Skip Berger on New Times, Seattle Weekly

Ron Borges' sticky fingers

Globe, meet Bangalore. Bangalore, meet Globe!

2 Comments

• Gonz said:

  Ok, forget about the fact that you didn’t talk to Skip. (He’s right about that, of course--you should have.) Let’s, instead, take a look at what he says about New Times: “My problem...was: who hires and fires? Who makes judgements (sic) about productivity? Who decides how the arts are covered? Somebody in Denver, or someone in the city who understands the market, the paper, the niche?” He also stipulates that the company’s “cookie cutter” approach has nothing to do with the writing. “My disputes with New Times were rarely over story content. Narrative journalism, advocacy journalism, investiagtive (sic) journalism: we've all done those things and love them when they're done well.” So, if I understand correctly, he’s upset about someone at corporate approving or disapproving (or completely circumventing) his hiring and firing practices. Well, I can’t help him there; perhaps he has a gripe. (Then again, given the fact that his missive to you contained several gross misspellings, perhaps he was in need of assistance on several fronts, including staffing). But in my experience, no one from corporate ever told anyone in Dallas what to cover or how to do it, as Skip alleges by saying that someone from Denver was dictatorial about the arts section. Again, to be clear, his beef with the company seems to stem from whose dick was biggest. It appears to have had nothing to do with substantive journalism. The most inane statement of all, though, is the one about New Times style having nothing “really alternative” about it. I’m afraid this truly betrays Skip’s ignorance--or at least his blindness. Newsflash: Alt. weeklies aren’t the counterculture bastion they were back in the ‘70s. They aren’t defined by the anti-establishment ideology anymore. Not at New Times, not anywhere. Let’s not forget--the Village Voice was owned, for a time, by Rupert Murdoch, for the love of Christ. What Alt. weeklies represent now is an alternative to the weak, timid, homogenized journalism too often found in big city dailies--and that is surely to their credit. Alt. weeklies are now defined by the quality of their work and how it differs from mainstream journalism, not by how they package the content or how the goddamn website looks. I mean Skip, bubby, even Rolling Stone has modernized itself. Whatever the fuck he’s clinging to, frankly, no longer exists. Anyway, if Skip still longs for the good old days when he could rail against whomever he considered to be the man and hire and fire people at will, I’m sure he’ll be quite content working at someguy.com, or wherever it is he’s landed. In the meantime, the people doing good work at New Time/VVM papers in LA, Dallas, Miami and, yes, Seattle, will continue to do so without him.
  March 2, 2007 5:39 PM

• pm said:

  Gonz beats the straw man. "Alt-weekies haven't been alt since the 70s!" Wow. I think Skip was challenging assertions made in the original piece, and I'm not sure that his letter was intended to be an Alt Weekly manifesto. That said, I think the man has a substantive gripe that goes to heart of what's objectionable about the New times papers. Here: "That said, the New Times version of the Village Voice chain has shifted from a company--under David Schneiderman--that encouraged regional difference and individualism to one that is top-down and hands-on. New Times has a cookie cutter and they're not afraid to use it." Homogenized, national "AltWeekly" isn't what anyone who reads such papers wants. Maybe NT has turned what they do into a viable business because economies of scale minimize costs, but at some point the local readers are going to lose interest in a paper that doesn't speak to them. I can't imagine myself picking up a newspaper that isn't keyed into and reporting on the arts scene in my city. I'm likely not alone, as a consumer of arts & culture, and, according to the open letter from the NW Film Forum's director linked below, the model isn't really helping arts outlets either. If this model isn't producing much of use, I don't think one's wrong to suspect the NT's expansion is hastening the death of the AltWeekly. So it goes. http://daily.greencine.com/archives/003319.html
  March 5, 2007 4:28 PM

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