Add a Comment
More TBC Talk
Would Kerouac Dig an ‘On the Road’ Movie?
Was Sit/Lie Unfair to the Haight?
Are Gay Men Losing the Ability to Socialize?
The New Rules for Dogs
One-off Newspapers: OK with Me
Smart as it sounds, I don’t really get the lengthy takedown of the artisanal newspaper published by The Smart Set yesterday. “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” writes Greg Beato, an editor at Reason. One-off newspaper projects are “about to become next year’s $299 chambray work shirt.”
What?
I’m with Beato this far: Monocle — the intensely international-sounding publication that recently announced Monocle Mediterraneo, a one-off summertime newspaper due out July 29 — deserves some amount of gentle chiding for its high-priced swaggery, which Beato points out includes “a tiny bag of wood” priced at $192. But Beato loses me when he groups Monocle’s (yet-to-be-released) homage to the “superannuated leftover from the glory days of mass culture” with $35 T-shirts, $600 duffle bags and “$90,000 bespoke Jeeps” (what’s a $90,000 bespoke Jeep?).
We’ve heard this kind of criticism before—at least since McSweeney’s Panorama came out in December 2009. (Full disclosure: I had a piece in Panorama. And I like pretty newspapers.) Editorially and aesthetically refined, these high-quality short runs are dilettantish, elitist, antithetical to the cause of meat-and-potatoes daily journalism—so the critics say. And they cost too much.
The point seems belabored, and a bit misplaced, coming from within the industry.
For $16 in stores (it was $5 in the Bay Area the day of release), Panorama offered something memorable: full-color broadsheets throughout, a 100-page book review, innovative design, and a crazily impressive contributors’ list. Hardly trying to act like a city daily, Panorama contained 350,000 words. Seven months later, I haven’t made it through my copy (has anyone out there? I’ll buy you a coffee if you have). With the San Francisco Public Press newspaper project released last month (a far less ambitious project that cited Panorama as a model, it sold for just $2), it seemed as though thoughtful small-batch newspapering was on the rise. The latest incarnation, Mediterraneo will cost £7 (so international!).
We don’t yet know what Mediterraneo will contain, but I can’t hang with the rhetoric that perceives these projects as a threat, elitist, or worthy of derision—however foppish. Is anybody cancelling their subscription to a local daily in hopes that Mediterraneo will fill the gap? I doubt it. Does the blogosphere light up with indignation at the inauguration of each new fashion glossy—at least as costly as the boutique newspapers? Hardly. And what is the consumer investment in the world of $4 Starbucks lattés (and $1 San Francisco Chronicles)?
As long as small publishers continue to experiment, we should meet them on the terms of the product they produce. Even if it does come at the cost of a Piccadilly pint.
Richard Parks has a degree from McGill University in Montreal and is currently a student in the documentary film program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. He is the recipient (with fellow Bay Citizen ...
View Profile
About Us
Reporting Staff
Stay In Touch
- About Us
- Events
- Support Us
- Careers
- Corrections
- Letters to the Editor
- Privacy Policy By accessing this site, you accept our Terms of Use. Please read them.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
- Katharine MieszkowskiEnvironment and Health
- Reyhan HarmanciArts, culture, nonprofits
- Zusha ElinsonTransportation
- Shoshana WalterCrime and punishment
- Jennifer GollanRegional government
- Aaron GlantzHousing, real estate, development
- Trey BundyEducation
- Matt SmithSF politics and government
- Andy WrightNews and engagement specialist
- Marie McIntoshPublic engagement manager
- Adithya SambamurthyVideo and Photography
Gerry Shih
I agree that the papers aren't elite or foppish -- but, but, but it has a *book* review! No Dan Brown! 100 pages! longer than any book I'd read! What next, 100 pages of farmer's market listings!? -- but this spate of one-timers somehow doesn't sit right because newspapering has always been great because of its perpetual process... as well as the product.
It's great to open the bundle of newsprint in the a.m. and scan the pages for your name in bold caps. But what's really great is that you put it down, finish your coffee and do it again, and again, and again.
From McSweeney's to the Monocle to the SF Public Press... we all have a crush with print. I do too.
But it reminds me-- one of my favorite UK sportswriters yesterday described a charming, promising, but ultimately unfulfilling athlete as "a shallow and increasingly unrealistic pash, but... still there, still cooking away against all sense of reasonable expectation."
A small part of me fears it might be the same here.
theo auer
While I am happy to see print is still in fashion, in its newest incarnation it offers up a shaky footing and well meaning but naif do - gooderism. The SF Public Press comes admirably close to offering a strong model for print journalism for a new age. That being a sort of locally sourced and vastly updated version of the Utne Reader. It however lacks strongly in news that is not decidedly left of center, but it shares that issue with just about every other news outlet in the bay save the Wall Street Journal's meager coverage. In places the experiment has taken one bad cue from McSweeney's never to be repeated Panorama - that being, a sort of cloying, cutesy, pseudo intellectual sense of cool. All this said, I hope The SF Public Press comes out again. It is an experiment well worth repeating. Many have proposed print existing as a sort of Utne magazine of the best of the web and print,but this project is the first physical glimpst of what that could look like.
theo auer
With the exception of a three or four articles, for me Panorama was a failed experiment. In content, promises and design. For me the bar is the sunday NYT or your average issue of The New Criterion and McSweeney's attempt to reenvigorate journalism didn't come close. Mr. Parks I will have you know yours was one of the few Panorama articles I liked. I'd gone on further, but I rather think Howard Junker made the best case(its well worth reading, coming from a respected critic and editor of local lit mag that discovered more talent than any other in there here parts):
http://zyzzyvaspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/12/dave-eggerss-panorama.html
Becky O'Malley
As a compromise, take a look at the Berkeley Daily Planet’s current incarnation: an experimental bridge between online and print publication. Because of IRS difficulties (our payroll service stole our tax payments) the former Berkeley Daily Planet LLC is being phased out, and now online content must be produced with no money exchanging hands and no ads (except free ones).
My partner and I do the editing and put the copy online using a simple program which he wrote. Reporters, some professional and others novices, are contributing their pieces free for the moment. A new non-profit, the Fund for Local Reporting, has been set up to raise money which will go directly to pay writers, but it’s just getting started.
The game plan is that the site is updated daily, with a new “issue” with a new dateline appearing online every Tuesday. New stories are added to issues as “Extras” when they occur, and on the next Tuesday there’s a new issue.
Becky O'Malley
Now here’s the novel part: after each Tuesday issue is online we use the same copy to create PDFs, graphic representations of pages, which are easily accessed by clicking the “ISSUE PDFs” button on the home page. Readers can then print their own papers (usually about 24 pages) on home printers
For non-computer-literate readers (a surprising number) Greg Tomeoni at Copy Central on Solano Avenue prints and sells a folded and stapled 8.5 x 11 copy for $2.00. This covers his costs with perhaps a small profit—and now he’s put some sales boxes in cafes and other prime locations too.
It’s working surprisingly well—it produces something that’s kind of a cross between a newspaper and a magazine. The technique could be adapted to all kinds of content, and capital requirements are minimal.
See it online at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com, print out your own copy, or buy one from Greg if you prefer.