The First Amendment; The Phoenix

The First Amendment and a free people weekly examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s produced by WGBH radio Boston in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. The host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Reuben. Whatever happened to the underground press well one of the developments was that it grew up and became big boy on the street and is now called the alternative press and is a vital force in many of our American cities. Here in Boston we have at least two papers one of which is the Boston Phoenix which represents that category of American journalism today. And I'm pleased to have as my guest Steven meant it's the publisher and president since 1970 and Robert J sales the editor of The Boston Phoenix Steve mintage was born in New York City has two degrees from Boston University and theater in broadcasting and film and started this process that led to the Boston Phoenix was with a publication called Boston after dark in 1966. And he's

been the publisher and president of the Phoenix since 1970. Bob sales has previously worked at the Boston Globe has been a script writer an urban affairs reporter Statehouse reporter here in Massachusetts and has worked at the national level for the New York Herald Tribune Newsday Fairchild publications The New York Post. He also teaches in the journalism department at Boston University part time. He's a graduate of Long Island University and was an urban Journalism Fellow at Northwestern University some years ago. Gentleman let me just start out by asking you what is the purpose of the Boston Phoenix is it to reach the large student community in a town like this or is it to cross the border across the general audience. It's basically I think across a broader audience than just the student community. We're fortunate of course in this city to have such a vital large and. Close knit student community the geography of the greater Boston

area is very small so there's a lot of interaction among the university communities. We started in the student community. The paper was started as I was finishing up my graduate work at Boston University and it has grown up with us. I was 22 23 years old when the paper started. I'm now 35. The audience that we have moved with is in that area as well as continuing to reach the student community it's a it's a very nice blend but it's not a student oriented publication particularly. I agree with that. That was Steve mintage about sales. What happened to the underground press the underground press was supposed to be the protest and press complaining arguing searching for new ideals. Well the alternative press is not what is the alternative press alternative to. I think you know I like to think that the Boston Globe is my competition.

There are lots of stories that we cover better than they do. And I think that we're all sort of in a sense that there are fewer daily newspapers and daily newspapers cost more so that people now boy our paper once a week rather than several daily newspapers. I think that's part of it I think more possibly directly Bernie is the is the notion that in the late 60s the underground press really kind of rose up started with the civil rights anti-war movement so it all actually started before it started the civil rights movement the first major marches on Washington gave rise to the underground press and then it really flourished in the early days of the anti-war movement anti-Vietnam War movement. And they were protesting and they screamed very very loudly. Probably the difference between. The Phoenix and

the pure underground press the old avatar in Boston or the Old Mole in Boston which goes back a number of years was that these publications were very singularly dedicated to a political purpose. We were not singularly dedicated to a political purpose. Yet our constituency was very much involved. And so we moved from an arts and entertainment publication called Boston after dark to the same title but got very involved in the social issues and in the war movement and the civil rights movement and that expanded the horizons of the paper as those processes have changed over the last decade. We have changed with them. And so while we may not scream as loudly in the same way we still are touching those nerve endings that we touched before we're just touching them a little differently.

Well now the paper has a circulation paid in unpaid of so many hundred eighteen thousand eight hundred thousand. The Boston Globe has a circulation of a million and more now the Boston Globe has a circulation on Sunday of that 600000 600000 daily weekdays it was 350000 or so or I call it 400. But this tremendous difference in those figures you're saying you're in competition with them but they are they're out to cover all sorts of news as best they can you're covering something different. I can't pick and choose but rather I cover I cover better than they do because I can cover it in greater depth because my reporters can spend more time developing a story and because they have the latitude within this client for him to be experts whereas in a daily newspaper you run with so many strictures that you really are allowed to express any expertise you've developed. Let's let's work down the sections of the paper for those in other parts of the country.

