Moons and Junes and Ferris Wheels [Updated]
About that merger of Village Voice Media and New Times
First, a disclaimer. I worked for the L.A. Weekly in the early 80’s. I worked for the Village Voice in the early 90’s. I worked for the New Times in the late 90’s. I work currently for the L.A. Weekly. Talk about moons, and Junes and Ferris wheels!
Like everyone else at the Weekly, I have no idea how this will change the paper. I suspect it will mean a lot of changes. I don’t know what they are. Nor their intensity or character. But in pondering this merger of the two biggest chains of metro weeklies I think there are some realities that are overlooked in the notion that this simply spells the “death of alternative journalism,” that this is necessarily some historic turning point.
Some thoughts, in no particular order:
"Alternative journalism," at least defined by the nostalgic vision of a lot of laid-back folks in earth shoes and turtle-necks working happily and lovingly late into the night to put out a spunky tabloid full of futon ads, died a long time ago. At least, if we are talking about publications with any real significance. The truly successful metro weeklies, L.A. Weekly, Village Voice, Phoenix New Times, the Boston Phoenix etc. etc. have been, corporate-run multi-million dollar entities for some time now.
Has that crimped their creativity? No doubt, in some ways. But the corporatization and professionalization of these same weeklies means that their writers and editors and free-lance contributors can earn real-word salaries, providing the means to do some pretty damn good journalism.
I don’t know a single editorial employee of these outfits who longs for the good-old-days when they got paid $50 an article, if anything. Indeed, I am always amused when someone I know says he or she was shocked to learn that people who write for, say, the L.A. Weekly, actually can be paid well (Note that the Weekly pays about the same fee -- and sometimes more -- for a cover story as does the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine). Same deal for the New Times chain in which salaries are competitive with mid-sized daily newspapers. Reporters and writers in both chains are paid dignified salaries with good benefits and, for the most part, don’t drive to work in dilapidated V-dubs with flower-power decals.
The group that holds both the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice are not some blue-haired collective of hipsters. It’s a privately held corporation whose principals include a heavy presence from Goldman-Sachs. The ownership group leaves almost all questions regarding editorial matters to CEO David Schneiderman, a former publisher and editor of the Village Voice who, previously, worked as a New York Times editor. The internal culture of the paper is fairly benign and enlightened as corporations go, but nevertheless corporate (yes, we even have HR managers).
This merger, like most corporate marriages, will undoubtedly lead to some downsizing. The Village Voice, however, was downsized a full decade ago. Where have you been? The paper that used to be sold in kiosks alongside the New York Times was put on the street as a free-circulation publication. Soft, feature coverage was increased and pushed up to the front of the book. Writers were cut. News coverage – especially expensive national and international reporting-- was rolled way back. In the eyes of some, this was a disaster. Others thought the Voice came out of it all more agile and readable. But the world didn’t come to an end.
The Voice/L.A. Weekly papers are stolidly liberal-lefty and continue to keep a finger or two dipped into some nebulous conception of a counter-culture. Their cultural coverage is ample. The L.A. Weekly, more than the Voice, conitinues to put a lot of its resources into state, national and even international reporting. Sometimes the results provide excellent coverage that beats the mainstream media. Other times the pages are marred by a whiny, predictable politics of victimization.
The New Times chain, by contrast, takes pleasure in poking at pc-liberalism and by refusing to take partisan stands, fancying itself as libertarian lone-shooters. Sometimes the results are refreshingly unpredictable, hard-hitting exposes of politicians both conservative and liberal. Other times the product is sophomoric and snarky, lacking in any serious analysis. Local coverage by some New Times publications has admirably driven targeted pols to drink. On the other hand, the New Times Los Angeles (which closed down a couple of years ago) thought its readership couldn’t or wouldn’t focus on politics beyond the city limits and that was plain mistaken. The future success of the L.A. Weekly, under New Times corporate management, will depend to a great degree on what lessons were assimilated by the former’s short-lived experience as a Los Angeles publisher. The readers of the Weekly are a liberal, cosmopolitan audience, deeply concerned about politics at every level. They also demand robust and critical coverage of the arts – at least of the movies. Their tastes and expectations cannot be written off after a quarter century of picking up the Weekly every Thursday and anticipating a certain sort of paper.
