This special issue of the Fifth Estate is a collaboration between the Detroit staff and our friend and comrade, Freddie Baer in San Francisco. The essay on deep ecology was written and edited here, but with invaluable suggestions and criticisms from several people around the country. The typesetting, graphic selection and lay-out were done by Freddie, and for this herculean effort, as well as for her patience, her suggestions and her eye for graphically attractive design, she has our immense gratitude.
This issue’s appearance as a stitched pamphlet is a departure from our usual tabloid format and was decided upon as a design and lay-out experiment. Several years ago we tried a full-sheet size, common to daily papers, for the Fifth Estate. Although we found it to be easier and faster to prepare, our readers didn’t like it. We’ve always resisted the smaller pamphlet format because of the doubling of the work involved in laying out half-size pages, but given the single-essay character of this special issue, we thought we’d give it a try, It does give more the appearance of permanence over the tabloid format, which is usually only retained while an issue is current, so it is perhaps more appropriate to our status as a journal rather than a newspaper.
We are pleased enough with it to want to do other special issues, particularly a series of reprints we have been considering of past Fifth Estate articles. Although we officially have a quarterly publishing schedule, we really have only been putting out about three issues a year because much of our time is devoted to a variety of other projects and interests. A reprint series could fill that extra gap and at the same time put in compilation form some of the material we feel shouldn’t just rest in mouldy piles of old newspapers. We are thinking of issues on technology, war, Central America and primitive society. Suggestions for the pamphlet series are very welcome.
A Note on Distribution and Price
Since this is a special issue, we would ask that distributors maintain both this and our Summer edition as current until the appearance of our next regular issue, And, to further confuse things, keep the special issue for distribution until the subsequent issue is replaced by our Spring edition. As of this issue we are raising our price to $.75 per copy due to the rapidly increasing prices for our rent, materials and printing bills. Our subscription prices will remain the same; distributors will be contacted about the increase. Also, if you are interested in distributing this special issue, please send $.75 for 1-4 issues; $.50 per for five and over. If you would like to distribute the Fifth Estate each issue, please write for terms.
By the way, this issue marks the 22nd year of continuous publishing for this project and we want to thank everyone for the support that has made it possible.