Cate WillitsFall 2011

Small Press Project

Advocado Press

AcknowledgementsMany thanks to Mary Johnson, editor and co-founder of Advocado Press. Most of the information contained in my report was obtained through correspondence with her.

Why is Advocado Press Important?Generally speaking, disability studies reached academia in the 1990’s. Perhaps even more importantly, the Americans with Disabilities Act was not made into law until 1990. Advocado Press, however, was founded in 1981, making it a significant frontrunner for critical work and thinking concerning disability studies. The fact that Advocado prefigured disability studies and legislation demonstrates its critical influence in highlighting disability as a social presence that needs to be recognized. Furthermore, that Advocado has remained as a successful press -- publishing texts concerning disability and disability studies for 30 years -- is a testament to its continued vital presence in a culture where disability is still a problematic identity and uncomfortable topic of discussion.

A Quick Look at Advocado Press Today

• Advocado Press is based in Louisville, KY.

• Advocado is currently interested in publishing books in the disability studies market, especially those concerning media.

• The majority of Advocado’s titles are print-on-demand.

• Advocado is not currently seeking new manuscripts, but they do receive some through mail and e-mail

History of Advocado Press

• Advocado Press was founded in 1981 by Mary Johnson and Cass Irvin.

• In 1980, Mary had started publishing The Disability Rag as a local newsprint magazine.

• Mary’s goal behind The Disability Rag was to help organize the community of disabled people in Louisville.

• The press originally did not publish books, but was created to publish The Disability Rag Magazine (later, Ragged Edge Magazine). http://www.advocadopress.org/ragsub/subscribe.htm

• In March 1981, Advocado incorporated as a non-profit press and began publishing The Disability Rag.

• Advocado began publishing books in 1994 with The Ragged Edge – an anthology of writings from The Disability Rag.

The Ragged Edge Online

[http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/]

• The Ragged Edge Online features fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.

• Samples of texts found on The Ragged Edge Online:

Economics of the Press

• Advocado currently does not have an office or a paid staff.

• Their most significant overhead is maintaining the websites for Advocado and for The Ragged Edge Online

• Their income comes mostly from the sales of their print-on-demand titles.

• Advocado runs by the work of several volunteers; however, they did have some paid staff in the past.

• The primary tasks of these volunteers include fulfillment and shipping duties for orders on the few books that are still in stock.

History of Advocado’s Economics

• In the past, while still publishing The Ragged Edge and The Ragged Edge online, Advocado received most of its income from magazine (both print and online) subscriptions.

• Early in its history, Advocado received about a third of its income from donations.

• In the late 1980’s Advocado administered several federal grants which also created income.

Marketing

• Advocado markets their titles using:

– disability studies e-mail lists

– booths at disability studies conferences

– reviews in disability publications and academic journals with a focus on disability studies

• In the past, while Advocado still maintained a print periodical, they marketed their titles to their magazine subscribers.

• Advocado is a member of Small Press Distribution (SPD).

Book Design/Production

• Advocado has an in-house designer – Barrett Shaw is Advocado’s current board president and is a freelance graphic/book designer.

• Today Advocado prints all their books via print-on-demand. For their first print-on-demand book, Advocado used lulu.com for Disability Awareness: Do It Right!. Since then Advocado has used CreateSpace and LightningSource (which is a division of Ingram distributors). Additionally, once their older titles have sold out, they switch them over to print-on-demand and do not take them out of print.

