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December 08
So, I hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving weekend. I would have posted more, but I forgot the Internet existed.
So here’s the skinny from the big exciting meeting of the Newspeak Totally Board of Director-Bots:
As many of you know, our printing company has been nice enough to pass along the quite precipitous rise in paper costs to us, and that, combined with the downtown and the fact that advertisers are scared shitless lately, means one thing: we’re moving the whole shebang online.
We’re not alone in taking advantage of Our Li’l Depression to do this; the Christian Science Monitor recently went paperless, as did Radar and about a trazillion others. Printing in the conventional sense is looking sillier and sillier, a totally unnecessary expense that actually prevents us from doing cool things. Print is going to go away, and it’s never really been a matter of if we’d have to trash the print edition, just when, and it’s a good idea on our part to get a head start. (Don’t believe me? Check this and this out, and consider that even monoliths like the Times, the Post and, duh, our layoff-a-licious, publisher-less local daily, are feeling the hurt.)
We can look at this two ways. One is that, yeah, we’re failing to make ends meet on a consistent basis, and operating the same way we have been just doesn’t look sustainable. The other is that, in two short years of doing print in this town, we’ve left it a whole lot better than we found it: our stated goal from day one was to put pressure on larger media to make them better. In that respect, we totally win; the Indy is a much more readable paper than it was in October ‘06, and the ‘Zette … well, the Gazette has blogs now. Sort of.
There’s also the issue that, even in a town like Colorado Springs, an irascible lefty voice like ours has become a whole lot more mainstream. When the paper started, we had a Republican-controlled Congress, a Republican governor, a New Life that incorporated politics into the pulpit and a president who wasn’t a devastatingly handsome black Democrat. Now we do, and—while we certainly can’t claim credit for any of those things, except for the Obama presidency, which our endorsement totally made happen, BTW—it’s now sort of weird to think that the politics of Newspeak are, with obvious exceptions, the politics of the American majority. Anyway.
So the December issue will the last monthly print issue. This doesn’t mean that Newspeak is going anywhere, though, either as a business or a philosophy. This will actually allow us to ramp up our content by a whole lot, throw some money at marketing and events and do things that, by design or decision, the print edition just doesn’t allow us to do. Like, you know, podcasts and videos and stories that I wouldn’t let get into our print edition (because of all the fucking swearing, yo). And timely stuff. We get to review movies again! And go to shows and interview bands and do food pieces and oh my god it’s going to be so fun.
So what to expect from us: one more print issue, called The Last Issue, in which we do a lot of things we always wanted to do but were sort of afraid to. Then, another site redesign and a relaunch shortly into the New Year. Then, shit-tons of online content that will make you think, or pee your pants, or spit bourbon onto your laptop, or all three. You’ll also see a broadening of our base of contributors and, hopefully, a sense that Newspeak doesn’t really belong to or is controlled by anybody but the very supportive community around it.
So hey. Here’s to the future.
Posted by: Aaron Retka in Uncategorized | Permalink
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6 Responses to “News! Speak! Newspeak news peek! News!”
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Fuckin A!
I’m really happy for ya’ll cuz it makes total sense. And I’ll get more all the way here in Chi-town.
Makes me sad though that what I went to school for is a dying art form. sigh.
But I’m really proud of you Aaron for how far Newspeak has come. And I look forward to your future.
hey aaron. long time reader. i got into newspeak because of noel, an old friend from s.f. poetry days. i used to have poems in toiletpaper advertising dnote in arvada, which you may or may not remember. anyway, figured i’d stop paying attention when he left, since i don’t live in the springs and all. but guess what? newspeak is still one of my favorite blogs to check. (the others are boingboing, wooster,joyengine, slog.) so, good work and keep it up. more contributors a good idea. i’m a sucker for lots of content. i’m happy to contribute if you need some northside action. poetry, reviews, whatever. copingsaw@gmail.com
as for print edition, keep it up, but sporadically, with one unique advertiser paying for each small “special edition”, which shall be a bizzare collector’s theme issue. also go back to original toilet paper idea of laying them wherever, get them into the right hands and make a game out of guerrilla distribution. this way print edition of newspeak is total fun, with the added purpose of creating both tangible objects of art and content for blog simultane. perhaps they could be the results of sporadic planning parties, just to amp up the fun. just an idea.
also, more pranks in general. we miss the pranks. or was that just noel?
happy monday.
More pranks are on the way. Believe you me, they are.
believe me you me i we us them
Glad to hear this. Journalism might survive if more papers realized that printing stuff on paper is rapidly becoming pointless. I worked in newspapers for nearly a decade and I *never* got the paper delivered at home — I always read it online!