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• Issue 1
• The Making Of

What have we done? In the beginning there was fervour, idealism and a few pints.  There was absolute rage and total commitment to bringing down media empires. There was the passion that only the inexperienced and uninitiated can feel.

There were 15 journalists with one challenge - to go and stick it to the free papers.  To us it made sense to ask them, actually, to demand that the freesheet newspapers stop printing rubbish. Not only that, we were going underground (literally) to meet people and deliver into their hands free books. Ditch your free sheet, take this book and read our website. This is the stuff of crusaders.

Into the subterranean world we went.  We handed out free books.  We were met with some strange looks. And the word seeped out about the London Book Project. We were creating a library on the subway: books from John Pilger to Dan Brown via "Seaside Villages in Cornwall". We didn't care what it was as long as it wasn't a "viewspaper" shoved in your face.

And then the Metro - a freesheet - contacted us to say they were interested in our story but offended by our mission statement. And while the story ended there for the Metro, our disparate group was thrown into disarray. We could get publicity, but we would have to change our mission statement. Hence the dilemma...would we change our stripes, tone down our mission statement and start again, lesson learned?

We put it to a vote, and then we put it to another vote, and then just to be sure we put it to a final vote. In between the second and third votes, we had a veto. I haven't voted as much in the past few years as I have today. Though perhaps misguided in our idealism, we've stayed true to our democratic principles.

The issue at hand was whether we should change our mission statement just because a freesheet found it offensive. We abandoned our demand that they stop printing rubbish; in its place went the hugely inoffensive "nappy wearing" slogan, Your Voices, Our Stories.

I changed my mind. I put my hand up three times to say we should alter our mission statement. Are the freesheets printing rubbish? I think they are.

So why did I change? Maybe I've left idealism behind. I think you can offer people alternatives, but will the Murdoch empire really listen to us, a bunch of minions?

You know what?  They might. I think we should change the mission statement back.