Dan Oppenheimer: A Voice on the Arts and Pop Culture
With just a few freelance articles and a master's degree in nonfiction writing under his belt, Dan Oppenheimer deemed his first "real journalistic job"—covering the arts beat for the Valley Advocate—"not a typical experience of the world of journalism."
Oppenheimer praised the paper's environment as "friendly and warm." Of the job itself he says, "There were certain have-to tasks each week, short calendar listings and such, but there was an exceptional amount of freedom. I had great leeway, when writing longer pieces on local artists, to explore and to write stories in ways that made sense to me. Maybe it was typical Advocate or maybe it was typical Tom Vannah."
Oppenheimer describes, for example, writing a cover story about the heavy metal music scene. "I quoted all these academic references about subcultures," he recalls, "and it amused me to be able to do this."
During the couple of years he spent at the Advocate, Oppenheimer thinks the relationship between the paper and the music scene wasn't always easy. "It sometimes felt a little antagonistic," he explains, "because some reporters were almost skeptical of the local music scene. Or maybe things seemed uncomfortable simply because a previous arts editor had been so connected to that scene."
Yet Oppenheimer says artists often appreciated how the Advocate writers' stories had "some depth or texture" as opposed to stories in other papers. "I think that's because we had more freedom to read into what we saw or heard, rather than simply print what we heard from artists," Oppenheimer offers. "The stories might have felt a little more personal."
Mark Oppenheimer: The New Haven Beat
Viewing the Advocate as his ticket back to New Haven, Yale grad Mark Oppenheimer recalls, "I was living in Boston, substitute teaching and freelancing. I thought working for the Advocate was the best journalism job I could find. And it was. I'd never come across readers so passionate and responsive before. The alternate press came from a tradition of being the voice of a community."
Oppenheimer praises New Mass Media—the company that owned the Advocate at the time—for recognizing the importance of the Internet early: "Initially, New Mass Media (which was owned by the Hartford Courant) paid attention to the Web, and hired someone before most places did so." However, he says, "It was an ugly, slow, and dysfunctional website. I suggested college students could do better. But the Advocate site had to be on the Courant's platform and that requirement of synergy stopped potential momentum. Meanwhile, the company didn't stay current with the paper. They attempted a paper redesign, in-house, on the cheap. That's a job that requires more specific expertise." He adds, "It's funny that a paper once on the cutting edge in the 1980s could find itself caught way behind in the '00s. The Advocate should have led the charge into the Web future."