Advocado’s Titles

• Most recent title that represents Advocado’s current publishing interest:

– Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media

– Published by Towson University professor Beth Haller

– Published in 2010 through print-on-demand

Some of Advocado’s Titles:

Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve & the Case Against Disability RightsBy: Mary Johnson (2003)

[http://www.advocadopress.org/make.html]

• Available for purchase online from Advocado and from Amazon

https://www.createspace.com/3423117

"Imagine an African American's voting rights withheld until he or she proved 100 percent African American descent, or a woman having to sue her employer to get a women's restroom in the workplace. Outrageous as those scenarios seem, their like is commonplace in the lives of the disabled, Johnson says, because of widespread misinterpretation and misapplication of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). She points out numerous flaws in the law, beginning

with its title (she prefers that of the British analog, the Disability Discrimination Act) and including the fact that it is enforceable only via lawsuit, putting rights seekers in an adversarial position, and that it contains an escape clause permitting noncompliance if accessibility causes a business "undue hardship." The disabled person's difficulties aren't, however, confined to the law, and the roots of conflict over disability rights reach deep into personal prejudices and national values. Bit-by-bit Johnson deconstructs arguments against disability rights from the likes of Clint Eastwood as well as more ordinary folk, and she constructs powerful reasons why we all benefit from inclusion." --Booklist

Acclaim for Make Them Go Away

• "In challenging us to imagine a more accessible living environment, Johnson outlines why we all have a stake in creating such a society,...it's the one minority that anyone can join in an instant... Viewed this way, accessibility becomes a matter of self-interest for everyone. [I]f America is to live up to its promise as a place of opportunity for all, then this is a discussion we desperately need to have. Johnson's thoughtful, carefully argued book is an important contribution to that dialogue, and an excellent place to start." -- Martha Barnette, The Courier-Journal (Louisville)

• Make Them Go Away "reveals the animus against disability underlying all those sweetly written op-ed pieces, and ... challenges us to oppose the mindset that puts the civil rights of all Americans at the mercy of the marketplace." -- Douglas Lathrop, New Mobility

Selection from Make Them Go Away

• Is it disability status – or discriminatory treatment by others – that the ADA is about? Most Judges and many attorneys still don’t seem to know. And a series of decisions the summer before Clint Eastwood began his campaign seemed to say that most members of the Supreme Court didn’t know either” (57)

• When Clint Eastwood insisted that he should have been given a letter notifying him of changes that needed to be made at his resort, rather than being simply sued for having violated a 10-year-old law, attorney Paul Rein, who had taken the case for wheelchair user Diane zumBrunnen, had argued that neither black people nor women barred from facilities would be required to send a letter to the organization in advance of suing them. Why, he’d asked, ‘should disabled persons be the only class of persons required to send letters?’ Eastwood’s response to Crossfire’s Bill Press, who had brought up Rein’s comment, shows why people think disability rights are beyond the bounds of common sense: ‘You’re not going to reconform a whole building based upon the entrance of a black person or a woman coming in,’ Eastwood had said.” (29)

The Ragged Edge: The Disability Experience from the Pages of the First Fifteen Years of the Disability RagEd. Barrett Shaw (1994)

[http://www.advocadopress.org/ragg.html]

• Available for purchase from Advocado and online from Amazon

• “What this book attempts to capture and convey is simply the experience of being a person with a disability in America today. What does it feel like? The introduction says: ‘It is hard to unravel the tangled, knotted ball of the disability experience – isolation and differentness versus a common identity; images of weakness, vulnerability, enforced childishness, learned helplessness versus defiance, willingness to make waves and change the status quo; pity, destroying dignity, and its other side, fear, fear of our differentness, our ‘imperfection,’ as if perfection were humanly achievable; and then our own fear, raw fear of attitudes that would destroy our kind, whether by genocide, selective abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide or rationing of care. This book attempts to weave a rough but strong cloth from these gnarled strands, to give the feel of the disability experience.’” – from jacket cover

Acclaim for The Ragged Edge

• “The Disability Rag is the voice of a mighty revolution, and this stunning collection from its first 15 years will become an invaluable primer for anyone who wants understand the new thinking of the disability rights movement. Here are the urgent, spirited and provocative stories that have changed the way people – disabled and nondisabled – have come to view what it means to have a disability.” – Joseph P. Shapiro, U.S. News & World Report, author of No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement

• "Reading The Ragged Edge [anthology] is like sitting in on a vigorous, sometimes funny, and often irreverent roundtable discussion of the issues that most concern all humanity, disabled and nondisabled, whether they admit it or not. Some of the voices are reflective, some sad, some furious, but none will lull you to sleep. On the contrary, you'll feel ready to roll on out and transform the world.” – Nancy Mairs, author of Plaintext, Carnal Acts, Ordinary Time and Waist High In the World

Selections from The Ragged Edge

“White Caps” By Mararet RobisonWhite caps on the river. Wind all day. Hard.You’ve been dead three years.Still I write you letters in my head.

And dreams some nights of us together. Indian summer’s gone.When I crossed the river bridge at dawnA fine powder of snow was coming down.My aide pushed my wheelchairWhile I gripped the handrail. Mother,I’m learning to walk again.May/June 1993(102)

“The Do-gooder” By Billy Golfus

• “When I say Do-gooder I don’t’ just mean the counselors, staff, vocational (do you really need four syllables to say ‘work’?) personnel and assorted ‘helpers.’ I mean the agencies, programs, or what they call ‘care providers.’ The term Do-gooder appears to suggest the kind of neighbor that brings over chicken soup when you’re sick – and once in a while somebody’ll even do that. But that’s not what I mean. I guess, for the most part, I’m talking about the professionals. After my accident I started to have my eyes opened very slowly. IT took me years, like they say, to process what had happened. While the physical disabilities and the brain damage that I have are inconvenient, a drag even, they’re not as bad as the treatment by my friends, social systems and especially the Do-gooders. These people are professionals,’ for God’s sake. To hang the word ‘helping’ on ‘professional’ gives the connotation of humanity, generosity and compassion. AS if their reasons for acting came out of a sense of community and personal beliefs. Give me a break! Obviously the Do-gooders don’t go into that line of work for the money – although they are making a better living than the people they ‘serve’ – and even though the words are about supporting and serving, they’re basically trying to fill their own needs, to use the jargon” (165).

Anesthesia: Poems By Kenny Fries (1996)

[http://www.advocadopress.org/anes.html]

• Available for purchase on Amazon

• “What is the relationship between the poet’s body and his poetic corpus? This is the question Kenny Fries examines. He has formed out of his physical self a body of poetry of classical proportions, and in his sequence of poems in homage to Claude Monet, he has shown how the commitment to realism is, in fact, an incitement to the transforming power of love and the Protean nature of the world” – David Bergman, Editor of Men on Men

Acclaim for Anesthesia

• “In a deftly orchestrated collection, Kenny Fries brings to light a complex awareness of his history as a Jew, and as a gay man physically disabled at birth. Tough-minded and sparely written, the poems take their source from a clear and calm intelligence that projects an aura of affirmation in the face of suffering and loss. Fries is not content with the merely personal; his work spins into wider worlds. Anesthesia marks a new depth and range in this gifted young poet’s career.” – Colette Inez

Sample from Anesthesia

“Love Poem”On the narrow bed. Patterns of lightand shadow across your body. I holdyour face in my hands. Tell me, before I kiss you, what it is like to beso beautiful? I want to know how otherhands have touched you. What othereyes, beneath your clothes, imagine.And how do you imagine me? Do youfeel my callused skin? See my twistedbones? When you take off my clotheswill you kiss me all over? Touch me asif my body were yours. Make me beautiful.(10)

Desert Walking: PoemsBy: Kenny Fries (2000)

[http://www.advocadopress.org/dese.html]

• Available for purchase on Amazon

• “In elegantly contemplative poems, Kenny Fries explores the natural world of the desert, carrying us on a journey that is both an esthetic and spiritual quest. Richly interwoven with colors and contours of the land, bomb testing sites, holy places, native lore, and offering homages to artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Ellsworth Kelly, this wise book merits our praise.” – Colette Inez

Acclaim for Desert Walking

• “From Exodus to Eliot’s The Waste Land the desert has been the site for spiritual quests that balance a deep mourning for the human condition against a longing for joy and transcendence. I see this same alternation in Kenny Fries’s Desert Walking, where the American wilderness fosters the poet’s quest, its non-human austerity tempered by the

presence and solace of a beloved camerado in the tradition of Whitman. The promise of Kenny Fries’s earlier work is realized in this one.” – Alfred Corn

• “These spare, precise poems chart the complexities of human intimacy with both delicacy and brashness. Their mix of candor and tenderness is memorable and moving.” – Chase Twichell, author of The Snow Watcher

Sample from Desert Walking

“Equivalents”These days are cut short by the skyand I leave too much unsaid.After a long day of travel you comeat the edge of the cliff: the starsAnd I leave too much unsaid.I replace your face with the sky.At the edge of the cliff: the stars -- light too old to remember your eyes.I replace your face with the sky. Dark hills vast curves of your thighs.Light too old to remember your eyes –the moon sinks through the night.Dark hills vast curves of your thighs.At the crest of the gorge: a plateau.The moon sinks through the night – Dawn shadows skimming the hills.At the crest of the gorge: a plateau.The mountains swallow the moon.Dawn shadows skimming the hillsmy hands trace over your skin.The mountains swallow the moon.After a long day of travel you come.My hands trace over your skin.These days are cut short by the sky.(18-19)

Getting LifeBy: Julie Shaw Cole (2000)

[http://www.advocadopress.org/gett.html]

• Available for purchase from Advocado and online from Amazon

• “Emily, is a non-verbal, nursing home resident who has sat like a lump on a borrowed wheelchair for most of the past seventeen years. But Emily is not a lump; she is a

thinking, feeling human being who has never had the opportunity to show her stuff. Raised by an aunt and uncle after her mother was killed in an accident Emily is subjected to tender care from her uncle and abuse and despair from her aunt. When both these relatives die, she is dumped into the nursing home where she believes she'll stay forever. In one of the novel's many ironies, it is neglect and abuse that changes Emily's life. She is so badly neglected by a member of the nursing home staff that she finds herself in a hospital-and that turns out to be the best thing that could have happened for her. An empathetic doctor sees that there is more to Emily than meets the eye and begins a course of liberating Emily from the nursing home. This doesn't happen overnight. Just like in real life, Emily has lots of time on her hands in the nursing home, which has been home for many years. She's not that eager to just up and leave. And how can she, she wonders, since she doesn't speak; she can't walk, no one outside of the nursing home will take care of her and on and on. Emily shares her struggles, her pains, her triumphs with us on the path to freedom with which the book concludes. “--Steven E. Brown, Institute on Disability Culture

Acclaim for Getting Life

• “It is fiction, but it likely describes the lives of many persons with disabilities. The reader should not fear, however, that this is a preachy or depressing narrative about the perils of nursing home life. The story is written from Emily's perspective, and Emily is very funny, imaginative and downright spunky. Her unexpressed thoughts will move the reader to laughter as often as tears. In addition to being a great read, this book needed to be written to call attention to the Emilys in institutions far and near and to gather backing for initiatives to support these folks in their efforts to live in the community and enjoy a more independent and fulfillling lifestyle. As Emily vividly demonstrates, people with disabilities enhance our lives by being in our midst.” --Reba Pierce, Kentucky Monthly

• “There are many fictionalized accounts of disability; unfortunately, most of them seem to be written to appeal to preconceptions of the non-disabled reading public about what it ‘ought’ to be like to live with a disability. Getting Life, on the other hand, rings very true to real experience, and fills a gap in human understanding that few books I’ve seen really do.” – Mary Johnson

Selection from Getting Life

• “That gives me thinking time. What is the difference between outside and here? Could there be any advantages if outside is what Jo and Nate and the aides live? But Andrew describes his life: travel, new people, different places, even jail. I get very excited, but I feel really scared. Is it what he tells us, or that he tells us? It’s not how he tells us! What is so appealing here? Damn his eyes!” (106)

• “I would watch as the light moved across the room and onto the board with the tacked-on window shade. Uncle Nate put a can with a few brushes and a strong smell in it on the smoking table. He squeezed buttery wads of color form small tubes he kept in a box high in the closet. I watched as he moved the brushes in the light and made shapes on the old stained shades. He didn’t mind that I watched. He didn’t know that I wished very hard to be able to make such shapes and colors and lights move about like that. He didn’t know that I wished that I could change the pages in the book. But when I lucked into the pictures of the churches on all two big pages, I could watch them changing in their light. It took a long while before I realized that it was the same church, but in different light, at different times of the day. I just hadn’t expected that.” (1-2)

To Ride the Public’s Buses: The Fight that Built a MovementEd. Mary Johnson and Barret Shaw (2001)

[http://www.advocadopress.org/ride.html]

• Available for purchase from Advocado and online from Amazon

• To Ride the Public’s Buses “is the first in the "Disability Rag Reader" series, anthologies of articles on particular topics that appeared in the Disability Rag 1980-1996. TO RIDE THE PUBLIC'S BUSES, begins in the 1980's and chronicles the fight for equal opportunity rights for people with disabilities. Protests occurring during this time were fought to publicize the segregation and prejudice evident in the American Public Transit Association. With a Forward by Stephanie Thomas, Adapt organizer and editor for Incitement, this anthology chronicles the nationwide legal, political and personal issues involved with gearing up the movement and keeping it moving perpetually forward. Edited by Mary Johnson and Barrett Shaw, TO RIDE THE PUBLIC'S BUSES details the success of a group of activists fighting for wheelchair accessibility and equality in the eyes of the public.” – Amazon product description

From the Foreword of To Ride the Public’s Buses

• “How could you go to school, or go on a date, or volunteer somewhere if the only trips deemed worth funding for you were medical trips? How could you get a job if you could only get three rides a week? If you were never on time? How could you raise a family, shop for food, get your kids to and from school or wherever, if all the rides were taken up with work trips (and this for a population with a 70% unemployment rate)? Most of all, you heard the oppressive, overbearing message that other people – from the transit authority CEOs and system managers down to the drivers – could decide better than you – and would decide – what was most worthwhile for you to be doing. You simply did not count . . .” (Stephanie Thomas viii)

Sample from To Ride the Public’s Buses

• “Local option’ is nothing but a sophisticated states’ rights argument,’ said Wade Blank. The Denver disability rights organizer with roots in the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s worked for years to get Denver public transit accessible. He relates much of the struggle for accessible mass transit to the struggle of the blacks in the South over the issue of Jim Crow.” (9)

Disability Awareness – Do It Right! Ed. Mary Johnson (2006)

[http://www.advocadopress.org/dadir.html[

• Available for purchase from Advocado (print-on-demand) and on Amazon

[http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/disability-awareness---do-it-right/464206]

-->>link to “purchase”

• “Disability Awareness -- Do It Right! offers you an all-in-one how-to guide from the Ragged Edge Online community, with tips, techniques and handouts for a successful Awareness Day.

Short background articles and planning lists help you organize fun and effective Awareness Day activities that disability rights activists support. Concise, easy-to-read chapters show you how to carry out 6 specific types of activities, how to handle follow-up discussion and even how to spur social change.

Appendices include resources and articles to use with Awareness Day participants.” – from: www.advocadopress.org

Acclaim for Disability Awareness – Do It Right!

• “One of the reasons disability simulations are so popular is that they take the focus off oppression and social change, and instead put the focus on simplistic solutions: ‘be nice.’” – Prof. Art Blaser, Political Science, Chapman University

• “Disability simulations are not likely to disappear anytime soon . . . So is it possible to structure them in ways that enable all who take part to truly confront the prejudices they had coming in, to understand each other better on the way out and foster a willingness by all to keep moving forward? True communication occurs when people speak to each other not from where we wish things were, but rather, from where they are. Only when that is understood can we move toward where we’d like to be.” – Lawrence Carter-Long, Disabilities Network of New York City

Sample from Disability Awareness – Do It Right!

• In discussing how simulations are popular but not necessarily the best option for a Disability Awareness Day activity, Disability Awareness – Do It Right suggests:

“Try this exercise!

Discuss among yourselves why ‘simulations’ aren’t done with other kinds of ‘awareness’ training. Then ask yourself why it might be such a popular approach to disability awareness training.

Our fictional organizations used techniques other than simulations, and we’ve outlined them below. Shadowing, investigation, dramatization, role-playing, audiovisuals and discussion are time-tested educational techniques that will probably get you closer to your objective than simulation.”

*To facilitate discussion, the handbook uses three fictional, or “imaginary groups”(38)

• “Shadowing

‘Shadowing’ has been popularized as a technique to give young adults a taste of the job world. A teen spends a day following the worker (‘sticking to her like a shadow’) observing everything she does, how she does it, when she does it, where she does it. Designed to be a one-on-one activity, it gives the teen a real feel for what a job is like, and gives him a specific individual to talk to, bringing up any questions he has. In our example above, Podunk Community College’s Awareness Day participants were shadowing their disabled escorts as they traveled with them around campus and watched as the escorts tried to get into various buildings” (54-55)

Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass MediaBy: Beth A. Haller (2010)

[https://www.createspace.com/3460454]

• Available for purchase online from Advocado and from Amazon

[https://www.createspace.com/3460454] -- >> link to “purchase”

• “Towson University journalism professor Beth A. Haller's 20 years of research into disability and mass media inform this one-of-a-kind collection on advertising, news, entertainment television, film and Internet new media. Ideal for disability studies students and researchers as well as disability activists.” – from: http://www.advocadopress.org /

Acclaim for Representing Disability in an Ableist World

• “Haller’s Representing Disability in an Ableist World is an exciting, fully-loaded, and comprehensive book. The essays are both foundational and groundbreaking – opening up

new territories in the new media environment and in disability studies” – Simi Linton, author of My Body Politic

• "[T]his textual analysis is a gem of clarity. . . . a welcome addition to disability studies literature in general, and in particular, to those who feel strongly about the necessity of educating students about responsible consuming, reporting and reviewing of disability issues in the news, and in culture at large. . . . I like this book enormously, and would recommend it especially to those teaching in the fields of Disability or Media Studies. Its clarity makes it an ideal text for newcomers to the field, and the richness of its samples and methodologies render it equally valuable to those who have been in either field over many years, and who may be looking for a new way to think about the issues Haller examines with thoroughness and perspicacity." -- From the review by Celest Martin in Disability Studies Quarterly 31.2 (2011)

Samples from the preface to Representing Disability in an Ableist World

• “I believe that the media narratives that ignore, devalue or misrepresent disability issues reflect the ableism of society through those narratives. Media content is shaped by dominant social beliefs about disability that come from the power of the dominant able-bodied culture, which defines and classifies disability. When these dominant beliefs ignore or represent disabled people with stereotypes, this is known as ‘ableism.’ The ableism within media content presents people with disabilities as inferior to able-bodied people, as ‘defective’ or as having a worthless status.” (iii)

• “Analyzing the content of the media has allowed me to understand the values of the media in representing people with disabilities and their concerns. This, in turn, helps assess the societal status of people with disabilities and their concerns. This, in turn, helps assess the societal status of people with disabilities and determine whether there are changes in the social culture regarding their issues. I believe media content to be especially important because of the many societal barriers that still exist for many people with disabilities which limit interpersonal interactions between disabled and nondisabled people. I argue that most non-disabled people still learn about disability issues through the media, rather than through interactions with people with disabilities.” (iv)