One of the more entertaining aspects of working for an institution like the Weekly is to see how often the readers sense some sort of betrayal, some creeping sign of impurity. Take a certain kind of corporate advertising – like tobacco ads—and you’re a sell-out. Fire an unproductive worker in order to increase efficiency and balance the budget and you’re “going corporate” – even though we went corporate a long time ago. What none of these critics ever can come up with, however, is some other way for their beloved, “alternative” paper to finance itself, pay its rent, distribution and staff and face up to the compeition. There’s often some unreal expectation that in a fiercely competitive and radically shifting marketplace, these papers should be managed as if they were some sort of Tibetan healing circle. Get real, folks. These are businesses. For their journalism to succeed and to be widely read, they need to be successful businesses.
The same political Left, always ready to criticize these papers for selling out, in the meantime, has historically failed to create any of its own successful commercial publications or to adequately support the existing “alternative” weeklies. No consortium of liberal foundations, that I’m aware of, has ever come to a publication like the Weekly or the Voice and said: here’s a $50 million endowment. Stop taking ads from tobacco companies and outcall masseurs, stop chipping away at the union contract, and live on this donation instead. In any case, be aware that run to one of these big city weeklies, you need to find five or ten million dollars per year. From where should that come?
The Internet, and its more liberal-friendly grass-roots manifestations, has seriously impacted the advertising environment that traditionally supported the weeklies. Craigslist, alone, has cost various weekly newspapers millions of dollars in lost revenue. Online entertainment listings seriously compete with the calendar guides that are the backbones of weekly papers. And powerful mainstream dailies have started their own weeklies in several cities (and some of them are quite well done).
The management of both VVM and New Times have decided their future economic prosperity resides in the acquisition of lucrative national corporate advertising. And for that end, they conclude, they will be in a stronger position if they consolidate. That doesn’t have a very pretty or romantic ring to it, does it? It's not something that gets me up early and fills me with inspiration. But I’m curious to know what, if you will excuse the term, are the alternatives? I ask the question in good faith. I personally have no answer (The other publication I work for, The Nation, survives because a) a couple of dozen wealthy liberals "invest" in it with no real expectation of return and b) it is not given away to its readers).
In the end, what’s at stake here is not the future of alternative journalism -- I have no idea what is meant by that term. I’m more concerned to know if there are going to continue to be any open venues where excellent, edgy, independent and powerful journalism will be supported and promoted. It’s been very hard to stably secure that space during my entire adult and professional life. The curve has been going in the wrong direction; everyone agrees it’s been getting harder and harder. I imagine it will be even more difficult in the short and medium-term future, with or without this merger.
UPDATE: More views on this here, here, here, and here.
October 26th, 2005 at 1:04 am
Fantastic article, Marc. You had a good note about no Lefty foundations giving a big chunk of cash to a paper to avoid the otherwise needed money-grubbing. Also Craigslist — PressThink noted a big journalism conference where none of the Big Shots/ Fat Cats recognized his picture. Even though he’s eating their lunch.
Have you followed Michael Totten into Pajama Media yet? When you say “the curve has been going in the wrong direction” you actually mean that MORE edgy journalism is increasingly available FOR FREE, and therefore not in a stable secure fashion, for writers wanting cash for words.
GM Roper complimented your new site, though with a wish you were more conservative. Not quite my own wish, though your new site looks great (except no picture; I’d like one above or below Search).
I most liked your sentence beginning: “There’s some unreal expectation that in a fiercely competitive …marketplace…” Unreal Perfection as the assumed easy-to-achieve alternative is the biggest problem of the Left.
I wish you would be more honest about what you think a REALISTIC alternative to BushCo is, and some of the real tradeoffs. In your prior post on Wilkerson’s “Bush is a disaster” op-ed, he mentions foreign disasters, but no alternatives. Was Clinton’s Somalia adventure really better? Did Carter’s capitulation to Iran serve world peace? I don’t think so.
(to repeat myself: Yay for Iraq and a New Constitution.)
Keep pounding on Bush (where I’ll usually disagree, to one extent or another) AND on greedy Dems, or intellectually dishonest PC bozos.
Thanks for having comments, still.
October 26th, 2005 at 1:14 am
Tom.. Thanks. And Thanks for being a persistent minority voice here, surviving constant bombardment!
As to Pajamas… I have not made a big deal of it, but I actually preceded Totten in it. Im a member of the editorial board and will be a featured “senior” contributing blog. Formal announcement on my front page in days to come.
