Alt-Weeklies Continue
to Struggle and Experiment amidst the Raging Digital Age
By: Andrew Noerr
Saying that the Digital Age has impacted the newspaper
industry today would be quite the understatement. This is especially true for
one kind of newspaper that has been essential for covering what mainstream
daily papers would never touch, and that is the alternative-weekly. Throughout
the nation, alt-weekly papers have struggled with how to cope with today’s
digital-friendly era. According to the Pew Research Center, the top 20
alt-weekly newspapers saw their combined circulation drop by 6% in 2013.
Long-existing alt-weeklies such as the Boston
Phoenix, the Honolulu Weekly, and
the Urban Tulsa went out of business
last year. The bug that is killing alt-weeklies has now spread to San Francisco
recently as well.
On October 14, The
Bay Guardian was shut down by the San Francisco Media Company. The highly
esteemed paper that has also been identified by Will Oremus of Slate as “venerable… and defiantly
weird” had been a prevalent left-wing force in San Francisco for almost 50
years, as the paper was founded by Bruce Brugmann back in 1966. In the
meantime, some former staff members of the paper are pioneering a fundraising
project called “Guardian In-Exile” in order to publish a commemorative edition
and preserve the archives of previous works from the paper. The goal of the
project is to raise $25,000 by December 6 via Indiegogo.
While efforts are
being made to give The Bay Guardian
one last paper to publish, there was not much information given as to why the
paper was shut down simply beyond “financial reasons”, according to SFGate. The
shutdown of The Bay Guardian is yet
another example of the turbulent era that alt-weekly papers are experiencing
these days. While some papers have unfortunately died, others have incorporated
unique strategies to keep themselves alive today.
For each alt-weekly paper that has been shut down though, there
are specific details that pertain to why each paper no longer exists. Still,
there seem to be some reasons for alt-weekly paper shutdowns that can be
applied to most cases, if not all of them. One such reason is the corporate
ownership of alt-weekly papers. According to that same Pew Research Center
report, it has become a trend lately for “legacy news organizations” to buy
alt-weekly papers, and that can lead to conflicts between left-wing reporting
and corporate interests.
“What we did in the newsroom shouldn’t have anything to
do with what’s happening in the ad room,” Rachel Brahinsky, former writer for The Bay Guardian and current Faculty
Director of the Master's Program in Urban Affairs at USF, said about her time
at the San Francisco paper. “The tradition of investigate journalism… was kind
of an anti-economic decision in some ways, (but) it was a value that… mattered
more than catering to corporate interests.”
Still, some within the alt-weekly paper business have
worried about how corporate interests could affect the content of the papers. Baynard
Woods, the senior editor of a Baltimore alt-weekly paper called the City Paper, expressed worry about the
alt-weekly being purchased by the Baltimore Sun Media Group in February of this
year. In a piece for the New York Times titled “Are Alt Weeklies Over,” he
worried that the City Paper might
“lose (its) edge” under “corporate ownernship.” With so many corporations
buying alt-weekly papers throughout the nation, such as the San Francisco Media
Company buying the SF Weekly and The Bay Guardian, cause for concern has
definitely arisen about this trend. This is especially true because the organizations
that are buying the alt-weekly papers are “traditionally considered alt-weekly
adversaries and competitors” according to the Pew Research Center report.
Crystal Huskey, publisher of an up-and-coming alt-weekly
publication in Knoxville, Tennessee named the Hard Knox Independent, said in an email, “The problem is that a few
corporations are buying up all the media properties. The papers aren’t
independently owned anymore. The corporate owners are calling the shots from
many states away.”
Huskey admitted that she thinks “each situation is
probably different” though. In fact, she has even worked for alt-weekly
publications that have been owned by corporations. In 2011, she worked as a
reporter and later as an editor for an online daily community newspaper named Patch which was owned by AOL. Even with
the huge corporate ownership, Huskey admitted that she was given complete
editorial control while she was there, and in her words, “it was incredible.”
Another oft-cited issue regarding the decline of alt-weekly
newspapers is the role of the Internet. Woods wrote in his piece for the New
York Times that “the whole idea of the Internet — untethered to geography,
universal in topic and voice — pushes against the sort of groundedness that alt
weeklies provide.” Still, the web can be seen as a double-edged sword for
alt-weekly papers though. Alt-weekly papers have not shied away from using the
Internet as a way to further publicize themselves and open themselves up to a
larger audience.
“I always saw the web not as a threat… but I saw it as
another outlet,” Tim Redmond, former editor of The Bay Guardian and current editor of 48hills.com, said. “That’s
what I see now… I think the days of the giant urban daily newspaper are over.”
Redmond continued, “I think what we’re going to see in
10-15 years is no more one dominant daily (newspaper), and I don’t think we’re
going to be killing trees that much longer. We’re going to see half a dozen
digital dailies from different perspectives covering different types of news.”
Redmond did admit that if the Internet were to pose any
kind of a problem, it’s that it would be an “economic threat” due to the
existence of Craigslist. The founding of the site in 1996 made it incredibly
easy for consumers to find classified advertisements all in one location on the
web. Since alt-weekly papers are so dependent on advertising though, the impact
that Craigslist had on them was and still is substantial.
“Craigslist was very significant in undermining the
economic base of alternative-weeklies,” Brahinsky said. “That’s not the fault
of Craigslist (though). It’s a great, free service. It was up to the
alt-weeklies to figure out how to partner with an entity like that or to shift
quickly and nimbly. For a lot of them, they didn’t shift quickly and nimbly
enough.”
