Anderson Valley Advertiser

The Anderson Valley Advertiser is a digital newspaper covering Mendocino County. From the 1950s until 2024, it published a small weekly paper in the broadsheet format.^[1]

Anderson Valley Advertiser

Type	Weekly newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	Independent
Publisher	Bruce Anderson
Editor	Bruce Anderson
Founded	1956
Headquarters	Boonville, CA 95415 United States
Website	theava.com

History

The Anderson Valley Advertiser (AVA) was founded in 1956 by Elizabeth and Steven Malgrem in Boonville, California.^[2] The paper was purchased in 1983 by Bruce Anderson,^[3] who expanded its national coverage.^[2]

Anderson left the AVA in 2004 for Oregon where he tried to start another weekly. It failed and Anderson bought the AVA back in July 2007. The paper enjoyed a modest national circulation during its print run. It is now online only. Anderson describes himself as "a socialist with strong, nay overwhelming, anarchist instincts."^[4]

Masthead

The old masthead in the print version billed the paper as "America's last newspaper."^[1] It featured mottoes borrowed from the French Revolution and the Industrial Workers of the World:

• Fanning the Flames of Discontent! (The IWW's Little Red Songbook is sub-titled "To Fan the Flames of Discontent")
• Peace to the Cottages! War on the Palaces! (The motto of Georg Büchner's Hessian Courier)
• All Happy - None Rich - None Poor

Various quotations are distributed throughout every issue of the paper. Examples include:

• "Be as radical as reality."^[1] - Lenin
• "Newspapers should have no friends."^[1] - Joseph Pulitzer

Contributors

Contributors include:

• Robert Mailer Anderson
• Alexander Cockburn
• Jeffrey St. Clair
• John Jonik
• Flynn Washburne