October 26th, 2005 at 4:59 am
Good article, Marc, and you raise some important questions. Unfortunately (surprise!) I don’t have any answers, but I have to say that the LA Weekly, even with its occasional misses, rarely fails to provide a great balance of intelligent local and national coverage (you, Powers, Aubrey Kaplan, Ireland, Bradley, Gold, among others, make the paper shine). I get excited every Friday to pick up my copy and start my weekend–much more excited than I do on Sunday morning when the Times arrives. I am also a consistent reader of the Voice, City Pages, and the Seattle Weekly (less often), and LA Weekly imho VASTLY outperforms them all. As far as the New Times is concerned, well, let’s just say that i wasn’t sad to seem them disappear in L.A.–their writing often struck me as sophmoric (remember Jill what’s-her-name? I wish I didn’t) and vapid, even though their restaurant coverage was more extensive than the Weekly’s.
That said, as a “consumer” (or, more accurately, potential ad-reader), I can predict that if the Weekly morphs into something disappointing, I won’t feel as panicked as I would if this were happening in, say, the mid-90′s, before the proliferation of online sources (blogs, online mags, etc.). It would be a great loss, no doubt, for the city, but we indeed live in strange times–though maybe not so “new”.
October 26th, 2005 at 7:57 am
The problem with these mergers is that the local “alt” weeklies tend to lose any distinctive character. I don’t expect consistently great journalism from them so much as a unique voice that connects with the local culture in a way that’s interesting. The East Bay Express, before the folks who founded and nurtured it quite rationally from a business perspective cashed out to New Times media, was a weekly staple as much for the cultural coverage as for the occasionally insightful article on local politics. I rarely if ever read it anymore because it’s much more the generic alt weekly that you can pick up anywhere. I don’t think the Voice is going to get any more corporate or a shadow of the old Village Voice than it already is, but the thing that I miss about these contemporary “alt” weeklies is the distinctive, quirky editorial perspective that many of them used to reflect. Of course, The San Francisco Bay Guardian – still under it’s “distinctive, quirky” founder’s guidance four decades later – is proof there’s a counter-argument. Thirty-five years on, what was once distinctive and quirky and muckraking can, by virtue of repetition, become as shopworn and predictable as any corporate journalism. It looks to me from this distance that the L.A.Weekly has evolved a pretty solid journalistic foundation, much like the current Voice. Not exciting but quite respectable.
October 26th, 2005 at 8:19 am
Sorry Marc but I remember that the late, unlamented, NEW TIMES LA thought that the likes of Jill Stewart should be their principal political voice – a women who was the only voice in town who thought Bernie Parks was just peachy keen as Police Chief. And that was one of her saner judgments.
Look, I’m no pie in the sky lefty idealist and I think its gtrat that people at a quality weekly can make a good living. But, as you note, the previous owners of the VILLAGE VOICE dumbed down that paper by cutting back its newshole. For a lot of us the VOICE was the gold standard of alternative papers. But NY does have the OBSERVER so there is competition. But here?
I hope you are right but the comments on LA OBSEVED don’t give me confidence. The NEW TIMES people seem arogant know-it-alls who felt they knew LA better than the natives. And what about the OC WEEKLY? It has an irreverent tone that is anything but kneejerk left wing. And it has broken major stories on local OC politics that were ignored by the REGISTER and the TIMES OC edition. I worry that the new owners will decide that everyone down here sre just like some character in THE OC.
I hope you’re right but I’m not confident.
October 26th, 2005 at 8:33 am
Thanks for chiming in Marc.
I blogged about this on the Huff Post here:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-dicker/merge-baby-merge-the-alt_b_9416.html
To reiterate : Look at the volume of stories in the LA Weekly or City Pages or the Voice. If you’re not interested in the feature piece, well, there’s usually two others. Then a few columns, great books sections, essays, links to staff blogs, etc…
Then look at a typical NT paper. It’s not the quality of reporting or the lack of lefty grandstanding that bugs me, it’s the lack of editorial content. Period. There’s just less of it. The East Bay Express is the only one of their papers that even covers books.
Who knows if this template will be applied across the board. I hope not. However, I don’t think NT has ever acquired a paper and then decided to leave it alone.
October 26th, 2005 at 9:20 am
Hi Marc,
Looking forward to your announcement on Pajamas Media and your explanation of what it is.
I took a look at the editorial board list:
http://pajamasmedia.com/index.php?p=2005/10/barcepundit_jose_guardia_1.php
The board seems to be well represented by the right, pro-war camp, but maybe I am misreading the bios. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but I would really want to know your take on it.
To be honest, I guess I have not followed your views on the War terribly closely so maybe that is why I would like to learn more about your association with Glenn Reynolds, John Podhoretz, Tammy Bruce, and Jose Guardia. In any case, you and David would be running in a different circle than you find at the Nation, so I hope my question is an understandable one that you will address.