Even though organizations like Craigslist have made it
harder for alt-weekly newspapers to receive significant revenue, it still
doesn’t mean that alt-weekly papers aren’t making money at all. Alt-weekly
papers from all over the nation have been incorporating intriguing strategies
to make money in today’s Digital Age.
One
such example is an alt-weekly paper in Seattle named The Stranger. The paper has a ticketing service called Stranger Tickets where consumers can buy
tickets to concerts online. Tickets can be bought for events in Seattle, San
Francisco, and Portland. While concert venues would receive most of the money
from the transaction, The Stranger
still receives a commission for every ticket sold. The paper also posts podcasts
on its site, and consumers have to pay a fee to hear a longer version of the
podcast without ads.
Tim
Keck, publisher of The Stranger,
said, “We get half of our revenue from the ticketing service, our online
podcasts, and web advertisements. The other half comes from the print ads in
the print edition of the paper.”
Another idea that has been applied by some alt-weekly
papers is to have a subscription-based service for online content produced by
the papers. Some alt-weekly papers have tried requiring consumers to pay money
in order to view online content. This is not a strategy that is common for
alt-weekly papers though.
“I don’t think it’s going to work (for) alt-media and
alt-weeklies,” Redmond said. “The Wall Street Journal gets away with it… (but)
there’s too many other sources for information that are free. I think that the
alt-weekly model of giving the content away for selling ads is going to work on
the web. I don’t think the pay-to-go model is going to work.”
However, if there is one alt-weekly paper that could make
a very strong counterargument against Redmond’s point, it could be the Arkansas Times. It’s an alt-weekly paper
that is based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and it was founded in 1974. It is also
one of the few alt-weekly papers to have a subscription-based service for some
of its digital content, even though lots of other publications make their
content accessible for free on the web.
Alan Leveritt, the publisher of the Arkansas Times who is at the paper for his 40th year,
said, “Most of the content on our site is free. Most of our online features and
what’s in the paper, that’s all free. However, we have the Arkansas Blog that’s
not free. It’s run by a 66-year old journalist who’s totally dedicated to
local, breaking news.”
According to the Arkansas
Times website, a vast majority of the content that can be seen on the
Arkansas Blog is produced by senior editor Max Brantley. Leveritt mentioned
that Brantley wakes up at 5:00 a.m. every morning and starts working
immediately. He calls people all day and posts short breaking news pieces on
the blog.
“The Arkansas Blog is read avidly by political and
business decision-makers all over Arkansas,” Leveritt said. “(Brantley) does a
lot of old-school reporting. It’s a must-read for most people in Arkansas.”
Another economic strategy that has been employed by
alt-weekly papers is to become an official non-profit organization. Brahinsky
stated that alternative-media organizations and investigative outlets becoming
non-profits is an exemplification of the “experiment of the era we’re in right
now with these papers trying that model.” Publications such as the San Francisco Public Press, ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and many others have become
non-profit organizations, and Redmond’s 48hills.com website is also a
non-profit as well. “Becoming a
non-profit means that you can get grants and you can get contributions,”
Redmond said. “Then you have a different model. You’re not out there hustling
to bring in 15% profit for the ownership. You’re trying to bring in enough
(revenue) to pay the staff.”
With all of this in mind, it may seem like a daunting
task for people who wish to start a new alternative-weekly publication or some
kind of new alternative-media source today. There are obviously many obstacles
that people must conquer in order to thrive in today’s Digital Age. Right now
though, a movement is occurring in Knoxville, Tennessee to start a new
alt-weekly publication and have it operating soon.
According to a recent article published by the Columbia Journalism Review titled “Knoxville’s
alt-weekly wasn’t losing money. It got shut down anyway” by Tamar Wilner, an
alt-weekly publication named the Metro
Pulse was shut down in Knoxville, and yet it wasn’t even losing money.
While the main reason cited for the shutdown was that the paper was projected
to lose money, there are suspicions that the liberal Metro Pulse was in conflict with the conservative daily newspaper
that owned it which is named the News
Sentinel.
This still hasn’t marked any kind of ending for
alternative-media in Knoxville though. A recent report from WBIR-TV in
Knoxville revealed that a group of journalists are initiating a grassroots
movement to start a new alt-weekly publication. The paper will be named the Hard Knox Independent. The publisher
will be Huskey, and the editor will be J.J. Stambaugh. Huskey admitted that
there is plenty of work left to do to make the Hard Knox Independent a reality, but making money hasn’t been a
problem so far.
Huskey said in an email, “(It’ll be funded) purely by
advertising. We will launch a Kickstarter campaign soon to help with initial
print costs, but the ads are already pouring in.”
Huskey
said that the paper should release its first edition in mid-January. After the Metro Pulse shut down, she met with a
small group of journalists to discuss creating a new alt-weekly publication. That
led to further talks that led to the creation of the Hard Knox Independent.
“People want authenticity,” Huskey later stated in that
email. “They want something real, something raw. They're sick of the same faces
saying the same things on TV. So many news outlets thrive on controversy,
scandal and despair. We want to be different.”
As of right now,
advertising will be the main source of revenue for the Hard Knox Independent. Still, Huskey admitted that the paper will
be looking to apply some unique strategies to help keep the paper thriving in
today’s economy. She did not wish to disclose the strategies yet, but it’ll
certainly be intriguing to watch how this paper copes with the pros and cons of
the Digital Age that dominates the newspaper industry today. Even though it has
seemingly become harder than ever for alt-weekly papers to succeed in today’s
economy, their significance to society is still as powerful as ever.
“Democracy can’t survive without reporters,” Redmond
said. “For the alternative press, as long as you have the audience, things will
come along.”
