Regular readers of the Valley Advocate may have noticed some changes in the paper in recent years. Over the last several months, we’ve published many letters from readers who vehemently object to at least one of those changes: our decision to stop running This Modern World, the insightful political cartoon by Dan Perkins (aka Tom Tomorrow). But in addition to making that particular controversial move, our editors, staff writers, designers and freelance correspondents have spent most of the last three years in a state of steady transition involving many changes.
It is worth noting that this period of change came about, in large part, because of something well beyond the control of the Valley Advocate—the sale of the newspaper by the Hartford Courant/Tribune Corp. to Newspapers of New England, a Concord, N.H.-based company that also owns the Daily Hampshire Gazette and the Greenfield Recorder. The sale effectively broke apart the “family” of Advocate papers, which included titles in Hartford and New Haven. While the separation had some sad moments—saying farewell to colleagues with whom we’d had long, fruitful relationships, for example—it also ended a comparatively short but frustrating period in which the Valley Advocate became a small speck on a massive corporation’s balance sheet.
Between 2001 and the fall of 2007, the paper had come under tremendous pressure by its former owners to cut spending, to share content among the papers, to chase younger readers with the addition of soft feature stories at the expense of hard news. Despite the valiant efforts of many people associated with the Advocate in those few years, the paper struggled to balance its historic role as a local alternative paper providing investigative news, independent analysis, commentary and arts coverage with new demands imposed by corporate executives in Connecticut—executives with little experience and no obvious enthusiasm for the alt press.
Life under NNE was almost instantly sweeter; despite a host of budgetary issues to resolve and operational logistics to work out, the Valley Advocate was set free to redouble its focus on local news and arts coverage. While NNE remained an active partner as the Advocate gradually untangled its business affairs with its former sister papers, it maintained its policy of giving its news departments a healthy degree of autonomy.
Throughout late 2008 and 2009, the Valley Advocate shifted some resources that had been used to fund shared or syndicated material—read: not local—to local reporting. In the face of a recession, we worked hard to trim our expenses without undermining our effort to revivify our local coverage. At the same time, we developed a plan that would result in a new and improved Valley Advocate, while also enhancing our monthly magazine, Preview Massachusetts, and our content on the web.
Beginning with the first issue of the year, we modified our format to include a richer well of longer features, a mix of news, arts and culture writing. The “feature hole” falls between an expanded news and commentary section, including more space for letters from readers and the addition of regular news briefs, and the arts section, which includes listings. There we increased the frequency of Chris Rohmann’s StageStruck column on local theater and Matt Dube’s Behind the Beat column on local music, which now run weekly, along with Jack Brown’s Cinema Dope column on the local film scene. At the same time, we expanded our coverage of the food and dining beat, bringing more voices and variety into the mix.
Our decision to stop running This Modern World, as well as similar decisions to end our long relationship with Isadora Alman, whose Ask Isadora sex advice column ran here for nearly 20 years, and to stop running the Boston Globe crossword puzzle, allowed us to move resources to local freelancers and away from syndicated material that can be found elsewhere. Last month, we launched our new sex column, V-Spot, which is written by Valley-based freelancer Yana Tallon-Hicks. This week, we’re launching a new local cartoon, The Optimist, by local artist Tom Pappalardo, which will appear in the spot occupied by This Modern World and, more recently, by Mild Abandon, which will move deeper into the paper. You’ll also see this week an expansion of Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird column; the popular feature will run a bit longer than before and provide a home for E.J. Pettinger’s Mild Abandon and Slow Wave, a cartoon by Jesse Renslaw.
Good newspapers are always works in progress. The paper that stops innovating, that stops trying to improve itself and strengthen its bond with readers, puts that bond at risk. With that in mind, I promise that the changes announced here do not signal the end of the job, but only the beginning.