I haven't perhaps seen it. There's always a section with a with a good lead story about something controversial in the paper that I'm looking about there February 27 looking at February 27 1979. A big story about a strike in a radio station and the management and the employees with a new owner coming in a very controversial story. Give me some examples of past stories that you think rep reflect the best of the investigative journalism of the Phoenix. Well we've in the past go for six weeks we've been breaking stories regularly that are a political nature about appointments made by the governor. When the investigations might have been not up to stuff. We also broke a story of the head of the Boston School Committee also working as a lobbyist for the back of the tobacco industry. We broke a story about a former state representative being appointed to a job at the Federal Trade Commission. Each

one of these stories has been picked up. By the. Traditional daily newspapers they followed us out although they sometimes have co-opted our stories not even giving us credit. We in fact I think were on the newsstand a day ahead of the Boston Herald American with the announcement of a new edit. We were very aggressive and very responsible I mean none of these stories has turned out to blow up in our face in fact we've got these big newspapers following us. How many reporters do you have that go after that section or go after stories for that section. Obviously you plan ahead and you have to give people time to do that work. How does it how does it work in the newsroom of The Boston Phoenix. Well we've got a full time staff of about eight. We also got a core of freelance writers who work for a sort of regular and some of them on a semi-regular basis. The door is open to

many people who come in to suggest stories to get work to come in with stories with us or work with them on stories and many stories get published kind of comment over the treads are awfully good stories. But the mark of the Phoenix story or the other paper the real paper. I know that you want to hear that name but that's another alternative. General Mark is the multi page story the lead with lots of detail lots of investigative work isn't it. Too To a degree we're similar in that regard. The real paper as long as you raise the subject I think we should talk to it from I think that the major distinguishing characteristic between the two publications The Phoenix which is a larger publication has a lot more space in it. How are we divide into three standing sections each week. The front section which is predominantly news oriented issue oriented

the middle section which is called Lifestyle is feature oriented. And the third section standing section is called Boston after dark which is our arts and entertainment reviews of theater and all the arts and entertainment listings section. We are much more event oriented than a real paper a real paper is much softer by nature. That isn't to say that they don't do an investigative story on occasion or even on a fairly regular basis but our front section is each week devoted towards News orientation and that's the well it is your example the lead story of the March 3rd 1979 Mr. Carson I was February 27 1970 corresponding issue of the day lead with the great yogurt wars Colomba behind the Boston Sundance then and the musical instruments in section 3. The WBC radio station strike story that you

carry and then the story about atomic energy. It's different but but similar. Now let me go to the next two sections of your paper lifestyle and arts. It seems to me that you are. Catering and I'm not criticizing I'm just saying it seems obvious you're caving to an upper middle class clientele who can buy hi fi sets that fits in with the advertising. Is this a fair statement or not. Well I don't I think it's to a large degree true but unfair. The facts may be true the characterization is inaccurate. First of all hi fi. You go into any college dormitory and you're going to find a hi fi set. It could be the most major purchase of one group and a minor purchase of another group. It depends on your position or your orientation towards music music is certainly a very strong element in the lives of young people so they may spend all they have on a hi fi system where an upper middle class person may buy it as a

necessary or unnecessary luxury. So I don't think the high fidelity advertising of which we get a great deal and very pleased with it because it does support the president would it be fair to say that it's an audience between certain age our demographics because of the way we break out in terms of distribution and circulation is as we've talked about before we came on the air and we have a free circulation that is distributed on campuses so you have a group of people that you're reaching primarily in that's with that circulation of 18 to 21 which is about a 40 percent of your total of 30 percent of the total circulation by 40 thousand copies were right there. Demography is 18 to 21 to 22 just by virtue of the fact that that's what college students are. Of course professors pick it up and things like that but the primary audience is that student group. The paid circulation almost by the very nature is not to that group of people because they're

primarily getting it free right. The demography of that group of people the median age of the reader in the last survey we did which was two years ago another one is in process now showed that the mean median age was 27 and a half. It will probably be up at least a full year by now. The upper middle class I would say upper middle class in so far as they are well educated. Some ninety eight point seven percent of them have some college education or higher predominantly professional white collar predominantly male. And the median income two years ago was something like seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars a year. So that's probably up by 10 or 15 percent anyway over the last two years. So that's the demographics of the group. And do we cater to them. Well I think I think if you can use cater

in the sense of trying to tap their interests both in terms I always say that publishing a current periodical is possibly one of the most difficult tasks in media. More so than perhaps the television shows or radio shows. I'm talking of a music variety because what you're doing is you're walking a tight rope all the time. You're leading and following simultaneously. If you get too far ahead of your audience they're going to leave you because they don't understand you. If you trail behind them they've already walked away from you and you die. So trying to keep that balance is what the task of the publisher and the editor is no Another is to do something that other newspapers don't do well perhaps other newspapers are doing more. That's such things as covering films. I enjoyed the alternate alternative press in this regard because they they tear apart a film they praise a film they don't condescend very much

