The Chicago Free Press’ Fall From Grace
Written by Daniel Cameron Wednesday, 03 March 2010 00:00
Many gay Chicagoans may ask “what happened?” The Chicago Free Press used to be the city’s and arguably the nation’s strongest gay newspaper. Now it seems to be in serious trouble. What’s going on?
Beyond the publicized financial struggles the paper has dealt with recently, there’s a personal side to the issues the CFP has been facing. Even if you haven’t read the media coverage about a gradual, then sudden “mass exodus” of staff, culminating the week of December 20 when the paper’s senior staff walked out, it’s hard not to notice the lack of any names from last year’s staff list that still appear in new issues except that of the publisher, David Costanzo. Costanzo represents Rainbow Media, the company that bought the paper in 2002, three years after its first edition.
Add to the near-100% employee turnaround a “former-Chicago Free Press Employee” Facebook group made up of former employees that started in the weeks after the walkout. It currently stands at 22 members after reaching a high of about 25, and demonstrates a clear negative feeling toward the paper, evidenced by the group logo of the letters “CFP” rearranged with a diagonal red line running through them. Despite its use of the universal symbol for “anti,” sources say the group is not meant to be specifically against the paper, and exists merely to facilitate communication between former employees seeking to help each other collect unemployment and other unpaid benefits, something they seem to doubt will be easy.
Still, some might say it’s only natural. This could simply be the latest rearrangement of the forces behind Chicago gay media. Between the Windy City Times and its outgrowths (one of which happens to be the CFP), Gay Chicago Magazine, and their predecessors, Chicago’s gay media scene seems to be an organic, living entity that changes frequently with the needs of the community. But there’s something different about the CFP’s woes. With any company upheaval, there’s bound to be some bad blood, and personality conflicts are inevitable. But the level of reproach found here seems to be a little higher, the contempt a bit more palpable, and the discussion a touch more personal.
Former Special Event Manager Dawn Pope is fighting to get her taxes filed and her unemployment paid after having been fired, then allegedly barred from collecting her things or her paycheck. Waxing nostalgic about Costanzo’s habit of yelling at his employees and failing to reimburse for travel and expenses is the least of her concerns, she said, as she focuses on finding new freelance jobs and just making ends meet.
“I think the only way the CFP is going to change is if David gets out of it,” said Pope. Her meeting with the Chicago Board of Labor regarding a pending investigation of the CFP was held February 18th, in which Costanzo was a no-show, was awarded to Dawn. A similar case held the same day between another former CFP employee was also won by the former staff member due to Constanzo not appearing.
The way former Editor-in-Chief Matt Simonette tells it, he was just trying to make a living. “We weren’t doing it to make a point or bring the paper down, and I don’t hold it against anyone who stayed,” said Simonette. “It was a matter of not getting paychecks on time. We were just trying to save our butts,” he explained with a fighting chuckle.
Former Art Director/Photographer Jason Smith left years before the recent storm, but said he smelled it brewing even then. “If you’re in the communication business and you can’t communicate with your own employees effectively, there is no long-term hope,” he said.
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CFP General Manager Bill Feld stayed with the paper for a short while after the December walkout, but eventually followed the rest of his co-workers out the door.
Even longtime gay activist, 1997 Chicago Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame inductee and former CFP contributor Rick Karlin, who resigned in late 2009, couldn’t keep himself from making public a few choice words he had about Costanzo when he left. An excerpt of a resignation letter he sent to the Windy City Times, Gay Chicago Magazine, and the Chicago Reader cites Costanzo’s “unprofessional behavior and lack of consideration toward his employees.”
Then there is outside trouble. General Manager Jeff Shand of the Ram Bookstore’s account of Market Days 2008, when the CFP allegedly neglected to put nets behind their dunk tank, resulting in a broken window charge of $907, then simply failed to pay. “They should be partly responsible for what’s happening,” said an unhappy Shand, “I’ll ban booths…for this year’s Market Days.”
