By Danny Schechter

"Survivor" is the name of the hot, real-person TV show, ripped off conceptually from similar programs in Europe. (That's often how innovation works on U.S. TV — "Millionaire" is a U.K. clone too.) "Survivor" is also a metaphor for the game new media companies are playing to see which ones can sustain themselves at a time of falling stock prices and uncertain audience share.

The news in dot.com land was not good recently when word of what marketers dismissed as a "correction" struck several online-news brands with the force of a hack attack. Crime-news site All Points Bulletin (APB.com) announced that it would have to fire 140 of the people who mounted its independent (i.e., independent of big media combines) enterprise covering criminal-justice issues. CBS.com announced layoffs, and MediaChannel affiliate Salon.com, the online magazine that has been praised as a harbinger of new journalism, followed with 13 layoffs, including their lively media correspondent (since rehired).

Some analysts spoke of failures to meet "revenue projections," while National Public Radio's "On the Media" program wondered if these setbacks are evidence that outlets separate from big media combines are doomed unless they come under some well-funded corporate tent. Perhaps that's why APB is reportedly huddling with Rupert Murdoch's empire in search of a financial savior. The relatively well-financed Salon, with many savvy investors and outside content deals, is hanging on, religiously counting the "page views," or number of hits, each story receives. When the hits are high, ad sales are strong. When hits are low, you get hit.

For the most part, media news is reported as business news, buried in trade magazines and insider or media gossip sites. While some in the mainstream media might spare a tear for the bad fortunes of a feisty and award-winning news company like APB, such sympathy is short-lived and often displaced by "I told you so" commentary. These "good die young" refrains usually implicitly endorse Margaret Thatcher's famous retort to critics of her free market economic strategy. When pressed about economic injustice, the Iron Lady was dismissive, arguing, "There is no alternative." This defense of the status quo was soon translated into the catchy phrase "TINA," meaning "There Is No Alternative" to capitalism. In South Africa recently, a counterslogan was coined in the campaign to get the debt burden canceled: "THEMBA" stands for "There Must Be an Alternative." In Zulu, the word "themba" means hope.

This TINA vs. THEMBA debate is found in the media world as well. Most mainstream journalism tends to endorse the former even as it occasionally acknowledges the promise of the latter. A recent case in point was in the June 11th New York Sunday Times Week in Review section, which featured a major backgrounder about economic concentration as a lead, Page One story. Wow! Finally, media concentration gets splashed on the front page in the news section. At last the Gray Lady features a prominent article about the dominance of structural economic forces. There was even a dramatic headline: Oli-gopo-li. OLIGOPOLY! This provided some unintentional irony when the dictionary definition was given prominent play, as in "pl: -lies." Yes, oligopolists do lie, especially when they are accused of being oligopolists.

But this all-too-rare coverage presents the issues TINA-listicaly (to coin an awkward term myself), actually celebrating "the greatest period of industrial concentration in American history." On Page 1 the phenomenon is framed as being benign. It quotes the head of the Federal Trade Commission, Robert Pitofsky, explaining that firms are just "trying to adjust to new economy circumstances and global competition, striving to find new efficiencies. That's all fine with us." How nice.

You have to jump to Page 4 to find a response from THEMBA-ites, for whom the monopolization of media power is not so fine. The Times included two dissents, just above an illustration of three gorillas. There we find comments that a braver outlet might have led with to give the story real punch. Quoted is Gloria Tristiani, an FCC commissioner who suggested that her fellow regulators are not regulating. "It is time for the FCC to realize we are not dealing with bottled waters or sneakers, but with the dissemination of news and information, the lifeblood of our democratic way of life," she said. MediaChannel advisor Mark Crispin Miller, of the Project on Media Ownership, goes further, arguing: "The real danger is much subtler. You are talking about the disappearance of alternative views."

What the story avoids doing is actually defining what alternative news is or can be, probably because Times editors see themselves as the definers of journalism, the guardians of old media and the status quo for which it stands. Online, the story is different, with a plethora of publications all claiming to be alternative but not in countercultural or left political terms, which is how the "underground press" of the '60s presented itself.

Today, as the Web thrives on a cool look, outspoken content is rare, as media columnist Dan Kennedy writes in Boston's Phoenix newspaper: "Independent media can thrive on the Net. It's just that independent media that looks too much like the mainstream may get left behind — including Salon, which, despite its hip, alternative tone, is essentially a mainstream magazine that just happens to be published on the Web. ... Perhaps it's time to realize that the original vision of the Internet, as outlined in Howard Rheingold's 1993 classic, "The Virtual Community" — decentralized, democratic, individualistic and fueled by passion rather than money — is actually the one that works best."

Personally, I find the term "alternative" confusing and often self-marginalizing. I prefer "independent" because that proclaims a status apart from mega-media. Yet there's a problem there, too. Independent ownership in and of itself does not necessarily lead to alternative or critical perspectives and information. An independent attitude is what's needed, a commitment to offering what others don't. Incidentally, some conservative outlets meet that test as well as progressive ones.

