The Real Paper

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The Real Paper
Media of the United States
  • List of newspapers

    • The Real Paper was a Boston-area alternative weekly newspaper with a circulation in the tens of thousands. It ran from August 2, 1972, to June 18, 1981, often devoting space to counterculture and alternative politics of the early 1970s. The offices were in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    History

    The Cambridge Phoenix was born on October 9, 1969, founded by Jeffrey Tarter. In the summer of 1972, Richard Missner, owner of what was then simply called "The Phoenix," fired editor Harper Barnes

    The Boston Phoenix. The entire former staff of The Phoenix was now unemployed, the lone exception being the late sportswriter George Kimball, who went to work for Mindich.[4] Because of the solidarity developed before and during the strike, the Cambridge group decided to continue publication as The Real Paper (by implication, "The Real Phoenix") and organized themselves as an employee-run cooperative.[5][6] Bob L. Oliver, The Real Papers founding art director, was responsible for editorial and advertising graphic design from July 1972 to July 1973 and designed the paper's logo based on the original Phoenix type style.[7] The Real Paper staff elected Robert Rotner as publisher, the late Jeff Albertson (a well-known staff photographer) as associate publisher, reporter Paul Solman as editor and Robert Williams as advertising director. The editorial staff included women's columnist Laura Shapiro, former editor Harper Barnes, rock critics Jon Landau and James Isaacs, reporters Charlie McCollum and Chuck Fager, cartoonist David Omar White,[8] and writers Stephen Davis, C. Wendell Smith and Jon Lipsky. David Chandler was the first design director, succeeded by Ronn Campisi and later Lynn Staley, who later became the head of design at The Boston Globe and Newsweek and Lucy Bartholomay, who succeeded Staley at "The Globe." Photo editor Peter Southwick also went on to "The Globe" as photo editor and now directs the Boston University College of Communication photojournalism program.[9]
    Paula Childs, the listings editor, became a television reporter.

    Though no capital was ever invested, The Real Paper cooperative became self-sustaining within several months. Two years of growth followed, accompanied by some employee turnover. Notable hires included reporters

    Harvey A. Silverglate wrote on legal matters; Lita Lepie, author of the murder mystery Black Lotus, wrote one of the country's first Lesbian columns under the pseudonym Lilith Moon; movie critic Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote about classical music, among other subjects; Fred Hapgood covered science.[11]

    Eventually, however, the strains of operating as a worker-owned firm without having learned how to handle cooperative management led to staff divisions. Published accounts of the split include one in the Harvard Crimson.[12] Another appeared in a 1983 book, Life and Death on the Corporate Battlefield, by former editor Solman and former Managing Editor Thomas Friedman.

    Le Anne Schreiber, writing in The New York Times (January 3, 1983) discussed and quoted from the book's chapter on the paper's early history;

    Lessons emerge from case histories of actual companies and individuals. Although it is told without hand-wringing, the saddest of these stories is what happened to the staff of The Real Paper ... Lines were drawn, and suddenly everybody was a close friend of somebody who was now the enemy of another close friend.
    In a traditional organization, the conflicts that arose would have been solved by firings or resignations; but at The Real Paper, which had been set up as an egalitarian business – with every employee holding an equal number of shares as long as he or she worked for the paper – there was no way to settle or to escape internal conflict. The fact that the paper had become profitable meant that no one wanted to leave and relinquish shares; but by staying together, given the bitter factionalism that had developed, the staff insured that the paper would become progressively less profitable.[13]

    Journalists, authors and others

    Ad from The Real Paper for Orson Welles Cinema (June 13, 1973).

    The Real Paper served as a springboard for many prominent journalists, authors and members of the music industry.

    10373 MacRobert was named in his honor. Boston television sports reporter Clark Booth wrote a story about violence in pro football in 1975 for both Mother Jones magazine and The Real Paper that Joe Nocera reprinted in part in The New York Times in 2012.[20] Booth still writes about sports for the Boston archdiocese's The Pilot.[21]

    Film criticism

    Film critics contributing to The Real Paper included Chuck Kraemer; Stuart Byron; the prominent left-wing journalist Andrew Kopkind, who died in 1994,[22] Stephen Schiff, who covered films for The Real Paper and the Boston Phoenix before moving on to Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and then establishing a career as a screenwriter (Lolita, The Deep End of the Ocean, True Crime); Kathy Huffhines (later with the Detroit Free Press before she was killed in a parked car by a falling tree limb); Patrick McGilligan (who later wrote biographies of Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Nicholson and others); David Rosenbaum; Bhob Stewart (later film critic for Heavy Metal magazine); David Thomson; Michael Wilmington (later film critic for the Chicago Tribune); Gerald Peary, who had moved from New York City to Cambridge in 1978 and continued to review for The Real Paper until it folded in June, 1981.