October 26th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Alex.. u read the bios correctly. The initiative for Pajama comes primarily from the right. David and I and a few others like Eric Umansky are a minority from the left. But that’s not a problem. PJ is a not a magazine in which I or anyone else is edited. We say what we want. The pajamas site is basically an advertising network and Im all in favor of blogs producing revenue. It will have an aggreggatd portal site on which my blog will be found. But PJ has no control, influence or incidence on what I or any other member will write. PJ was going to happen with us or not… I think it will be great that, say, Glenn Reynolds will bring a couple of hundred thousand eyeballs to a site where they will also have to read me and David Corn. Neither one of us are going to change what we do or write… maybe we can have some influence on them. Preaching to a choir is boring and pointless. I will always choose an adversarial audience, and that is what I have done. Let’s see how it works. I think I will have no regrets.
October 26th, 2005 at 10:31 am
Marc, you’ve got a point about why you and David think it’s worth joining PJM, but after reading Roger Simon’s blog post on Nicholas Kristof’s review of a new Mao book representing “a danger to the future of humanity”, I have to say that this isn’t a matter of respectable conservative opinion – which does still exist – but, at least in Simon’s case, of a clueless hack who has absolutely no awareness of his analytical incompetence and journalistic limitations.
October 26th, 2005 at 10:37 am
Well, Reg, if u read the blogs of some other PJ memebers ur gonna find things that will make you even more indignant. So what? This is an alliance that helps promote blogs as blogs… regardless of their point of view, period. All the PJ blogs already exist. None are being created. So I have no problem being placed in an environment in which there will be constant friction and debate. Look at it this way: when u post a comment today on my blog you have a possible audience of maybe 3,000 people. If due to the PJ portal that figure doubles, you will have twice the audience and made no compromises to get there. Certainly you dont impose a litmus test on the audience.
October 26th, 2005 at 11:00 am
I think you’re probably making the best decision…
But if you want insight into just how wack some of these allegedly intelligent fellows are, go over to Roger’s blog and read his piece on Kristoff. The extremity of his attack on this centrist book reviewer was shocking – and particularly hilarious when he treats us to the rank image of Simon himself in his Mao cap heading off to Sinotopia with the good comrades of the U.S. China Friendship Association thirty years ago. It’s a classic case of some former “fellow traveler” (I don’t think this moldy epithet is unfair in this instance) trying to cleanse themselves of their own sense of guilt by attacking any nuance or complexity on the part of a conventional liberal like Kristoff who NEVER harbored the kind of pathetic illusions about Maoist China that Simon apparently did. I find that sort of tranparent bullshit disgusting – and all too common among the Simons and Horowitzes. In fact, it’s one of their stocks in trade that endears them to new – and equally bizarre – comrades on the crackpot Right and turns the hubristic consistency of their flawed political judgement – in either it’s left or right version – into a valuable commodity.
October 26th, 2005 at 11:04 am
I should have add to that: “turns …their flawed political judgement…into a valuable commodity THAT THEY ARE EAGER TO SELL.
October 26th, 2005 at 11:19 am
My problem with the Weekly is not the journalism. The columns are good, the investigative journalism is solid, etc… Could use a bit more local coverage, but for the most part, it is a good Weekly. Working in the media I have checked out pretty much every metro weekly in the country and the LA (and OC) Weekly is by far one of the bet (if not the). IF they have to take corporate ads to fund the enterprise, than so be it.
My problem with the weekly is everything BUT the journalism. The entertainment coverage is for the most part is deplorable. Things like Cobra Snake make me want to vomit. The paper systematically skimps on coverage of high culture for low hipster crap in Silverlake.
I guess I get the feeling when I read the Weekly that it has 2 different audiences. I seriously cannot imagine the reader who grabs the weekly to read the cover story is checking out the fawning review of Closer or some other awful movie. I also get the feeling that the hipster who grabbed the Weekly for the column on how “handjobs are back†is reading Cooper. If they are indeed the same audience than my problem is with the average liberal-lefty and thus leaves someone like myself with no ‘alternative’ paper. I have to admit, the nature of the ads (fashion and high end lifestyle consumer items and pop culture) do paint a certain picture of the liberal-left as really being a wealthy coastal elite and anything but middle class. I can’t imagine that the LA Times or the Register are much different audience wise either.
October 26th, 2005 at 11:20 am
I meant to say IS NOT reading Cooper.
October 26th, 2005 at 11:26 am
Reg – You’re dead on about Roger Simon. I’m amazed at the speed with which he went from “I’m a progressive who supports Bush on the war” to flat-out Horowitzian. Took Horowitz himself a good decade or so.
