The Report is published, edited, and except where noted, written by Christopher Fisher, a native Appalachian who has been exploring how the corporate news media in the U.S. determines what qualifies as ‘news’ since at least August of 1980, when his family took off to live the California Dream in Marin County.
As they were about to leave West Virginia behind, his uncle enlisted him in an evangelical holy war, a war to end only after Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the upcoming election, and nuked the Soviets, China, and the whole evil communist empire around the globe out of existence, in an epic Apocalypse young Mr. Fisher had been blissfully ignorant of until his mother’s little brother mentioned it.
Wondering instead what Jesus thought about that idea, and where his uncle had been getting his news during a recent stint in the Marine Corps, Fisher opted to skip the rest of the Book of Revelations. Surely Walter Cronkite would have mentioned an upcoming nuclear war, and nothing about a looming Apocalypse had appeared on Ted Turner’s Cable News Network (CNN) either, which had begun broadcasting two months prior.
Fisher went on to study the corporate and alternative press, guided by the endlessly insightful George McGlynn and a few Jesuits at the University of San Francisco; and later the Political Economy of Mass Media with the indispensable aid of of one of the coolest Texans to ever fall for San Francisco, Harry Britt, at the New College of California.
In 2016, Fisher became an ordained minister in the Church of the Latter Day Dude, where the rebel shrug abides. Let’s all just take it easy, man.
The Report’s name is a nod to both Uncle Sam’s early 21st century predicament, as overseer of a global empire-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken, and the early 20th century, working family farm of William H. & Inez D. Riggle, its editor’s great-grandparents, in Cripple Creek, Wythe County, Virginia.
Up Cripple Creek was launched from a laptop in Fisher’s ex-wife’s place in Petaluma, California, where a popular local pastime is watching the Sonoma Aroma knock unsuspecting tourists off their feet when it hits their noses. Its editorial office will soon be migrating back to Greenbrier County, West by God Virginia.
The founder of Blue Bend Press, Christopher Fisher may be reached via email at UpCrippleCreekReport(at)gmail.com.
