Since Nov. 2, Occupy Oakland followers and activists have had their own daily website and print newspaper to read to make sense of the Occupy Oakland movement. 

Run by three volunteers, with the aid of a volunteer designer and a handful of other contributors, the Occupied Oakland Tribune is Oakland's version of the Occupied Wall Street Journal that was created in New York City and handed out during actions at Zucotti Park in Manhattan.

Inspired by what he saw of Occupied Wall Street Journal, local Occupy participant and media committee member Scott Johnson decided to work with Celeste Christie, a designer and co-founder of an organization called Art for a Democratic Society, to put out a print newspaper for the Nov. 2 General Strike in Oakland.

That first issue - 5,000 copies in all - was run off at a local copy shop and handed out at the demonstration. Coverage included a statement from the General Assembly on the strike, a statement by Occupy leader Boots Riley,  articles headlined "We are all Scott Olsen" and "We are all Oscar Grant" and an article on union support for the strike.

"It was amazing how quickly the copies went and how much everyone wanted one, with no one turning it down," Sarah Morgan (@djsarahspin), a recent Oakland resident and Occupier who's been writing and editing for the site and who coordinated the second print edition, said.

Since November, the Occupied Oakland Tribune team has published a second print edition of 20,000 copies for the Dec. 12 action and port shutdown and has ramped up to regular online postings, usually two to three times a week.

Printed at 1984 Printing in Berkeley, the second issue of the newspaper was twice as long as the first and featured Justice for Oscar Grant activist Jack Bryson on Occupy Oakland, statements from Labor organizations about the Occupy movement, an interview with videographer @OakFoSho, who has infatigably streamed #OO events, an article on tents on public - and private - property and a personal essay by an occupier who was arrested when Oakland police cleared the camp at Frank Ogawa Plaza on Nov. 14.

"What we are trying to do is create this as a space where people who are already involved in Occupy Oakland and don't have a blog can send their posts and share them," Johnson said.

"It's a way to get the word out about Occupy and all the issues that fall under the Occupy umbrella," added Morgan, who wrote about music when she lived in Atlanta, but has been working more on political coverage of Occupy since deciding to get involved. "We need 1,000 stories from 1,000 people to make sure importune issues are talked about every single day, not just once in a while in the paper."

Morgan and Johnson are planning two winter issues of the paper, one in January and one in February, and are seeking funding to support publishing costs. The January issue will focus on Occupy in Oakland and the nationwide foreclosure crisis in light of the "crimes of Wall Street." February's will be organized around prisoner solidarity, and what Johnson describes as the "prison industrial complex, from the death penalty to police harassment of Oakland Occupiers."

While the team working on Occupied Oakland Tribune is small, they are effective. The first issue of the OOT has more than 8,000 reads on Scribd, where the PDF is posted, and the website has roughly 1,517 unique visitors a month, according to compete.com, giving it more visitors than A Better Oakland (409) and thedto.com (409) - two long-standing and popular Oakland blogs.

Asked whether the Bay Area News Group, owners of The Oakland Tribune, have reacted to the Occupy movement appropriating their newspaper's name, Johnson says no. 

"A reporter interviewed me for a story about Occupied Oakland Tribune, but I don't think anything ran," Johnson said. "And so far, they haven't said anything about our use of the name."

Oakland Trib, consider yourself Occupied.

More details:

See copies of the print issues here:

• Issue One:  http://www.scribd.com/doc/71210851/OOT 

• Issue Two:http://www.scribd.com/doc/75343987/Occupied-Oakland-Tribune-Issue-2

Occupied Oakland Tribune website:http:// occupiedoaktrib.org/