to do anything only a very sophisticated film Gore's now is a large proportion of your audience artistically inclined. Film goers are little different than the average newspaper clientele. I think that by definition you're talking about people who have a high degree of education. They will be interested in films. They will be interested in concerts and the dances and dance and we give you try and give your audience what they're interested in. I try to put out a paper every week and I'd be interested in reading. I think every editor probably ought to be doing that. You know it's a difference between a shotgun and a rifle. The major daily newspaper the mass more mass are going to Europe and of course they have to because they're reaching a mass audience and they have to try and

tap so many different areas of interest and essentially get to a lowest common denominator. We have the same approach but our lowest common denominator is higher to start with. We're excluding people in various segments and saying we can't be everything to everybody that's not our task. So therefore who do we want to reach. We decide that either we decide it in the first place or it is kind of decided for us by the acceptability eries of the paper which have broadened over the years. And then what are these people interested in. What kind of service can we provide to them were very service oriented and service takes on many different faces its service can be an exploration into the institutions which govern our lives. Well let's say that your circulation increases which it has every year which it has every year it continues to increase at a certain point do you not face a problem. Following the policy of the New Yorker

which became better and better as the New Yorker year after year or because you are a newspaper becoming less and less alternative and by adding this and by adding that by meeting this need of your audience and the need of the audience becoming another of the traditional newspapers of the town. That's a good question. That's a good question I think we. That is a peril as we grow. Right now we're looking and I don't have a crystal ball and I don't know anybody that does. But we're looking let's say taking the statistics that are being presented to all of us as to where the population is going to be over the next 10 years. And it seems that the major population group in this country over the next 10 years is going to be the 25 to 35 year old person. We happened to be in a community that would possibly even

dominate in those age groups. We happened to be a publication that now serves that group of people today. So looking ahead for the next 10 years I think we can expand in circulation numerically and still deal with that group of people as they shift in slide and move and change what happens after that. I don't know. I really know. Let me ask a question that I asked the editors of The Boston Globe The Boston Herald The Christian Science Monitor everybody's been on this program. Why don't you have a proper book review section in this town. I'm talking about a really we've got a hundred thousand more students. Everybody says if they want I don't send it out and get it in the New York Times. I feel this is a big gap that big the very audience that you're talking about would be looking for the same kind of book reviews as you have in the arts section about films where the editor of The Boston Globe said that. Well he just said you're right and so did the editor of their own

sort of the editor of the. Well you're right but I took it out of the newspaper where I pick and choose I don't have the kind of space to cover everything I wish I had the space to have a proper book review section I wish I was going to stick with all my viewing audience. I'll give you the better answer. All right give me the back to the real and so it's all right I don't know what the I notice the gradation here that there's one answer from the editor and the real answer from him. Well well no because I think Robert is and I'm just joshing I think Robert is in it in a different position than I am. He's been the editor of the paper for six months and we have and there was a time when we did expend a lot of space to book review a great deal of space and it was all wonderful. There's no money in it. You can't support it. And the New York Times or The New York Review of Books and I guess a very few other publications in this country dominate the money from publishers. And when we have gone into the book review

area and spend a great deal of time energy space and money providing what we believe to be an excellent book review section you can continue to do it. If you don't have support for it. And that's that's the truth of the matter. Now whether whether Tom Winship from the Boston Globe will admit that or the editor of any other publication I don't know but I'm telling you the difficulty. It doesn't seem to have a high enough interest among the reader where it stands out in surveys is something we really want and miss. Nor does it have the dollars in advertising to support its being put forth. People don't buy the publication enough or it doesn't make the circulation jump up. So you can't use it in that way and the advertisers don't seem to care. They say hey we those who are interested in Boston in books read the New York Times. But isn't it possible that it's also due to a lack of inventiveness. For example couldn't you have the the the pick of the of the Phoenix and