    Business staff

    On the business side of the paper, the first circulation director, Russel Pergament, later an ad salesman who also wrote occasionally, founded, with fellow Real Paper ad salesmen Steve Cummings and Richard Yousoufian, Tab Communications, which eventually published 14 regional weeklies in cities surrounding Boston. Comptroller Howard Garsh spent many years at Sail Magazine. Steve Crosby is Dean of the McCormack Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts, Boston[23] and Chairman of the Massachusetts State Gaming Commission.[24] Circulation Director, David Stein founded two commercial real estate trade publications purchased by Communications Channels, Inc., redeveloped historic mills, and is the managing partner of a marketing company representing states' DOTs.[clarification needed] Advertising director Robert Williams became a serial media entrepreneur who founded National Cable Advertising, later NCC Media, now owned by Comcast, Time Warner and Cox. He then founded National Public Broadcasting (representing all the PBS and NPR stations in the US), now known as National Public Media.

    Early coverage of Bruce Springsteen

    Jon Landau's prophetic 1974 article in The Real Paper in which he famously claimed that "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen" is credited by Nick Hornby[25] and others with fostering the artist's popularity. Landau wrote:

    But tonight there is someone I can write of the way I used to write, without reservations of any kind. Last Thursday at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock and roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the first time.[26]
    When his two-hour set ended I could only think, can anyone really be this good; can anyone say this much to me, can rock'n'roll still speak with this kind of power and glory? And then I felt the sores on my thighs where I had been pounding my hands in time for the entire concert and knew that the answer was yes.
    Springsteen does it all. He is a rock'n'roll punk, a Latin street poet, a ballet dancer, an actor, a joker, bar band leader, hot-shit rhythm guitar player, extraordinary singer, and a truly great rock'n'roll composer. He leads a band like he has been doing it forever. I racked my brains but simply can't think of a white artist who does so many things so superbly.[27]

    Between the lines

    In 1975, The Real Paper was purchased by Ralph I. Fine, David Rockefeller Jr., and eventual Massachusetts governor

    William Weld, who installed Marty Linsky as editor.[28] Linsky succeeded David Gelber, brought to The Real Paper as a writer from The Village Voice. Gelber subsequently had a distinguished career as a documentary television producer at 60 Minutes for 25 years and at ABC News, winning eight Emmys and numerous other awards. His latest project is a series on global warming, Years of Living Dangerously. Marty Linsky went on to become a leadership consultant and author[29] and Harvard Kennedy School faculty member. Subsequent editors included Richard Rosen,[30] and Mark Zanger, the author of several books on food history.[31]
    Rosen's many books – from mysteries like Strike Three You're Dead to non-fiction works like Buffalo in the House and Such Good Girls to humor (Bad Cat, Not Available in Any Store) – and his television efforts, including the mock local news broadcast The Generic News – are chronicled in full at rdrosen.com.

    By late 1975, the competition between The Real Paper and the Boston Phoenix was being described as mainly economic.[32] By 1977, intimations of "computer" competition for ads first appeared.[33] In 1979, the Boston Globe's Nathan Cobb, who had lionized the two papers seven years earlier, wrote a story headlined "Their big worry is going broke."[34] "Not as gritty as they used to be," wrote the Globe's Bruce McCabe later that year.[35] "Reality catches 'those' papers," was the headline in 1980.[36] In 1981, The Real Paper was shut down, its assets again sold to competitor Mindich and the Boston Phoenix.