October 26th, 2005 at 11:36 am
So I guess I’m following you on all this alt-media-in-upheaval talk, but one question: Will the L.A. Weekly be a better or worse paper a year from now? One thing is certain: It won’t be the same.
October 26th, 2005 at 11:41 am
As editor, do you foresee efforts to actively pursue more friction in viewpoints among the PJ blogs?
One legitimate critique of the web is the ease with which readers filter out viewpoints with which they don’t agree. Very few readers seek to know what the “other” side is talking about. PJ blogs could be one of the few places were Left and Right readers would be exposed to such contradictory viewpoints. Is creating that almost non-existent cross dialogue part of the vision, for you, at least?
BTW, the only other place I have found that is able to present the goings on of both the left and the right blogospheres is http://www.memeorandum.com. I can’t recommend it enough. It is page A1 for the blogoshere, IMHO.
Memeorandum.com is an automated blogosphere “newspage” that generates the best “snapshot” of the biggest stories and posts generating conversation among the blogs at any given moment. It doesn’t discriminate between left and right because it simply lists the news stories and posts most linked to by their “feeder” blogs and newsites and then shows ANY blogs that are discussing it. It works really well.
In case you are interested, here is a great summary of what makes http://www.memeorandum.com so useful from the inimitable Umair’s http://www.bubblegeneration.com blog:
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2005/10/memeorandum-miniprofile-you.cfm
Robert Scoble broke the news on this service, here:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/09/12.html#a11129
October 26th, 2005 at 11:49 am
Oops I left out the lede:
Do you foresee efforts to seek out strong left voices and engage in direct dialogue with the right PJ blogs, or will there not be any special effort to dialogue among the PJ blogs?
And yeah, preview would have helped that…
October 26th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
That diversity of opinion doesn’t go both ways marc. Simon bans anyone on his blog who disagrees with his whackjob theses these days. The readers and regulars complain of “invaders” who dare test the status quo. I know about this first hand.
October 26th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
I’m with Josh on the culture/reviews often feeling very different from the really great news/politics coverage in the LA Weekly. The reviewers often recommend a piece based on its politics, not its entertainment or artistic value. And the LA Weekly’s best movies of the year is usually comprised of films that can only have been shown once in somebody’s basement. All that stuff does give the paper a very local feel, but sometimes it misses really good stuff that’s more out in the open. I want to be told what’s good, not just what’s good if I’m in a back alley in Silverlake.
As we all know, corporate attitude comes in degrees. A little bit of corporate brings professionalism, accountability, and some pay checks. Too much often stifles creativity and probing questions. So here’s to hoping that your new corporate masters aren’t too intrusive and too corporate, but still demand more than the whine and slash culture commentary of Ms. Finke.
October 26th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
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October 26th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
Marc…. I appreciate your smart and thoughtful commentary—which I see is deservedly getting a lot of play at LA Observed and other sites.
As a non-staff, regular writer for the Weekly who was once courted by New Times, I still remain speechless and somewhat concerned about what’s to come. I guess, speaking from an entirely personal and somewhat self-serving perspective, I wonder if the new management would have had the courage and will to ride with a somewhat risky, word-heavy, year-long series like my “American Family” thang. Although lots of folks think it’s a swell project now, as it turned out alright and got much positive attention, the Weekly editors really didn’t know that going in. They simply took the chance—and declined to pull the plug when one of the two main subjects of the series got arrested. Many other editors and publications wouldn’t have hung in—or assigned it in the first place.
October 26th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
RD: You, of course, are correct. The series you wrote would have trouble finding a home anywhere today in American journalism. When the Weekly went with it two years ago there was an equal chance it wouldnt have. As you know.
October 26th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
Marc, I note that the advisory Board for PJ Media includes one “Michael Ledeen”. If Richard Sale and LA REPUBBLICA are to be believed you may get a chance to be up close and personal to a Plamegate conspirator at your next board meeting. And a merry Fitzmas to you too!
October 26th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
Hentoff takes a stroll down memory lane…
http://villagevoice.com/specials/0543,50thehent,69254,31.html
October 26th, 2005 at 6:43 pm
Marc, I absolutely loved this post. I’m also delighted that you are on the Editorial Board of PJMedia… you will be a valuable addition.
RoseDog, you my dear, are one of the shining lights (Marc being another) of LA Weekly, and if the new management doesn’t hire you for lengthy pieces like “An American Family” then they are idiots. That was ONE of the best ever put out by LA Weekly.
