Sep 05, 2008  |  By: EMILY WAGNER  | COMMENTS     

There’s seldom anyone in the belowground office in Adams Morgan and the door, which has a sign taped to the glass proclaiming, “Feminism is Spoken Here,” is usually closed.

Hobbled by high production costs, off our backs (oob), a feminist news journal published in Washington, is facing the likely end of a 38-year run in print. The quarterly journal, produced almost entirely by volunteers, is due to come out this month, but the coming print edition may be its last.

Since its inception, oob has been produced by a consensus decision-making collective of women who are now establishing how they will redesign and maintain a web-only publication. Another issue is whether to charge for online subscriptions, which would pay to maintain the 18th Street office, or to make access available for free.

“This is a very big change and should be respected as such,” says Melissa Rodgers, a former intern who was recently elected into the oob collective.

“We’re deciding how to keep the original oob intact and simultaneously grow it into a whole new community.”

Although the collective is still in the brainstorming phase and has many decisions to make, obb will most likely publish exclusively on its web site after this month.

The publication covers national and international news on abortion rights, health and reproductive technology, lesbian rights, comparable worth, child care legislation and other women’s issues and has been published continuously since it was founded in 1970, making it the oldest feminist periodical of its kind in the United States.

“We’re doing what we can do right now to preserve the future of oob,” Rodgers says. “We need people to know there is still a voice here on 18th Street.”

To spread the word about the journal’s impending transition to the web and to attract new volunteers, oob is hosting an evening

of female-centric entertainment called “Save Our Backs” this Sunday at the DC Arts Center. The evening’s emcee is lesbian comedian Kat Wilderotter and featured performers are local feminist band Turboslut, Palestinian feminist hip-hop artist Sabreena Da Witch, Everyone Except Me and DJ Natty Boom.

“Playing music is our lives, it is a privilege to have the resources and support to do it,” says Beck “Ice Queen” Levy, guitarist for Turboslut. “Whereas maintaining oob is long-haul work and often thankless, we are honored to have an opportunity to give what little we can to benefit the magazine.”

Levy and others who will perform Sunday at “Save Our Backs” believe in ensuring that oob’s ideas and what they consider marginalized perspective remain accessible.

“If these ideas are lost, we will be constantly forced to reinvent the wheel and history will be doomed to repeat itself,” Levy says.

The first issue of oob was published on Feb. 27, 1970 as a 12-page tabloid. It was published monthly for 32 years until 2002, when oob cut back its publishing schedule to six times a year.

In 2007, oob switched to a quarterly schedule.

“It’s hard to find any other publication that has been publishing for so long that has had as few staff members as oob,” says collective member Carol Anne Douglas, who has been with oob since 1974. “We have, for many years, relied solely on volunteer work. It’s a miracle we’ve lasted this long.”
Because of oob’s national and international focus, the advertising revenue is limited to a national and international readership.

“It’s hard to look for national-scope advertisers,” says Karla Mantilla, who has been with the collective 14 years. She admits it’s a struggle to find businesses that want to reach oob’s demographic and, with no full-time staff to drum up new clients, the national and international advertisers often have to find them.

“We’ve just done a fundraising drive and raised $16,000 from our readers,” says Douglas, who estimated that it costs between $4,000 and $5,000 to publish an issue of oob. “So, we can continue in some form, but we can’t continue to pay printing and mailing costs.”

Phyllis Holman-Weisbard, a straight women’s studies librarian at the University of Wisconsin, believes that publishing oob online only is potentially a positive switch. Beyond keeping the budget in check, there is a large and growing community of feminists online.

“That’s where the readers are and where they expect their publications to be,” says Holman-Weisbard, who, prompted in part by the huge jump in postal costs, recently made the University of Wisconsin’s publication “Feminist Periodicals: A Current Listing of Contents,” available online only.

“Our contents are now searchable and it is available and used by many more people than have ever subscribed,” Holman-Weisbard says.

The University of Wisconsin’s ...