    Of the paper's demise, Jeff McLaughlin, describing the 1981 Boston arts scene in the

    Boston Globe
    , (January 4, 1982), wrote: "Hardest hit was journalism. Financial problems caused The Real Paper to cease publication, silencing a voice that was devoted to community-based efforts in the arts as in other cultural fields. The Phoenix won new readers with The Real Paper's demise,"[37][38] but in 2013, The Phoenix too ceased publication

    Fred Barron, who had written for both The Boston Phoenix and The Real Paper, used his alternative newspaper experiences as the basis for a screenplay, Between the Lines, filmed in 1977 by Joan Micklin Silver.[39] The success of that film led to a short-lived TV sitcom, also titled Between the Lines.

    Archives

    The Real Paper has been issued on microfilm by Bell and Howell.

    In November 2015, The Boston Globe announced that Northeastern University's Snell Library Archives and Special Collections[40] had received copies of The Real Paper as part of their acquisition of The Boston Phoenix records.[41] Hard copies are available to the public at Snell Library.[42]

    References

    1. ^ "SLIFF 2019 Interview: Harper Barnes – His Career Inspired the 1977 Film BETWEEN THE LINES". We Are Movie Geeks. November 12, 2019. Retrieved April 15, 2023.
    2. ^ Ex-Phoenix staffers sue Missner for fraud, Madeleine Blais, July 29, 1972
    3. ^ [1] [dead link]
    4. ^ "Boston Now Has Two 'New' Weeklies | News | The Harvard Crimson". Thecrimson.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    5. ^ "Phoenix Rises from Ashes; Staff Issues the Real Paper | News | The Harvard Crimson". Thecrimson.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    6. ^ x-Phoenix staffers join to publish The Real Paper, Joe Pilati, July 31, 1972
    7. ^ ""The Real Paper"". Bobloliver.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    8. ^ [2] [dead link]
    9. ^ "Peter Southwick » College of Communication » Boston University". Archived from the original on December 30, 2014. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
    10. ^ "About Anita Harris". Brokenpatternsbook.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    11. ^ "Fred Hapgood's Home Page". Fhapgood.fastmail.fm. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    12. ^ "Crawling Out of the Snakepit at the Real Paper | News | The Harvard Crimson". Thecrimson.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    13. ^ "Books of the Times," The New York Times, January 3, 1983.
    14. ^ "Rory O'Connor". Amazon.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    15. ^ Kaufman, Joanne (September 23, 2008). "His Pie Charts Bear Real Fruit: Making Economics Accessible". Wsj.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    16. ^ Marquard, Bryan (March 21, 2011). "Jon Lipsky, creative force on Boston theater scene; at 66". The Boston Globe. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    17. ^ "Ask Dog Lady". Askdoglady.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    18. ^ "Call the Cops – Cornell Alumni Magazine". Cornellalumnimagazine.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    19. ^ "Alan M. MacRobert". Skyandtelescope.org. July 25, 2006. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    20. ^ Nocera, Joe (February 4, 2012). "Opinion | The Cost of Football Glory". The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    21. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on July 8, 2014. Retrieved December 30, 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
    22. ^ Grimes, William (October 25, 1994). "Andrew D. Kopkind, Writer on Politics And Editor, 59". The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    23. ^ "Faculty & Fellows - McCormack Graduate School". Umb.edu. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    24. ^ "GBH News". Wgbh.org. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    25. ^ "Rock of Ages,", Hornby, Nick, The New York Times, May 21, 2004.
    26. ^ Campbell, Michael and Brody James. Rock and Roll: An Introduction. Schirmer G Books, 2007. pp. 326
    27. ^ "Bruce Springsteen Biography". Musicianguide.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    28. ^ [3] [dead link]
    29. ^ "Marty Linsky". Amazon.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    30. ^ [4] [dead link]
    31. ^ "Mark Zanger". Amazon.com. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    32. ^ [5] [dead link]
    33. ^ [6] [dead link]
    34. ^ [7] [dead link]
    35. ^ [8] [dead link]
    36. ^ [9] [dead link]
    37. ^ [10] [dead link]
    38. ^ [11] [dead link]
    39. ^ [12] [dead link]
    40. ^ "Archives & Special Collections | Northeastern University Library". Library.northeastern.edu. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
    41. ^ "Boston Phoenix publisher donates archives to Northeastern – The Boston Globe". Boston Globe. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
    42. ^ "Home | Northeastern University Library". Library.northeastern.edu. Retrieved December 1, 2021.

    Bibliography

    External links

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