Everywhere one turned during the last year, independent magazine publishers were voicing their public displeasure at the Independent Press Association (IPA) and its Executive Director, Richard Landry. The news was covered by sfweekly.com, in Jeremy Adam Smith's blog Jeremy's Journal on Media and Democracy, and in the impassioned, angry e-mails from magazine s like Punk Planet exhorting you to please buy a subscription, now. According to its critics, IPA wasn't paying. IPA wasn't talking. IPA wasn't leading. And it was fucked, as fucked as what the IPA had come to represent to so many of its member—a corporate entity lacking in transparency, vision and guts.

But what exactly happened? Where is IPA heading, and is the independent press as we know it going to die because of this upheaval?

Founded in 1996, IPA is a nonprofit association that boasts over 500 members, including household names (at least in the house I grew up in) such Mother Jones and The Nation, and local favorites (again, in my house at least) with a national presence like Punk Planet and Venus .

While the mission of IPA is fine—"to amplify the power of independent publications so as to foster a more just, open, and democratic society" it sounds like a non-profit mission statement ought to, and there's no doubt that funders must dig it. However, it is IPA's tagline that sums up its true reason for being: "the antidote to monopoly media." This tagline says 'fuck traditional media and fuck multi-national conglomerates, PR flacks, and fake blogs written on behalf of clueless CEOs.' It says that we can still create magazines in our dorm rooms and publish them out of our garage. It also says that we can give a voice to the voiceless and do work with meaning no matter how professionalized we become.

IPA has been dedicated to supporting this vision from the start through providing technical assistance, access to capital, and other services to support independent publishers. In 2000, IPA also decided to get into the distribution business and purchased BigTop Newsstand Services, renaming it Indy Press Newsstand Services. Richard Landry said via e-mail that IPA did this "in order to save one of the last remaining outlets that small publishers could turn to in order to get their publications seen and read by the public."

But then came the cash flow problems. When magazines stopped getting paid by IPA in a timely manner, if at all, people started getting upset. Landry said the cash flow problems occurred because "in this era of media consolidation, newsstand distribution requires financial and technical resources that are beyond the scope of a small nonprofit organization like the IPA ... even though the IPA is a nonprofit organization, that didn't make it invulnerable to the pressures of media consolidation that have put virtually all other for-profit independent magazine distributors out of business."

I wondered if this is how members of the independent press saw the problem and so I met with Anne Elizabeth Moore, publisher of Punk Planet (full disclosure: I have had work published in Punk Planet ). I asked her what she thought was at the root of IPA's cash flow problems. She said, "We don't know why there was a crisis with cash flow, but there was changing of attitude. They were trying to compete with major national distributors and we knew that was going to fail. What they will say is that IPA made their first mistake when they decided to become a distributor. That is a fundamentally flawed argument ... They have to meet the needs of independent publishers. [I] flew out in November (2005), all I could say is 'you're fucking us; it's such a bad business decision to work with you.' But that's all anger. That's what you get when you work with a corporate entity."

Here, then, lies one of issues that arises when you try to talk to members of the independent press about IPA and their recent business decisions: while the cash-flow issues are real enough, IPA has essentially gone corporate—they don't know how the independent press feels or thinks, they don't understand their members, and they don't seem to appreciate how much their lack of cash flow can hurt independent magazines.

I was curious what other members of the independent press might think as well, and so I reached out to Jen Angel of Clamor * (full disclosure: I have also published work in Clamor). I caught up to her on the phone as she was running around in preparation for Clamor's annual independent media conference. She said, "Clamor is one of the publications where even $1000 makes or breaks us. There is no cash reserve; I just don't expect them to reimburse us, and that sucks. We've cut back on some of the print issues. It's kind of a vicious cycle. We're not getting new subscribers. I think the indie press has really underestimated how bad this is for people; the staff there now doesn't know enough about indie publishing. They don't live the mission. They don't understand what it's like—don't understand how much a little bit of money [affects magazine s like Clamor]."

If a lack of understanding is one issue, another one is the feeling that IPA has been unwilling or unable to communicate what was going on. As Jen Angel said, "IPA kept us in the dark forever—we're getting the grant. The way they kept people in the dark, they didn't allow people that respect so they could make another choice about their projects."

I asked Richard Landry about the communications issues and he told me, "We tried to the best of our ability to keep indie press publishers apprised of our efforts to solve the cash-flow problem, while maintaining a level of confidentiality required during negotiations with potential partners. That meant we couldn't be as forthcoming as many people would have liked at the time. But striking this balance was critical to our ultimate success, and without question we feel that this was in the best interests of IPA publishers and the independent press as a whole."

Richard Landry's comments are telling because, in many ways, the issue here is one of leadership and how it is that organizations develop new strategies, address problems with their members' needs in mind, and ensure that these members feel engaged and part of the decision-making process. Often, when leaders try to grow from grassroots organizations, they begin to lose touch with where they came from. It's inevitable. Growth invites and sometimes requires a greater level of professionalism and structure—but leaders can't lose touch with who they're serving, they can't give up on transparency, and they can't blame ambiguous situations on how hard it is to strike a balance between growing an organization, admitting to their mistakes, and serving those who affiliate with them.

One story that emerged during the last year was that a member of the IPA was banned from IPA's e-mail discussion list when she made disparaging remarks about IPA. This led to the creation of a separate e-mail discussion list by a group called "Independent Members of IPA." I asked Anne Elizabeth Moore about this development and she said, "She was banned, which I'm opposed to, and the other community was started. The other community that was created is a lot of talk, but not a lot of action. It's useful for a lot of people, but not what we do."

And these comments are significant as well. While not all members of the IPA have the same needs or the same interests, they do all have a common mission and, when an organization's business philosophy is not aligned with their mission, problems will occur—problems such as banned members and divergent discussion lists. I asked Richard Landry to comment on these phenomena, but he did not respond to this question.

Richard Landry is willing to speak relatively openly about IPA's struggles with media consolidation, which he sees as a root problem for the cash flow problems IPA encountered. I asked Anne Elizabeth Moore to comment on this explanation. She said, "The thing is that media consolidation exists and it makes it hard to do my job, but it doesn't stop me from doing my job, and it shouldn't stop the Executive Director of IPA from doing his job. It should make it clear what it is he's supposed to do. If I wake up and say media consolidation beat me—that's crazy talk."

So what do you do then? For one, all members of the independent press have to kick and scream and do whatever it takes to keep the indie press alive and well. Members must demand its survival, because too many voices are lost every time an independent magazine goes away. On the other hand, the indie press can only benefit from strong leadership if it exists to ensure its survival and growth—and so members also have to demand that IPA be that type of leader.

IPA leadership has taken steps to strengthen the organization. There is a new distribution partnership with Disticor and $1.9 million in grant funding from the Ford Foundation to further build the Independent Press Development Fund, which makes loans to qualified members of the IPA.

"Our Disticor partnership and the expansion of the Independent Press Development Fund both set the stage for the IPA to play an increasingly important role in providing funding, training and consulting, and marketing services for independent, mission-driven publishers," Landry said when I asked him about the new developments. "We're entering a new period where these three areas will be the focus of our work. We think that these are the most practical ways for us to have a serious, sustained impact on our media environment."

And to that I say, 'I hope so,' because the members of the independent press deserve good leadership. Their voices are the lone voices of reason in a media-saturated world gone crazy; without them there would be no dissent, no opposition, and no "other." Without the independent press, there would be no antidote to monopoly media, and who wants to live in a world like that?

*As of November 2006, Clamor Magazine has ceased publication.