Mark York, interesting that you lambast Roger Simon for banning you. I remember most of that exchange and you were not just contrarian, but outright obnoxious. Some of those same wonderful traits you exhibit here as you share with us your “Wisdom and Punditry.” In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you have been banned from a lot of sites.
Marc, if you and others work at it, you can make your mark and unique style and outlook effective in any venue. If, for some very strange reason, they don’t like it, tough, it shows that the new management isn’t as bright as they think they are.
October 26th, 2005 at 7:22 pm
That’s according a wingnut: you. You know roper anybody can easily refute anything you and your stupid sidekick of says, anywhere. There is never a fallacy or a smear that you people won’t ewmploy when losing an argument. LIke our last exchange. Pathetic ad hominem, and you lost on facts. What a surprise.
October 26th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
Well Ledeen, Simon’s head is always up his butt.
October 26th, 2005 at 7:59 pm
Mavis Beacon is way off on Nikki Finke. Finke is THE most courageous journalist covering Hollywood right now. She can’t be bought and is fiercely independent. She also isn’t seeking personal relationships from studio heads. Her work annoys many and will most likely be the cornerstone of the reborn New Times franchise here in L.A.
October 26th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
I thought she was funny and to the point, but there was a bit of a blowup right here in tinsletown online.
October 26th, 2005 at 9:15 pm
York, you really need to learn the difference between me losing an argument with you (I didn’t) and not considering banter with you worth any more effort. Talk about ad hominem!
October 26th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
Let’s try to stay on topic, fellers — Any topic. Mark, what Roger Simon does on his blog is his business. It’s an imperfect world.
October 26th, 2005 at 9:27 pm
It certainly is. Roper loses because he can’t see it when he does. I didn’t drag my graduation rate post over here, he did to smear me. That explanation was imperfect too at my expense. I corrected it. It’s pretty evident now to anyone that a winger who calls others a liar is 180 off as usual.
Now, I believe I was commenting on Nikki Finke who writes for an independent paper here.
October 27th, 2005 at 3:05 pm
Nice job application, Marc! Although you might have put in a word about the current editor, who 1) puts out an improbably decent paper week after week, especially compared with the train-wreck that she inherited; and 2) has given you personally a better, more nuanced (and probably better-paid!) forum than you have had in the 25-odd years I’ve been following your writing.
And poking liberalism as a sport went out with bear-baiting. Much better to extract Senator Brownback’s kidneys with a rusty screwdriver and feed them to ravening dogs.
October 27th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
Very interesting post, Marc. I live in NYC and am generally very dissapointed with the Village Voice. It lacks the verve and finger on politics that the LA Weekly has.
By the way, I am normally the last person to defend Roger Simon, but I see nothing wrong in his banning of unwanted commenters. First off, it’s his blog, and he has the right to allow or ban anybody he wants. Second, hostile comments usually detract from intelligent discussion far more than it contributes to it.
There’s nothing worse than having to scroll through a flaming war. Frankly, I would enjoy blogs more if there were more regulation of blog comments.
October 27th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
Well Peter that would depend on whom the guilty party actually was wouldn’t it? All it takes over there is anyone not on the Kool-aid to show and offer a differing rendition of reality. The unfortunate part of this is each blog becomes a one-cabal in its own right. That may be something we have to live with because of the opposing views these days and the fervency of the believers. Like marc said though, it’s his business.
October 27th, 2005 at 5:41 pm
“There’s often some unreal expectation that in a fiercely competitive and radically shifting marketplace, these papers should be managed as if they were some sort of Tibetan healing circle. ”
That is such a disgusting racist thing to say about Tibetans.
October 27th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
Marc,
People have been making creative suggestions on how to establish and fund progressive alternative noncommercial media sources for years. Here are some examples that I have read about:
Per a July/August 1997 article in EXTRA!:
“The 1996 Telecommunications Act prevents the FCC from charging the broadcasters fees for use of the (broadcast) spectrum, unlike other commercial users of the spectrum.†Were we to be able to charge broadcasters those fees, the $2 billion – $5 billion that could be generated annually could subsidize an extraordinary nonprofit and non-commercial broadcasting system.
Other ideas touched on in the EXTRA! article include:
· The Telecom Act requires the commercial broadcasters to get free license for digital broadcasting, but it doesn’t state that they should have nearly all the potential channels. Let them each have one channel per market and then open up several, perhaps as many as a dozen, for nonprofit and noncommercial utilization in every community.
· Get rid of all advertising on kids’ TV shows and require all broadcaster to do at least 10 hours per week of commercial-free kids programming during the hours kids watch TV.
· Remove advertising from TV news programs and require all broadcasters to do 15 hours per week of local and national news and public affairs programming.
· Remove control of news divisions and children’s divisions from corporations like GE and people like Rupert Murdoch, and establish independent elected bodies controlled by some combination of viewers and journalists/programmers to call the shots.
· Place a 5% tax on TV advertising to generate the funds to do this.
These suggestions were made with television in mind, but I would think that there are savvy and bright people out there that can develop proposals for print media.
Just because liberal foundations are not doing what the right has been doing for decades in terms of building a labyrinth of right wing think tanks and using their funds in a strategic manner doesn’t mean that we can’t pressure more liberal foundations to make their grants more strategic in nature.
We shouldn’t, as you appear to do, simply shrug your shoulder and say, “Well, they aren’t funding it NOW, so therefore we should accept as reality that it can’t or won’t happen.”
Accepting the status quo as inevitable, or a reality that won’t or can’t be changed, is a pretty pathetic position to take.
We never could and we can’t now afford to accept the status quo. If it took women a hundred years to win the vote and hundreds of years to advance civil rights, end Jim Crow, etc., we continue to fight for the change we want to see even if it isn’t easy or quick to get where we want to go.
Being “pragmatic” and “realistic” about the status quo I think is adopting a defeatist attitude.
The question was need to ask is what kind of media do we want? Then we have to strategize to see what ways we can make it happen.
October 28th, 2005 at 12:12 am
“Mark York, interesting that you lambast Roger Simon for banning you. I remember most of that exchange and you were not just contrarian, but outright obnoxious. Some of those same wonderful traits you exhibit here as you share with us your “Wisdom and Punditry.†In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you have been banned from a lot of sites.”
I’m all in favor of banning assholes who refuse to engage in rational debate but I read the thread where he was actually banned and I didn’t think his comments there were out of line at all. If he made comments in previous threads that you think were out of line, and that put his banning in a fuller context, then you need to post some links here, as a matter of good debate form, so that the rest of us can play too.
October 28th, 2005 at 9:44 am
I was reading your blog on the LA Weekly Web site. There’s a typo.
Like everyone else at the Weekly, I have no idea howf this will change the paper. I suspect it will mean a lot of changes. I don’t know what they are. Nor their intensity or character.
How doesn’t usually have an f.
October 28th, 2005 at 11:35 am
Duly noted DC. Frankly I don’t remember exactly, but I believe I ribbed Roger about walking out on the media panel at the LA Times Book Festival which I was attending offering my report of what I saw and heard there. I was blog-swarmed by winged regulars, as is the usual MO.
October 28th, 2005 at 11:59 am
Here’s the final exchange:
The board (PJ Media) seems a bit lopsided doesn’t it? Marc Cooper and the conservatives. What kind of readership requirements are there?
Posted by: marky48 at April 28, 2005 07:14 PM
——————————————————————————–
Wouldn’t it be much simpler to just get Arianna Huffington to bankroll you?
Posted by: Richard Nieporent at April 28, 2005 07:26 PM
——————————————————————————–
marky48 – PC w/modem, ISP, literacy. Happy? No, of course you aren’t. The Way to Happiness — form your own board. May we contact you at momigotaloadinmypjs.com?
Posted by: Stephen_M at April 28, 2005 07:28 PM
——————————————————————————–
“What kind of readership requirements are there?”
The ability to read without moving your lips and running your finger accross the screen,there are those around who will help with the big words.
Posted by: PeterUK at April 28, 2005 07:32 PM
These two carried over their attacks from another thread. To which answered,
I see the same imbecilic trolls live under all bridges here. How quaint. Readership refers to numbers of viewers. Of course these nitwits don’t actually create anything of their own so I can see where difficulty comes in with my question.
Posted by: marky48 at April 28, 2005 08:24 PM
Meaning they don’t have blogs of their own, or books, but freely criticise those who do with the same sort of slams tried here. Nitwit is as nitwit does.
October 28th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Roger steps in at this point and bans me,claiming he lost patience, then more piling on from the legions.
Roger:
I decided to give Marky a break by checking out his blog. He had 10 post’s dated from April 15th to April 28th. Most were about enviromental issues. He had received a grand total of 2 comments for all his posts. His opening line about himself mentioned his wisdom and punditry. It must be the quaint idiocy of the blogosphere that is keeping everyone away from his site.
Posted by: Kevin P at April 28, 2005 09:21 PM
And the obligatory conspiracy charge:
Poor Marky Snark,the worst case of projection I’ve ever seen.
Why do those starting a blog think that the best way to attract commenters to their sites is to sneer and jeer on the site of an emminent and established blogger?
There is obviously the fastest gun in the West syndrome in evidence here,but they invariably end up like Daffy Duck with their beaks shot off.
The real way is to link the thread with something apposite on their sites,make careful and intelligent comment,worked for all the great bloggers.
Invent a better mousetrap and the world will flock to your door,if however, it is only mouse crap……
Posted by: PeterUK at April 29, 2005 03:44 AM
October 28th, 2005 at 12:14 pm
Here’s the original post for context:
Aw Roger, you’re not that thin-skinned are you? I was down front and it was interesting that Hewitt was booed because of his, shall I say labeling the host of the festival. Ken Auletta denied the label wingnuts apply to everything that doesn’t move in perfect lockstep with their predispositions. I agree with him.
When it becomes the bloggers book festival and the paper is out of business then Hewitt can gloat. It ain’t happening in our lifetimes, nor should it. I interviewed for a flunky reporter gig at a sister paper here in LA. It required two stories a day. That’s a lot of original reporting. No blogger chases down 6-8 sources every day. All they are is opinion sites commenting on real reporters’ work. Yeah that’s a tough peanut gallery. The real work is something else.
Posted by: marky48 at April 24, 2005 09:22 AM
October 28th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
“Duly noted DC.”
My comments were actually directed at GM Roper. I was asking him to back up his claim that you deserved to be banned by providing some links to your “obnoxious” comments. Like I said, I had read the thread where Simon banned you and don’t remember your comments there being ban-worthy. If there is a history before that thread then I would like GM to post some links to those threads, if he would deign to back his shit up.
October 28th, 2005 at 6:57 pm
Yes I’m aware of your strategy, but I pre-empted GM’s action, or inaction. This makes it easier to see who is in the wrong, or not. He tends to run away when challenged with facts.
October 30th, 2005 at 6:34 am
I was a fan of the old LA New Times and Jill Stewart. It was at least covering local politics, something the LA Times didn’t seem to think important (and frankly, neither did LA Weekly). And she made me laugh.
I’m hearing a lot of nasty things about the new management but tend to believe there is some hyperbole being tossed around.
In a perfect world we’d have both publications. I think they made each other try harder.
Anyway, I’m out of the country until next spring so I’ll have something to look forward to upon my return.
I don’t care who was banned from who’s blog. And I don’t understand why it is such a hot topic on a completely different blog. It must be annoying to the host.
October 30th, 2005 at 9:24 am
Obnoxiousness irritates Roger Simon. Lies in support of deadly and pointless wars don’t irritate him. No different from Totten in that regard…the guy who’s afraid to go to Iraq and report from the ‘liberated’ territory.
October 30th, 2005 at 10:08 am
And that’s very telling.
October 31st, 2005 at 2:01 am
Back to the thread or button up y’all. No more bandwith for raking over who got who pissed off on someone else’s blog. Irrelevant, immaterial and boring.
November 1st, 2005 at 12:56 am
What you say about the chorus of hysteria from the readers every time a weekly goes through any sort of “change” reminds me of the legion of Macintosh users (of which I have been one since 1991).
I’m thinking about how you say that the death of the New Times L.A. was because the management didn’t give the readers what they wanted, the New Yorkers didn’t understand the L.A. scene. How did that play out? I’m imagining a gradual loss of readership, a ship going dead in the water. What prevents that from happening to the Weekly? It has a community of readers, a buzz… like the Macintosh “evangelists” who do the brand’s advertising for it.
I am faithful to the Weekly, I read it when I was in Berkeley and in Chile, because I think it’s been a damn good paper with a recognizable style and produces reliably good writing on issues that I care about. Even if I didn’t agree with Manohla Dargis, I loved her reviews. I’m not an urban black man, but I always read Erin Aubry Kaplan with fascination. I always appreciate what Haefle and the others do with political coverage. The themes like the special issue on the L.A. River and the transit system and elsewhere, covered by Brendan whatsisname, they’re always right on the money, timely and informative. The Weekly has had guts, like when it spent the money and effort to publish daily issues during the 2000 DNC.
Even your boringest MBA student who would never touch a Mac will bow before what he will call “the greatest word-of-mouth advertising in the world.” I used to be a higher-voltage Mac fanatic than I am now, but the same way I would talk up the computer to my friends, I also do about the Weekly.
On a side note, I just want to say that when I was in Berkeley, I was surprised at how sucky the SF Weeky is, and how good the East Bay Express is. I thought the SF Weekly was the LA Weekly’s sister, and that didn’t make sense.
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