Alternative Press Review

{{Short description|American magazine}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}

{{Infobox magazine

|title=Alternative Press Review

|image_file = Alternative Press Review logo.png

|image_size = 250px

|image_caption = Alternative Press Review header

|editor=Jason McQuinn
Thomas Wheeler
Alan Antliff

|editor_title = Editorial collective

|staff_writer =

|frequency = Irregular

|circulation =

|category = Alternative media, anarchism

|company =

|publisher=AAL Press

|firstdate = Fall 1993

|country = United States

|based = Columbia, Missouri

|language=English

|website =

|issn = 1072-7299

}}

Alternative Press Review (byline: "Your guide beyond the mainstream") was a libertarian American magazine established in 1993 as a sister periodical to Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. The first issue was published in Fall 1993.{{cite web|title=The first issue|url=http://www.oss.net/dynamaster/file_archive/040320/31e1e26ccaf0fd752bede339443904bf/OSS1993-01-17.pdf|work=Alternative Press Review|accessdate=14 November 2015|date=Fall 1993}} As of 2002, its editorial collective consisted of Jason McQuinn (Anarchy), Chuck Munson (Infoshop.org) and Thomas Wheeler (Out of Bounds). Munson was co-editor and reviewer from 1997 to 2003, when he was replaced by Allan Antliff. The magazine was first published by C.A.L. Press and then by AAL Press.{{cite news|title=Category Archives: Alternative Press Review|url=http://calpress.org/category/alternative-press-review/|accessdate=14 November 2015|work=CAL Press|date=9 February 2014}}

According to its self-description, "The Alternative Press Review is your window on the world of independent media. APR publishes a wide variety of the best essays from radical zines, books, magazines, blogs and web sites. Plus, APR publishes a selection of short and lively article excerpts, along with reviews, commentary and columns on the alternative press scene and other alternative media."{{cite web|title=Home Page|work=Alternative Press Review|url=http://alternativepressreview.org/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130824231658/http://alternativepressreview.org/|archive-date=2013-08-24}} In practice the magazine has featured media criticism (e.g. "The Decline of American Journalism" by Daniel Brandt), coverage of resistance movements (e.g. "An Interview with Zapatista Women" by Guio Rovera Sancho), and cultural criticism (e.g. "Immediatism vs. Capitalism" by Hakim Bey, "Flyposter Frenzy" by Matthew Fuller, and "Dark Age: Why Johnny can't Dissent" by Tom Frank).{{cite journal|title=none|journal=Alternative Press Review|date=Summer 1995|volume=2|issue=2|pages=3ff}} The magazine's chief concerns, according to New Statesman are "sex, other media and the CIA". Contributors to the review have included McQuinn, Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian,{{cite journal|title=none|journal=Alternative Press Review|date=Spring 2002|volume=7|issue=1|pages=49ff}} Richard Heinberg{{cite journal|title=none|journal=Alternative Press Review|date=Spring 2003|volume=8|issue=1|pages=53ff}} and Harold Pinter.{{citation needed|date=May 2025}}

Alternative Press Review was criticized by Kirsten Anderberg in a 2005 issue for the fact that its contributors were overwhelmingly male, a phenomenon that according by Wheeler is a result of low numbers of submissions from female writers. McQuinn responded to Anderberg by stating that the gender of writers and publishers within socially conscious alternative and radical media was "simply irrelevant".

The review was described in 1994 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as "[c]loser to the edge of the magazine world, and not quite as articulate as the Utne Reader" – the magazine's main rival and market leader. Ian Hargreaves, writing in the New Statesman in 1998, called the magazine "the real rivet-spitter on the block" of alternative media, while a 1999 OC Weekly feature hailed it as "the essential nutrient missing from one’s daily McMedia diet of misinformation and disinformation."

Web-site is defunct since at least 2005.{{citation needed|date=May 2025}}