First Published: Frontline, Vol. 4, No. 2, July 7, 1986.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The People’s Daily World (PDW), a new and ambitious initiative of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), began regular publication June 3. Using modern computer and telecommunications technology, the “first coast-to-coast daily working class newspaper” in U. S. history rolled off the presses simultaneously in New York and California and was quickly distributed to readers across the country. The new paper is on the mark in vision and form; its content reflects the outlook of the CPUSA, from which stem its political strengths and weaknesses.
The PDW appears five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday. Daily subscribers ($10 per year in a special introductory offer) receive every issue by mail; weekly subscribers ($7 per year) receive each Friday’s issue, which contains the World Magazine insert and a Spanish section entitled Nuestro Mundo (Our World). The Friday issue is also published in two separate editions, a national edition and a California edition, with several pages of focused regional stories in the latter. Plans exist to expand the number and frequency of the regional editions, in particular to begin publication in Chicago before the end of the year.
The PDW combines the previous work of the Daily World, the CPUSA’s daily New York-based newspaper, and the People’s World, a West Coast weekly centered by the CPUSA but not officially a party organ. Mike Zagarell, former editor of the Daily World, is now the new paper’s editor; Carl Bloice, previously editor of the People’s World, is associate editor.
The PDW appears with an attractive format and a wide range of news coverage and comment. Blue and red are used to highlight the front and back pages; a series of regular formatted features (“A Deeper Look,” “Across the Country,” “People,” “Worldwire,” “Arts & Entertainment,” “PDW Sports” and others) set off different sections of the paper for reader convenience. The PDW contains proportionately more analytic and in-depth articles than the Daily World did, and its regular appearance and flexibility to produce regional editions allow a very broad range of topics and struggles to be covered.
Not surprisingly, the CPUSA has given the task of launching the PDW the highest priority, arguing that the new paper is pivotal both for building the mass anti-Reagan fightback and the CPUSA itself. The preparatory fund drive for the paper raised $500,000 and the CPUSA announced that supporters had distributed 250,000 copies of the preview issue published May 1. The CPUSA’s stated goal is 10,000 daily subscribers and 100,000 regular weekly readers by the end of 1986.
Even if this goal is not fully reached, the PDW would still represent one of the boldest and most wide-reaching left propaganda initiatives in many years. And it certainly comes at a time when the most aggressive efforts are needed to reach the U.S. populace with information and analysis from a working class, antiwar, anti-racist and pro-socialist perspective.
In that sense, the reservations in this quarter about the PDW do not concern the ambitious and much-needed effort to establish a national working class daily paper. Rather, our doubts that the PDW will maximize its potential for building the U.S. working class movement center on the assessment of current conditions and proposed strategy to move forward that anchors its editorial policy, that is, the current perspective of the CPUSA.
Commendably, that perspective is based on a partisan stance toward the range of issues facing the working class and a constant emphasis on the need for unity, within and between the various people’s movements. This outlook is expressed in the PDW’s own statement of its priorities and aims:
The PDW will carry the stories of trade union struggles against today’s generation of robber barons .... campaign for peace and against the Reagan administration’s world-threatening nuclear arms buildup and Star Wars schemes .... wage an unrelenting struggle against efforts to roll back the civil rights gains of recent decades and will fight the use of racism to divide the people of our country .... stand firmly for the full equality of women .... carry news of the struggles of youth, seniors and farmers .... fight for the desperate needs of the homeless and hungry ... In the People’s Daily World you will read about the peoples of the world on the rise for national independence, peace and social progress. The People’s Daily World will champion the cause of socialism.
Yet while taking the peoples’ side of the class barricades with commitment and enthusiasm, the PDW displays a noticeable reluctance to address and analyze the shortcomings and problems that currently afflict the working class forces. Forthrightly discussing the backward sentiments and divisions that impede durable unity is unfortunately treated as tantamount to reinforcing them. The result is one-sided coverage and commentary that fails to rivet the political attention of activists who confront the many still-formidable obstacles to unity day in and day out.
A similar pattern affects the PDW’s treatment of the class enemy and its policy of Reaganism. To its credit, the PDW keeps the fight against this expression of ruling class militarism, racism and austerity at the forefront of every topic. Yet its current evaluation is that Reaganism, in the words of associate editor Bloice, is experiencing “declining fortunes ... the honeymoon is over.” Further, according to the CPUSA, there has been no shift to the right among the U.S. population and, quite the contrary, we are in the midst of an upsurge of progressive popular resistance. Such an over-optimistic perspective necessarily distorts coverage of national political trends and obscures the fact that the U.S. bourgeoisie as a whole has moved to the right. It leaves readers without the full framework necessary to understand and analyze such developments as Reagan’s congressional victory on contra aid or the continuing rightward drift of so many “liberal” Democrats.
The PDW’s strengths and weaknesses are most concentrated, perhaps, in its coverage of the trade union movement. In attention given to this crucial area and in closeness and familiarity with its many component parts, the PDW’s coverage is far ahead of the rest of the left press. On the other hand, the very prominence given this area – and the fact that virtually every social struggle is seen through the prism of a trade union perspective – sends a message that the PDW regards trade union battles as the only “real class struggle,” all other fights being secondary or peripheral. And the coverage is so glowing – bordering at times on adulation – that one loses a sense of the very real internal problems and contradictions the labor movement presently faces.
Over the coming years, the PDW will be reaching thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – with its political perspective, speaking as the editorial voice of the largest and most influential organization on the U. S. left. As such it deserves being monitored regularly by all those in the progressive movement.