We had a lively editorial staff meeting last week here at CityBeat. The big topic was my decision to move Savage Love to a Web-only feature, ending its almost four-year run in the paper.
A number of criticisms came up in the meeting. The writers, not surprisingly, were concerned I’d drop one of them to help the paper’s business side, much as we’ve dropped Savage Love to help boost circulation. Others thought Savage Love was the edgiest and best written feature in CityBeat and losing it was a huge blow to our editorial quality.
Most of the staff had concerns about appearing to cowtow to conservative forces in Cincinnati that want to silence CityBeat‘s progressive voice. They also wondered about the timing of my decision, coming shortly after we’d found out that The Enquirer is developing a stand-alone free weekly publication aimed at young professionals.
And they disagreed with the way I announced the decision to CityBeat readers, slipping in an editor’s note in response to a letter wondering about the status of Savage Love (see <a CityBeat winning the war — and a key part of the winning strategy is to get more papers into more hands throughout Greater Cincinnati.
More readers need to see what we write every week about the tough issues facing Cincinnati and the good people working to improve the city. More readers need to hear different opinions and new voices. That helps change our community, and change is more important here than ever.
Is this too much information? Am I full of shit? You tell me.
CityBeat was a strong alternative paper in the five years before we ran Savage Love, and we’ll be a strong alternative paper for the next nine, 15 and 30 years. But I can show you better than I can tell you.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2003.
