Help Us Digitize the News From Nowhere!
News from Nowhere
News from Nowhere was an underground newspaper published in DeKalb from 1967-1971 that featured art, poetry, satire, and information about student protests, political movements, and the counterculture. A project of the DeKalb Peace and Freedom Party, it was led by editor Peter Roman, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at NIU.
Describing the paper's mission in its first issue, Roman wrote:
"We seek to break down the barriers between town and university and open up all possible lines of communication. We want to involve as many as possible in dialog and participation. Solutions, ideas, ideologies, and actions we take in the face of war, fascism, racism, and poverty take on fresh meaning for us only in so far as they are formulated by the group itself. The old political vocabulary has lost its meaning. We want to interact with people, not on the basis of meaningless labels or party affiliations, but rather with the assumption that if we mutually oppose oppression there is a basis for interchanging ideas and common action and, perhaps, even some solutions."
The first issue of News from Nowhere, published in September 1968
News from Nowhere hoped to be an "open forum to stimulate local participation and dialogue," offering multiple points of views from different groups on campus.
Each issue contains original contributions from NIU students, faculty, and staff, supplemented by content provided by the Liberation News Service, an underground press agency that distributed bulletins and photographs to more than 500 papers much like New from Nowhere between 1967 and 1981.
In February 1968, the Political Science Department created a policy requiring all teaching faculty to defend their dissertation by the end of the year or face dismissal. When Peter Roman failed to meet this deadline, the University declined to renew his contract. It was widely believed that this policy and Roman's removal were motivated by his political views and involvement in projects like News from Nowhere. Over 900 students marched to protest Roman's removal, calling themselves "The Case for Peter Roman." They ultimately failed to sway the Personnel Committee of the University Council, which defended its "right to decide who shall be invited to remain as one of their close colleagues."
A call-to-action from NIU students in defense of Peter Roman, editor of News from Nowhere News from Nowhere was recently featured in a poster and online exhibit by graduate students Crystal Camacho, Ajahnaé Clay, and Jenny Guzman-Vieyran as part of coursework for HESA 500 (Higher Education and Student Affairs).
Contributors to News from Nowhere are encouraged to reach out to Carrie Kortegast, Associate Professor from the College of Education (ckortegast@niu.edu), if they are interested in being interviewed for a future oral history project.
The library is missing four issues of the paper, including:
- Vol. 1, Iss. 3 (November 1968)
- Vol. 2, Iss. 3 (November 1969)
- Vol. 3, Iss. 3 (1970)
- Vol. 3, Iss. 6 (1971)
Anyone who might be willing to donate any of these missing issues is encouraged to reach out to Bradley Wiles, Head of Special Collections & Archives (bwiles@niu.edu).
Digitization
Although the paper had as many as 2,000 subscribers, issues of New from Nowhere are scarce and exceedingly fragile. The NIU Libraries holds all but four issues, although many of these are torn, wrinkled, and falling apart due to inexpensive paper used and suboptimal storage conditions. Digitization of all 408 pages for the NIU Digital Library will preserve the paper by reducing handling, while making this important part of NIU's history more widely available for study. This will offer students and researchers an alternative perspective on NIU student life during the Vietname War era, different than that found in the Northern Star, NIU's official student newspaper, which NIU Libraries also recently digitized.
Costs & Stretch Goals
We estimate that digitizing all 408 pages of News from Nowhere held by the library will take 23 hours of student labor, paid at $15/hour, for a total of $345, and 20 hours of supervisory work and quality control from Preservation Coordinator Sata Prescott, for a total of $614. The long-term costs for storage are $5.63 per year for $56 when budgeting for ten years. Digital Library fees, which cover hosting and software development, are assessed at 15% of the project subtotal of $1,015 for $152.
If we exceed our fundraising goal, we plan to index the full contents of each issue, including the title and author of every article. This work will facilitate efforts to contact contributors and invite them to participate in oral history interviews about NIU campus life during the 1960s and 1970s. Additional funds will also help us digitize any of the four missing issues that are donated.
