About Amateur Journalism

We currently have about 250 members and are always on the lookout for others who share an interest in our hobby.

What is Amateur Journalism?

It is publishing a little journal containing your own ideas and thoughts on a variety of subjects and having it distributed to fellow "ajays." It is composing your own essay, poem, or short story and seeing it published in another member's paper. It is producing a paper from copy provided by others, just because you love to publish.

The end product is the amateur journal, a little magazine which might take any form. It could range from a tiny, whimsical "thumbnail" in size to a deluxe, deckle-edged heavyweight.

There is no price tag on anything, for we interpret "amateur" to mean untainted by the commercial dollar (although we have some professional journalists and printers who enjoy taking part in the AAPA on a no-deadlines hobby basis). We write and publish to please ourselves and each other.

From letterpress printing to desktop publishing

Although AAPA papers are published using many different methods, a good number of current AAPA members have hobby print shops that use hand-set type and hand- or foot- operated presses.

Computer-generated amateur journals began appearing in the early 1980s, and an increasing number of members use home computers to produce their papers. Some publishers combine the old and the new; for example, using letterpress equipment to add color headings to an offset-printed journal that was laid out with a desktop publishing program.

Benefits of membership

• Members' papers are combined in a monthly mailing called a "bundle," distributed by our mailing bureau. Publishers send the mailer sufficient copies of their papers for each member, and the mailer packages them up and gets them to the post office. Typical bundles contain one to two dozen papers.
• An official organ, The American Amateur Journalist, is published every other month to keep members informed of activities.
• Pleasantly-relaxed conventions are held annually, traditionally in late summer. We get together for several days of conversation about common interests (namely writing, printing, and publishing).

Should you join?

• If you enjoy sweating the details with a desktop publishing program or pumping a press in the basement for the sheer delight of pleasing yourself and several hundred friends, you should join.
• If you enjoy scribbling a short story or an essay for the mere literary exercise and the satisfaction of seeing it in print for such a select audience, you should join.
• If you enjoy experimenting with layouts on your desktop publishing program, you should join.
• If you ever edited a neighborhood newspaper and never got over the thrill of being a publisher, you should join.
• If you have an interest in letterpress printing, you should join.
• If you're interested in a good creative outlet...to please yourself, to express your own personality, to get across what you feel or experience, to get away from the herd...you should join.

For further information

You can view examples of amateur journalism.

There's also a page of frequently asked questions from visitors to the AAPA's Web site.

The following AAPA member can be reached through the Internet, and would be happy to respond to your questions. If you would like sample ajay papers, please include your "regular" postal mail address.

• Dave Tribby, 1529 Fantail Court, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
  website@AAPAinfo.org

AAPA History

The Web site of The Fossils presents an extract from Truman Spencer's History of Amateur Journalism describing the formation and early years of the AAPA.