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The Preview Paper:

While it is obvious that many people in the Muncie community were upset by the paper, the number of issues sold, the classified sections, and the level of controversy that surrounded the paper shows that The Only Alternative had an audience.

Along with the paid advertisements and classifieds, The Only Alternative ran a segment called “The Preview Paper” on the back page of the issues.  This page served as a bulletin board for the local community and advertised movie times, local concerts, art galleries, and other events in Indiana and eastern Ohio.  The intent was to have a specific section devoted to informing the local community about interesting events. By having a list of events on the back page of each issue, the reader could learn about these events without even reading the paper. "The Preview Paper" contained information that would not be found in either the Muncie Star or the Daily News, and therefore, provided an important service to the community.

Many of these events took place in venues at college campuses including Ball State University, the University of Notre Dame, Purdue University, Indiana University, Indiana State University, Butler University, and Antioch College.  Other events took place at art galleries, community theaters, and playhouses.  The venues for these events have been mapped out using Google Maps Engine Lite here:

The yellow markers represent venues linked to places of education, both high school and university. The red markers represent privately owned venues or venues owned by the local communities. A second layer of the map entitled "The Only Alternative" marks places related to the history of the paper and the people involved.

While The Only Alternative was certainly aimed at the Muncie and Ball State community, this map of “The Preview Paper” clearly shows that the newspaper had some influence and readership outside of the immediate Muncie area.  “The Preview Paper” segment was created by readers who sent in information for each event.  While it is impossible to know for certain, the fact that 26 of the 45 venues were on college or high school campuses, it seems as though The Only Alternative had student readers outside of the Ball State student body. One of the most interesting facts about these events is that, outside of a few experimental and controversial films, most of the events would have been totally acceptable to the mainstream community. The map of the venues listed in "The Preview Paper," strongly suggests that the readership of The Only Alternative was much larger and widespread than people in the community realized.