By Garbo Cheung-Jasik
Bill Boyd is a senior vice president of Creative Loafing, which is based in Tampa, FL, and publishes alternative newspapers in three southeastern states. Boyd’s responsibilities include designing and implementing a “ ‘ built-to-last’ organizational architecture”. Since Creative Loafing is a relatively small company with 200 employees, he takes on additional assignments as necessary, including a one-year assignment as publisher of its Florida papers.
During the 1990s, Boyd was a faculty member of The Poynter Institute, where he taught leadership courses that ranged from one week to six months in duration. His principal focus was helping newspaper companies make the transition to the digital age. Prior to joining Poynter, he was an executive at a computer company and at CBS Television and a reporter for PBS.
As traditional daily newspapers vie for younger readers, alternative newspapers remain the voice of choice for its readers, staying true to its counterculture heritage and history of rebellion with stories that challenge the conventional. Boyd discusses trends in alternatives and the future of the alternative press.
Q: What are some of the issues that you deal with at an alternative paper that you wouldn’t deal with at a mainstream paper?
A: Other side of the coin issues. Dailies tend to do better with older readers and alternatives do better with younger readers. We’re working on keeping readers after they have kids and “get boring” while dailies continue to struggle with getting younger ones. Most alternatives do not own their own presses, so we wrestle with printing contracts, while mainstream papers wrestle with maintenance (of presses), depreciation, etc.
Q: A number of alternative papers started as underground papers and many of them are regarded as progressive. Today, many mainstream papers are creating alternative papers of their own, such as the Chicago Tribune's RedEye and Chicago SunTime's RedStreak. What defines an alternative paper today?
A: Alternatives vary a great deal, but all provide “read and do” utility for readers via listings, picks and “best of” lists, and most lead their markets in that area. Many alternatives also provide news about “what’s really going on” with proposed stadiums, corrupt judges, etc. and other stories that mainstream papers tend to ignore or tiptoe around.
Q: What other topics or issues do alternative papers cover that mainstream papers usually do not cover?
A: The issues range from cultural trends to historical changes to election coverage. Alternatives tend to lead their markets on civil liberty stories like surveillance cameras around the 2002 Super Bowl in Tampa and the effort to censor and cut off funds for Tampa’s public access cable channel. Alternatives also provide fun stories that you would not find in many mainstream papers, like cover stories on swinger clubs or the daytime life of nighttime lap dancers. Alternatives tend to be much more aggressive and irreverent in media coverage than their mainstream competitors.
Q: How can alternative papers stay distinctive and maintain that independent voice that draws its younger, hip readers?
A: The main thing is to stay true to the heritage of rebelliousness, humor, and risk taking that appeals to the young and hip, as well as the hip and not so young. Rebelliousness and “attitude” are cutting edge issues that transcend fads for youth and the media that serve them.
Q: Many mainstream daily newspapers have stagnant or declining circulation numbers. Have alternative papers been able to take advantage of the mainstream press's difficulties in keeping their reader base?
A: As daily circulation has declined, alternatives and other weeklies have grown. Whenever it rains, somebody’s garden grows.
Q: A recent article in Editor & Publisher indicated that the average age of readers of alternative papers is now boomer age and many of their editors also are in that age range. Traditionally, alternative papers have targeted readers in the 18-25 age range. Have alternatives’ readership demographics changed?
A: Alternatives continue to have high penetration in the 18-25 demographic. We have almost as many readers in that demographic as competing dailies with three or four times our circulation.
Q: Has the advent of the Internet been a boon or bane for alternative papers? Do most alternatives have and take advantage of websites?
A: Neither. Most alternatives have websites but remain print-dominant enterprises. The “personals” ad category that has been so lucrative for alternatives is migrating rapidly from print to online and the alternative industry is migrating with it.
Q: Are there particular types of journalists and news executives who are attracted to work and careers in alternative news, as opposed to the mainstream press?
A: Like our readers, people who work for alternatives tend to be contrarians, not just in challenging the local political establishment, but in challenging the media establishment. They also tend to be devoted to pursuing personal growth that encompasses, but is not limited to, career growth.
Q: As you know, the mainstream news media continues to struggle with diversity issues such as hiring and retaining a workforce reflective of a multicultural society. Given the heritage and history of the alternative press, are managers or owners of alternatives more enlightened when it comes to these issues?
A: Papers in this industry are like dailies of similar size, 250,000 circulation or less, in that they have limited diversity and relatively few initiatives designed to improve the situation. While the executives of alternatives generally have liberal political and social views, that has not produced staffs that look like America as much as I would like. There is a relatively new program in conjunction with Northwestern designed to increase the number of minority journalists in the industry. (The Academy for Alternative Journalism, held in conjunction with the Medill School of Journalism, is a summer program that is designed to recruit and train minority journalists to work at alternative papers). I am pleased that our company has three African Americans among the top dozen managers, but we are not as diverse as we would like to be across the board.
Q: Ten years from now, what do you think the future will be for alternatives? Are the trends favorable for their continued success?
A: I think the trends of dailies shrinking and alternatives growing will continue. The oracles say that the future of alternatives is bright.
Garbo Cheung-Jasik is the program director for the NAMME Foundation.