List of Essays in Representing Disability in an Ableist World

1. “The changing landscape of disability ‘news’: Blogging and social media lead to more diverse sources of information”2. “Researching media images of disability: How content analysis provides a method for assessment”3. Changing disability terminology in the news”4. “Not worth keeping alive? New York Times narratives about assisted suicide”5. “Autism and inclusive eductation in the news media: Hartmann v. Loudoun County Board of Education: A case study”

6. “Disability media tell their own stories”7. Pity as oppression in the Jerry Lewis Telethon”8. “The new phase of disability humor on TV”9. “Media advocacy and films: The ‘Million Dollar Baby’ effect”10. Advertising boldly moves disability images forward”

Making News: How to Get News Coverage of Disability Rights IssuesBy: Tari Susan Hartman & Mary Johnson. (1993)

[http://www.advocadopress.org/maki.html]

• Available for purchase from Advocado and online from Amazon

• “Worried about anti-disability spin in the media? Fight back -- make your own news! Get on the front pages, lead the newscasts, influence public debate. This how-to book gives examples, tips” – from: http:// www.advocadopress.org

• “the essential book for every disability rights group who wants to see disability rights issues on the front pages of its local newspapers and at the top of the evening newscast. It explains how to turn disability issues into newsworthy stories reporters will want to cover.” – from jacket cover of Making News

• “Here in one manual, how to . . .

• Get reporters to use your group as a source for story ideas

• Plan events reporters are sure to cover

• Build relationships with reporters and editors

Plus sample media campaigns” – from jacket cover of Making News

From the intro to Making News: How to Get News Coverage of Disability Rights Issues

• “Disability rights issues are not yet covered as ongoing news stories of importance to this nation. Though it is one of the most far-reaching laws of modern times, the Americans with Disabilities Act received less attention from the media during its move through Congress than either the 1964 Civil Rights Act or the Equal Rights Amendment” (i).

• “When disability rights issues become a routine part of news coverage, then society will finally regard them as ‘public’ issues affecting society as a whole, rather than ‘special’ issues affecting ‘the handicapped.’ We hope this manual will provide some tools to help that day soon” (iii).

Table of Contents to Making News

IntroductionSection I: Basics1. Making disability rights issues newsworthy2. Learning to be a source3. Developing a media strategy4. Building relationships with news media5. Getting coverage for an action6. Changing Hollywood imagesSection II: Media CampaignsIntroduction7. Fighting the telethon8. Ramp That Step! Campaign9. Attendant Services Now! Campaign10. The Right to DieSection III: Opinion-page ArticlesSection IV: ResourcesAppendicesI. Know your media outletsII. Who does what in news mediaIII. About those language guidelinesGlossarySample Media AdvisorySample News Release

Sample from Making News: How to Get News Coverage of Disability Rights Issues

• In chapter 1, “Making disability rights issues ‘newsworthy,’” under the section “A story with a human face,” Mary Johnson writes: “Reporters will almost always ask you for ‘a story with a human face.’ Reporters must be shown how the issue affects ‘real people’ – and the more typical the people are, the better. It is the job of those of us in disability rights groups to find people who can give reporters that human dimension – but we must make sure that the story does not become simply another story of an individual overcoming disability (or being overwhelmed by it). The individual in these stories must illustrate a larger, far-reaching issue that affects many people. (Producers often call this ‘The Big Picture.’) The individual in the story serves as an example; the story itself, though, should be about something larger, something that potentially affects most of us in society” (4-5).

For More Information:

• Visit Advocado’s website at:

http://www.advocadopress.org/

• Visit The Ragged Edge Online at:

http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/

• For an interview with Mary Johnson, visit:

http://media-dis-n-dat.blogspot.com/2009/04/founder-of-disability-rag-tells-its.html