But TINA be damned, THEMBA is alive and well in the sense that America has a rich tradition and mix of dissenting media, alternative newspapers and independent, politically oriented outlets. Many are as different from each other as they are from The New York Times. One of the best known, The Nation magazine, proudly boasts that it is the country's highest circulation and longest running journal of weekly opinion. It just celebrated its 135th birthday with a fundraiser in the posh, wood-paneled halls of New York's University Club, where gentlemen still must wear ties. (Is this a sign that radical journalism has gone upscale, or just that they got a good deal on the venue?) Comic Paul Krassner joked that he had to enter through the kitchen because he was wearing a TV shirt. Michael Moore was making no sartorial concessions either, wearing his proletarian uniform, natch, with trademark baseball cap. They were all funny. The biggest yuck was provoked by Al Franken's comparison of Bill Clinton's relationship with that intern and Thomas Jefferson's affair with a slave. Which, he asked, was more "inappropriate"?

On a still amusing but more serious note, author and movie director Nora Ephron brought the house down by singing — literally — the praises of Publisher Victor Navasky, while editor Katrina vanden Heuvel made an eloquent argument for how and why The Nation remains a beacon of independent journalism in the age of oligopoly. If you are not familiar with the magazine's content, a new collection of Nation reportage will be out soon from its soon to be launched book imprint, Nation Books. Navasky speaks of the alternative content of his magazine thusly: "The journal of opinion involves moral argument, political controversy and cultural analysis." The Nation sees itself as more than a publication. It is consciously seeking to serve progressive political movements.

At a time when some online ventures are going under, The Nation seems to be thriving, having just licensed all of its archives in a million-dollar Internet deal. Thanks to its Nation Circle funding network, led by movie star Paul Newman and my old friend, music executive Danny Goldberg, the magazine is paying its bills these days quite well, thank you. The magazine's well-appointed donors looked like they could be at a faculty meeting or even in the boardroom of an investment bank. One sign of The Nation's legitimatization by the establishment was the presence of CBS News's Dan Rather in a roomful of radicals. The omnipresent Hamilton Fish of the Nation Institute sought to protect him by publicly (and only half seriously) imploring a few of the media-critical guests — Mark Crispin Miller, Don Hazen of Alternet and myself — to leave him be, as if we were going surround His Anchorship and pin the tail on the donkey. I mused instead about the day when a Nation-type perspective will have a regular TV outlet, not just a correspondent for dinner.

If the Nation is America's best-selling source of alternative perspectives, there are even more radical outlets out there, with different political views and different internal ways of working as well. I dined with The Nation after spending a day and half in beautiful Woods Hole, Massachussetts, on Cape Cod. I was there for the annual Z Media Institute (ZMI), organized by Z Magazine, which for two decades has offered another model for presenting political ideas. Z is a regular outlet for Noam Chomsky, but also for more grassroots, activist-oriented readers, folks who would likely be uncomfortable in places like the University Club. If the Nation serves the intellectual elite, Z orients itself to those in the trenches.

Another difference: The Nation boasts a big staff and large office, while Z was created and is edited for the most part by just two people, Michael Albert and Lydia Sargent, who demonstrate that a small, technically savvy team can sustain a media enterprise of quality and commitment. Michael, who has problems with The Nation's hierarchy, stresses the importance of working in an egalitarian manner. "We have to practice what we preach, or why bother to do this?" he said, insisting that Z tries to be a model for bottom-up revolutionary perspectives, including less reliance on professional journalists. Perhaps that's why scores of activists came to ZMI seeking to improve their skills and deepen their analysis. I agreed with Michael's exposition of values, but it was not immediately clear to me how to implement them in the far more deadline-pressured world of New York news pros and weekly (and daily) news cycles.

What are the values alternative media holds dear? I found one explication last Saturday when I accompanied MediaChannel advisor Mike Zweig, author of "The Working Class Majority" on a boat ride benefit for WPKN, a community radio station based in Bridgeport, Connecticut, whose signal reaches the eastern end of Long Island. Station manager Harry Minot told me the station has been very successful by relying totally on financial support from listeners, with no ads, underwriting or foundation grants. "We don't allow donors to influence our programming," he writes in the station's most recent program guide. "Our aim is to preserve absolute freedom ... with no regard whatsoever for 'marketplace concerns or the Lowest Common Denominator.' " I was struck by how many listeners turned out for the fundraiser and how many of them were just plain old community residents and suburbanites.

WPKN, Z and The Nation are not the only alternative media enterprises, of course. The MediaChannel features many more in all aspects of media work, from David Barsamian's Alternative Radio to Free Speech TV to the new independent media centers that sprang up around the Seattle protests and will be activated soon in time for the U.S. political conventions. And I am not even touching on international enterprises here. That's the stuff of another column, because there are too many projects to explore. One suggestion: Have a look at our partner site, OneWorld.net for a whole world of media.

In the end, it will be the loyalty and support of readers, listeners and viewers that will assure the survival of alternative media outlets long after the "Survivor" castaways off the coast of Borneo are forgotten. Alternative media inspires the kind of loyalty that commercial media does not. Shows like "Survivor," however, have the deep pockets of a network, in this case CBS, behind them; independent media has to scramble harder. The good news is that many such outlets are thriving.

And sorry, Mrs. Thatcher, there are a lot of folks out there rooting for THEMBA. The French journalist Daniel Singer, who is a MediaChannel advisor, quotes a slogan that graced the streets of Paris 32 years ago and still animates the instinct to produce alternative media in the first place: "Be realistic! Demand the impossible!"

AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA.

The Media Channel is a not-for-profit project of OneWorld Online and The Global Center, and is produced by Globalvision New Media.