Analysis Of Isabelle Mailloux-Bique's Echoes From The Curb

This idea of alternative publication is best illustrated through the case study of Isabelle Mailloux-Béique who writes about her own experience with activism in “Echoes from the Curb: Street Newspapers and Empowerment,” published in a larger collection edited by Andrea Langlois and Frédéric Doubois. Though Mailloux-Béique’s story is centered on street newspapers in Montréal, instead of larger alternative publications, it connects her activist engagement as an art form. Mailloux-Béique herself is an independent journalist and uses outlets to facilitate and drive an individual’s ability to engage on a different level and test ordinary bounds of print. Street newspapers for her were vital in creating social change with a refusal to be silenced

In order to develop a sustainable source of media, it requires social infrastructure, a readership, and an understanding of its wider importance. When print, specifically magazines, acts as a means to circulate activist views that go against the mainstream, there must also be adequate funding to support the publishing. This takes it back to the work of J. Johnston and This Magazine, which illustrates the hardship that must go into publishing an alternative print based on small or large scale monetary donations and voluntary writer contributions. Historically, Canadian society has been receptive to alternative media, though government support in funding these endeavors have been virtually non-existent (Skinner 37). Though, for such large-scale alternative publications to exist, take Broken Pencil or This Magazine, there must be an audience who supports it. The lack of funding however does not seem surprising since most mainstream outlets are backed by major socially élite players who guide the lenses their works publish from, unlike most alternative press. According to David Skinner, there have been attempts to create independent Canadian media alliances but they have ultimately been unsuccessful. Alternative media has also intersected mainstream publications and challenged these journals as a result. Take the scholarship of Chris Atton and James F. Hamilton for example; in their co-authored work Alternative Journalism they grapple with the realities of volunteerism when it comes to alternative journalism. As noted in the This Magazine case study, volunteerism is at the root of the publication’s