couldn't you do a book review or two book reviews that were done so superb Lee with the photographs with backup stories with behind the book kind of things that your very Your very type of reader and maybe he doesn't want to read 30 through or if he would have needed an occasional run again agree yours was an important book and somebody else. But isn't there always a variant on what there's got to be a priority there's always a very important story about a museum and we don't have a lot review every week. There's always a very important jazz reviewer. You've got to create priorities within the space that you haven't. Do you like Nat Hentoff. You're torn between doing jazz and political commentary. You started out in jazz. Yes isn't that I think true of Les Brown that Nat Hentoff in 1968 wrote several pieces for Boston after dark on jazz but he was he was quite a mist man in the in the jazz fan and Les Brown of The New York Times their radio TV

what sections would you put in if you had the space what would you do if you featured what feature sections or whatever. I think that or I would try it had do more of the kind of things I was talking about you know so my staff were laughing with the headers but I think I would expand my political coverage. I think I would probably go more into story tutors to stories to feature kinds of stories about it about neighborhoods about things that happen in communities I might try and do more stories that affected people in suburbs. I also might. You're trying to build some more clones of service stories that we could do in the lifestyle. Would you send somebody to Washington or to London or what not if you had the money I would send somebody to Washington when there was a story worth covering that we maintain a bureau.

We have correspondents in Washington stringers and you know who are involved. I would. Oddly enough it's interesting to listen to Bob and he and I talk all the time and we agree sometimes we disagree and other times I would expand the art section. To include more featured material which we don't have the space to do. It's very service oriented it deals with the now happening. But I would want more interview more behind the scenes what's going on in all aspects of the arts. And I don't think I would expand the political. Coverage of the paper at this time particularly given the choice if I had expand one over the other I think I would definitely move into either the first the art section and then probably the lifestyle section. One of the things you have done I gather comparatively recently done it five or six times you told me was to have a little magazine input a glossy magazine input with a paper called saver and the issue I'm looking at again there were 27 79 issue is a

movie Food major concessions movie food and it has all sorts of things about pub crawling and cognac in the spirit Divine I'm just reading here and grow up making peace with the five most hated foods. Tell me a little about the background to this section. Well it is. The other standing section in the paper which changes every week is called our supplements. A concept we developed probably the first one was done in 1968 I think and has evolved to the point where we do virtually one every week. Yes. Which is it so it really is another section of the paper which in another itself can be as many as 80 to 100 pages just to supplement the save or which is the glossy magazine one of two that we produce. Another one is called style which was in last week's paper. The previous issue to this one and that's on fashion

the saver started or evolved out of food and drink supplement that we used to do on a quarterly basis four times a year. And we took it from that and developed into what is now going to be a 10 times a year magazine on the world of food and drink and 90 is this is successful commercial venture for you that it has active It has a magazine that has been so far. Yes. So I gather that you're in the last few minutes that you're tempted to go in different directions. You might you might end up as being a magazine publisher if this phase got a little more popular. This might get thicker another section might get lonely. We haven't done it at the expense of the newspaper that's the amazing how you do it all with such a small staff compared to what we would have as we hit the 8 people he was talking about were just on the news and how many are on the Savors a total staff right now at the Phoenix of about

150 people. That's tremendous. It's. We started with two ice nine hundred sixty six. I say Well where is the alternative paper going to go. Now where is it going to go it's going to get better at what it does. It's great that you can deal with minority stories more First Amendment type things or is it going to deal more with the facts of living today as we deal with the facts of living today every week we deal with the most important of a dozen or so stories. Each week in the new section we have dealt with minority stories we have dealt with first amendment stories. We have gotten the stories of people's civil rights being abridged. We did a major story on a trial of several people for a racial incident two weeks ago. We did a story on how China is being

squeezed into oblivion by an urban renewal project in which some powerful interests have an interest. So I mean you suggest we don't do those things. We do state. Yeah I mean it is it is not we're going to do something in lieu of something else it's a mixture. And that's what I think we've tried to do is find new ways of exploring things which are around us the facts of living a very important to us all. When one of those facts predominate then we will concentrate on that. If we have another war an energy crisis you know we will lead. That's a good summary and I think it's a very interesting fascinating newspaper. And it's again the first name is enhanced by showing the glory of our of our national mentality in so many ways. And I want to thank you Bob Sale's the editor of The Boston Phoenix and Steven Minnich the publisher and president for joining me for this edition Bernard Ruben. The First Amendment and a free people. A weekly examination of civil liberties in the media in

1970. The program is produced in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. I WGBH radio Boston which is solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange.