San Francisco Herald paper edition (May/June 2009 - Issue 67) Here’s an excerpt from The Beast Next Door by Allison Parks, which you can find in “The Top Ten Things You’ve Probably Missed on Cal-List.com” at the new SanFranciscoHerald.Net: “Shamu is my neighbor. I don't know his real name, but I do know one thing: come rain, snow, or a hellfire shower of meteors, Shamu will be outside of his apartment, topless, sitting in his little wicker chair. I say the chair is little because Shamu is anything but little; he's a juggernaut, a whale of a man with a spine-chilling pony tail and matching mustache. He looks like Ron Jeremy ate himself then ate everyone he's ever slept with, then ate 600 candy apples because he was still hungry.” Also by Allison on “The Top Ten Things You’ve Probably Missed on Cal-List.com”: Brangelina, Knowing Your League in College, and Pie Crimes (the last one has a video of her throwing a pie in the face of a cheating boyfriend. You couldn’t see something like that in the old print-only edition of the Herald.) Kimberlye Gold has an account of her audition for the Nashville Star TV show, plus an interview with acclaimed pop sensation Tristan Prettyman . Mr. Fabulous (remember him?) offers some obituaries in Latest Passings. Ace Backwords has a few stories. I forgot what they were called but they were good. And of course, there’s Good Clean Fun (“The Elvis of Comics Strips”) by me, Gene Mahoney: It’s Agnes Devonshire and her on-again/off-again art-fag boyfriend Lars in “You Say Passive, I say Aggressive, Oh, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off.” Plus the comics are in color now. Oh, and there’s another Good Clean Fun on the homepage. It’s called “Montecito Waltz”, where Wembley meets Opus the Penguin. Only on SanFranciscoHerald.Net. Oh wait, I forgot to mention that you should check out The Scene column. There’s a tidbit I wrote about the 2008 Mill Valley Film Festival and its honoring of the great Swedish actress Harriet Andersson. Gabrielle Harris at Hamilton Ink PR was nice enough to get me in even though I was writing for Cal-List instead of the Herald. (And she was extra nice to get me in because I was the one writing about it, not Kimberlye.) Oh wait, I forgot to run that ad for Allison’s ‘zine. Here it is: Want to be amused, repulsed and entertained all at the same time? Want to catch up on all of the hottest, juiciest scuttlebutt in print today? Then start reading The Strumpet's Trumpet – California's hottest rag! $20 for a year (12 issues) to: Allison Parks, 1427 4th Street, Napa, CA 94559 ***** In July 2008, on the ten year anniversary of the Herald, I killed it off and made it an online-only publication called Cal-List.com. Now, on the ten month anniversary of Cal-List.com, I’m killing it off and bringing back the Herald. That’s right, folks… THE HERALD IS BACK! (Sound of crickets.) I said… THE HERALD IS BACK! (Sound of one person clapping slowly and unenthusiastically.) That’s better. The excitement for the return of the Herald is building by the minute! As you can see, the Herald isn’t back in its complete original form. With advertisers abandoning print, publishing a newspaper isn’t tenable anymore. So this is a newsletter with event listings and some commentary (like “The Society Page” column had in the old Herald.) For the comics and articles you’ll have to log on to the new website, SanFranciscoHerald.Net. What I found with Cal-List was that if you don’t update your website daily, or at least weekly, people tend to forget about you. And I’m not going to be one of those bloggers who update their site daily, or at least weekly. Geez, between them and these guys on talk radio who are on the air, like, ten hours a day, every day of the week, with an opinion on freaking everything… This June I turn 44, and at middle age you have to start thinking about what won’t work instead of only what might work. So there won’t be any more of the Santa Monica Herald, the Hollywood Herald, the Palo Alto Herald, the Santa Cruz Herald, or any of those (literally) 37 California Herald editions that were being published. I also won’t be putting out that New York Herald that was planned. And that childhood dream of an enormous amusement park called Mahoneyland – well, that goes without saying. (Actually, that last one I can’t blame on the Internet.) No, I guess this is it. The San Francisco Herald as a mere shell of its former self (and that’s not saying much!) So why put it out? I don’t know. I have to. Here’s an update on my continued good luck: 2008, the year I started the online-only publication, turned out to be the first-ever year that Internet advertising declined. Not as bad as newspaper or magazine advertising (nothing could be that bad) but downhill nonetheless. And it’s not coming back -- even when the recession ends. I can only speak for myself, but I think that the Herald/Cal-List thang is a microcosm for what’s happening in the big-time publishing world. Business owners didn’t want to buy advertising in the Herald anymore, but when I approached them about the online publication, they were interested. Then after a few months, interest in the Internet product died off. The recession aside, I think this was the year when a lot of businesses realized that with Google and all the other search engines out there, if someone wanted to find them, they would. So why spend money when you don’t have to? Which brings me to another topic: How to save (some) newspapers and (a few) magazines. For this idea I have (or rather, for this idea I regurgitated from other peoples’ opinions I read on the Internet), let it be known that it won’t work for small publications like the Herald. It probably won’t work for those medium-sized Village Voice-type “alt-weeklies” either. But I’ll bet it would work for those big daily papers that are losing millions of dollars a year. Here’s what they should remember: They’re in the news business, not the paper business. Printing on paper and delivering it takes up about 60% of a paper’s budget. They should just publish online and, this is the most important part, charge for content. There are plenty of websites offering their opinion of the news, but very few that actually gather the news. And if they’re just giving the news away to the bloggers, they’re committing suicide. Newspapers like the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle get over ten million unique visitors to their respective websites a month. If only 10 percent of them were willing to pay, say, a $5 per month subscription fee they’d be raking in over $5 million a month each. Not to mention their expenses would be half of what they are now. Plus they’d be ensuring they have a future audience. People under 30 don’t read newspapers -- they surf the web. So even if publishers did come up with a profitable print model (Good Luck) it wouldn’t last because their readership will literally die off. Forget this Jeff Jarvis guy and his book What Would Google Do?,where he argues that the benefits of giving information away for free outweigh charging for it because you reach more people. Hey, Jeff, how about you quit printing your book and just put it online for free? Then I’ll think you may be on to something. (Though it should be noted that charging for Internet content will probably only work for long-established newspapers, not startups. Some former staffers of the recently deceased Rocky Mountain News started a news site with the goal of having 50,000 paid subscribers and fell 47,000 short.) It’s time to charge for content because businesses don’t need advertising anymore. What’s sad is that a lot of newspapers (and magazines) may run out of money before they reach this inevitable conclusion. Which means that A LOT of journalists are going to lose their jobs needlessly. Playboy magazine lost over $150 million last year. It finally happened – men got tired of looking at beautiful, 20 year old, nude women. Oh well, all fads eventually die out and… okay, you know what I’m getting at. Mad magazine just started publishing quarterly instead of monthly to cut down on losses. Magazines like Newsweek, US News & World Report, as well as many others, which used to make hundreds of millions a dollar a year in profits, are now losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Not so long ago if you told people you write for a big-time magazine their reaction would probably be, “Wow, that’s so exciting!” Now it would probably be, “Wow, that thing’s still around?” Esquire, which beat out The New Yorker for best magazine ever in a recent poll, is rumored to be on its last legs. Even Maxim, that once-popular trashy men’s magazine is hurting (its UK edition now only publishes online.) Adding insult to injury, Stuff and Blender, the two other “lad” magazines published by Maxim’s founder also recently ceased print publication. You know what? I changed my mind. You can’t save newspapers and magazines. They won’t be profitable, even as online-only entities. It would work on paper (or rather, on computer screen), but not in reality (with or without the Kindle). As Jeff Jarvis (the guy I maligned earlier) notes, we now live in a link economy. You don’t read Rolling Stone to find out about the hottest bands. You Google “hottest bands”. You don’t read the San Francisco Chronicle to get news on what’s happening in Nob Hill. You Google “Nob Hill”. I used to read the paper every morning to see how the Yankees did (yeah, I know, it’s terrible - but the Giants are my second favorite team). Now I whip out my cell phone and click on Yankees.com. It’s like what Harris Rosenbloom wrote in his prescient Metropolitan Report column for the Herald at the beginning of this decade: “Magazines are transparent, and a scheme is not a vision. No matter how many copies you put out, no matter how good you are, you cannot create a desire or a need.” And in today’s Internet-driven 24/7 news cycle, the same goes for newspapers. In 1985 desktop publishing was invented. Individuals and businesses could design their own ads in the form of posters, flyers, and brochures - then distribute them via guerrilla marketing. Newspaper and magazine ads became less vital. In 1995 (the year Craigslist was founded) the Internet began to gain popularity. Newspaper and magazine ads became a lot less vital. By 2005 newspapers and magazines were starting to realize that their salad days were history. Free news was all over the web. By 2015… you know what I’m getting at. It’s over. But hey, look at the bright side. Most people in their 30s and 40s start to feel old. People in that age range who work for newspapers and magazines can feel young with the knowledge that they were born too late. The money losing publications they’re working for now won’t be around forever, and new publications won’t be sprouting up to hire them. Will they keep writing anyway? Sure they will. They have to. ***** And now… THE SCENE… brought to you by Bella Luna Avon (1310 Broadway in Burlingame). Buy or sell… Trying to Find the Door, the new CD from San Francisco’s neo-blues band Shantytown is available at Amoeba Records… At the DNA Lounge: 6/1: Death Guild. 6/2 & 3: Mayhem. 6/4 & 5: Zombie Beach Party. 6/6: New Wave City. 6/7: Battle of the Bands. 6/13: Bootie. 6/16 through 19: Hubba Hubba Revue… HERALD WATCH: Day???: Taqueria El Sol (801 Taraval at 19th Ave.), a Mexican restaurant, still has “Aloha” printed on their front door, obviously a holdover from the Hawaiian restaurant that was there previously. Who to Call:???… At The Independent: 6/3: Little Joy. 6/4: The Aggrolites. 6/5: The Submarines. 6/6: Or, the Whale. 6/7: Rogue Wave. 6/10: The Felice Brothers. 6/11: Nikka Costa. 6/12: Datarock. 6/13: Jay Reatard. 6/14: A Camp. 6/15: Art Brut. 6/17: Gene Ween (solo). 6/18: Sly & Robbie. 6/19: King Sunny Ade & His African Beats. 6/20: White Rabbits… At Artzone 461 Gallery: Our Heritage, 5/30 through 7/5… The Artist X-change Gallery is now available to host the music of local area musicians… 6/27: KONIG (king of boylesque) at SOMArts… 6/7: Project Open Hand invites you to attend “Shhh… Don’t Tell Your Mother… Dessert First!” at the W, featuring some of the Bay Area’s most talented pastry chefs… 9/18 through 20: The third annual American River Music Festival… At Gallery Paule Anglim: 6/10 through 7/11: John Zurier, John Beech. 7/15 through 8/29: Deborah Butterfield… Haines Projects (1661 Tennessee) is the new warehouse space for Haines Gallery… Opening reception first Friday of each month at City Art… At The Warfield: 6/10: Neko Case. 6/11: Reik. 6/19: PJ Harvey & John Parish. 6/20: Les Claypool. 7/2: Yes, Asia. 7/28: Jewel. 9/2: Al Green... If you need laser-toner-ink cartridges for $38.95 (minimum) or half off the original cost (whichever is higher), email me at sfherald@gmail.com... My favorite song at the time of this writing: “Help I’m Alive” by New York band Metric. Crucial, man. Just crucial. My favorite song last year was “L.E.S. Artistes” by Santogold (who is now named Santigold because of a lawsuit involving jewelry, infomercials, fake rock stars, space aliens… just Google it, I can’t really figure it out.) She‘s performing at the Warfield in late May (probably too late to see her by the time this issue comes out). You know how these white suburban kids listen to rap and try to act gangsta? Well, apparently she’s a black chick who loves these white ‘80’s new wave bands like Missing Persons. There’s a switch. What’s the next trend? Black urban kids uttering stuff like: “Bully, bully, old chap! What delightful shenanigans!”… And on that note, I’ll take a hike. It’s good to be back (whether you think so or not). Don’t forget to check out the articles and most of all, the comics, on the all new SanFranciscoHerald.Net. Word to your mother. Yo.
|
||
|
All contents © 2008 by Gene Mahoney |
