Alternative to What, Motherfucker?
Un-radical New Times sees no profit in working for change
By Mick Farren
"Pornosec, the sub-section of the Fiction Department which turned out cheap pornography ... to be bought furtively by proletarian youths who were under the impression that they were buying something illegal."
-George Orwell, 1984
've always disliked and distrusted the word "alternative" - especially when an adjective - as in "alternative press," "alternative rock," or "alternative radio." When someone starts trying to sell me "alternative," the alternative is usually a diluted substitute for the real thing. My suspicion of the word, like so much else, started in the 1960s, when some superior hippies - unacceptable combos of Gandhi and Nellie Oleson - prattled on about an "alternative society" and reforming the squares by our shining nonviolent example. My youthful response was invariably negative. I was already well aware that reforming squares usually ended with the local PD clubbing me about the head and shoulders. I was far more at home with people who used words like "underground," "radical," "revolutionary," or even, on a particularly bad day, "helter-skelter."
About the only alternative society with which I truly sympathized was that of the San Francisco Diggers, who - taking their name from a 17th-century English utopian commune horribly shut down by Oliver Cromwell's army - attempted to set up a moneyless, classless society on the streets of 1966-67 Haight-Ashbury. I dug the Diggers because their alternative was aggressive street theater and their leader, Emmett Grogan, was a master prankster with a decidedly street-thug panache. After the Diggers, though, the word "alternative" degenerated, until, by the 1970s, it meant groovy-but-corporate, maybe faux-outlaw but never going all the way. It finally reached its nadir in this new century with the "alternative" press in general and the New Times corporation - the nation's largest "alternative" newspaper proprietor - in particular.
But this has to be the moment for the disclaimer.
Los Angeles CityBeat has an interest to declare in that it really only came into being as a result of a forced divestiture after New Times and its prime rival, Village Voice Media, were caught red-handed in an illegal market swap. Thus we take a baleful interest in recent scuttlebutt claiming New Times and VVM are now facing off like Hitler and Stalin, and that the outcome will be a massive merger moving toward an alternative-press monopoly. But don't believe that colors what's to come. I have loathed New Times since 1996, when its overbosses Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin bought up and closed down the old Los Angeles Reader, deprived a whole bunch of fine and talented folk of both a paycheck and a forum, and replaced it with New Times Los Angeles, a paper that no one in L.A. wanted to read. (On a more personal level, I am writing this in an alternative organ, which gives me free rein to say what I fancy. Should I refrain from hypocritically complaining? Nah. I'll pitch the bitch. I have a doctorate in biting the hand that feeds. Especially when the feeding ain't lavish.)
In the beginning, there was the underground press. Inky fly-by-nights in cities across the Western World, running on mutiny, amphetamine, and the original IBM typesetting machine, preaching what John Sinclair defined as "rock 'n' roll, dope, and fucking in the streets" - although "offing the pig" quickly made the masthead as the grip of Richard Nixon tightened on reality. The Furry Freak Brothers' and Black Panther Party's communiqués happily coexisted in the underground's flamboyant gonzo pages, freely distributed via the no-copyright Underground Press Syndicate. Splendidly anarchic, recklessly innovative, constantly under indictment or out on bail, and so broke we depended on the cash from hookers buying classifieds to score beer and weed for the workers, the underground press was a lifeline to freaks across the globe, telling them, if nothing else, they were not alone.
And then some enterprising hip capitalists - that was the polite term - led by Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner asked themselves the questions the underground always avoided: "Why take all the chances? Why suffer all the grief? Why not take what's commercially viable and dump all the cultural insurgency?" By 1975, the u/g rags had all but vanished, giving way to smugly groovy tabloids run by baby moguls who made it very clear to the rebel vets from the underground that they were now working for the Man. By the Reagan era, the alternative bosses were having so much fun playing Charles Foster Kane that some decided to build empires. Prime among the imperialists were Lacey and Larkin at the Phoenix-based New Times, who, with a stunning grasp of venture capitalism, acquired weeklies across the land until they owned 11 newspapers, including the prestigious SF Weekly. Although, in Lacey's own words, New Times operates "without the burden of a political agenda," my observations - on a proof-in-the-pudding level - place the general NT demeanor somewhere between neocon and libertarian. The distinguished Nat Hentoff, a longtime contributor to the NT-threatened Village Voice, noted in The Boston Phoenix that New Times doesn't run editorials and is "neither unionized nor anti-establishment, and that is, to understate things, troubling."
Certainly, if my assessment of its overall vision is correct, the alternative New Times offers is a market-driven string of free weeklies, with cookie-cutter design, centralized editorial, voiceless writing, and definitely no old-time Hunter Thompson shenanigans. In this, the company appears very close to Clear Channel, the concert-promoting/tour-sponsoring radio chain that "apolitically" hired Howard Stern, only to fire him when its marketing strategy dictated going gung-ho for Bush's War.
The problem with expanding empires is that they inevitably collide. The alternative-press world has been abuzz with rumors concerning this possible NT/VVM merger, and related moves, charges, and countercharges. When The Village Voice drastically cut its freelance rates, senior editor Robert Christgau characterized it in a letter to contributors - posted on Jim Romenesko's website (Poynter.org) - as "an attempt by management to render the paper more saleable." San Francisco Bay Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann sounded the full alarm, claiming to have documents detailing how the merger would create an 18-publication chain ultimately controlled by Lacey, Larkin, and their bankers, with major papers in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, and Houston.
Brugmann also reminded his readers that this wasn't the first time New Times had gone after VVM. In 1999-2000, a purchase of VVM by New Times was nixed when "a Republican Justice Department with a decidedly pro-business slant decided that the original New Times-VVM deal was blatantly illegal and anti-competitive." Brugmann further warned that the new merger would be "much worse and could turn into a classic disaster." Lacey immediately responded with a lengthy SF Weekly diatribe in which he charged that Brugmann's "ethics are as convenient as any whore's" and derided his story as "spewing brain vomit." Oddly, though, Lacey neither confirmed nor denied the merger, but simply waxed cryptic: "I can't comment on that, but you know what they say about broken clocks."
The impact on the alt press in major cities might well be the disaster Brugmann predicts. New Times has demonstrated the kind of arrogance that would cause it to gut what editorial integrity the venerable Voice and the advertising-fat L.A. Weekly have left and force them to conform to the formula that failed before. Here at CityBeat, we can only watch and wait. New Times' slash-and-burn dislike of competition may well set it gunning for CityBeat, but fuck 'em. I won't lose sleep. We have faced - and continue to face - far more pressing threats than Mike Lacey and New Times. We have a damaged planet, a cul-de-sac war, and an administration of criminally negligent clowns. Alternatives like New Times only waste useful space in which these and a hundred other issues could be addressed. The alternative they offer is nothing more than easy-sell irrelevancy.
Published: 10/06/2005
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