Even if Costanzo is right and the complaints against Rainbow Media have been exaggerated, there seems to be a sense of skewed priorities at CFP. $907 is not a large bill for a business, and the Ram is as much or more of a Chicago staple as the Free Press itself, dating the paper by almost 25 years. Shand believes the lack of payment was part of a personal and undeserved vendetta against the Ram.
“Payroll irregularity,” “absentee publisher,” “exodus that started in 2004,” “good writers chased away,” “weakest gay Chicago publication now,” and simply “relieved not to be at the Free Press anymore,” are some of the unfortunate quips various former staff members came up with when asked about their former employer. Many also cited Costanzo’s resistance to focusing on the online edition of his newspaper, versus the Windy City Times’ proliferation of strong online vehicles.
Yet several employees who have quit or were fired later returned for long-term gigs. And not everything that can be said about Costanzo can be considered negative. Former Director of Sales Tim Nedoba, who started the former-CFP Employee Facebook group, said he didn’t mean for the group or Costanzo’s alleged shortcomings to become part of the news, and that if you look at the history of the paper as a whole, there have actually been more ups than downs.
“On a personal level there are sides of David Costanzo that I really like, very compassionate sides,” said Nedoba. “The Chicago Free Press is a tremendous story in and of itself. When the paper started, [it was] 10 of us. We didn’t know business, just how to write, do ads, etc. We just started putting up billboards. In 1999 there wasn’t a better paper than the Free Press,” he recalled. “There’s a lot to be proud of.” The mere longevity of the grassroots newspaper, and what he sees as a reshaping of the way gay news is reported as some of the ways the CFP has made Chicago gay media better.
Still, given recent struggles, Nedoba admitted the CFP may have to make room for fresher, stronger media outlets. “Do I think a year from now there will be a CFP? No. But I believe very strongly in the need for independent gay press,” he affirmed.
Former CFP contributor Gary Barlow echoed that sentiment. “At one time the Chicago Free Press was a very good newspaper. It’s a shame [great writers] are not working for the community in Chicago anymore,” he said, referring to several writers who not only left the paper but the city, starting their own media projects in Wisconsin.
“There is a future. I don’t know what that future is going to be. This is a period of transition. I don’t think anybody has quite figured it out,” said Barlow.
Competitor Tracy Baim, Publisher of the Windy City Times, refrained from speculating for the most part, referring to the inevitable changes that come with media territory and suggesting that publishers would be wise to stay out of comment lines as much as they can when it comes to “news about the news.”
“These walk-outs are always complicated by money, personalities, and egos,” said Baim. “But every publication and media outlet needs to do what is right by their readers and customers, and not worry about what anyone else is or is not doing.”
Gay Chicago Magazine Publisher Craig Gernhardt wasn’t as shy in expressing his feelings about the CFP.
“I feel we’ve always been better than Free Press,” he said assuredly. “I make sure all my writers get paid, that’s the ‘A’ priority on my list. I make sure they are taken care of so they stay working for me.”
In fact, following the publicized departure of the three senior staff members in December, Gernhardt immediately head-hunted two of the three (Simonette and former Senior Writer Amy Wooten), and added Barlow to his team.
Gernhardt’s since been using the new hires’ background to bolster the magazine’s news section, which had previously relied on content pulled from press releases. They also helpedGay Chicago release its first candidate endorsements in 33 years. Gernhardt said he has had to work overtime and add at least one additional honor box to satisfy increased demand for both the print version of the magazine and the web site.
“Now my content is really fresh, not the same AP stories everyone else is running,” said a cheerful Gernhardt. “We’re picking up more distribution stops. Readership is increasing.”
Meanwhile, the Chicago Free Press has a new staff, an apparent new owner (an intention to acquire Rainbow Media by a joint venture of Out Loud Chicago, CFP Media Group, and CFP Corporation was announced January 15), and a new year to work with. Only time will tell if the paper can make a fresh start. Ultimately, the intriguing story about the personal side of the CFP’s recent faltering pales in comparison to the sad story of gay print publications failing all over the country. Taken from the “Out in the Suburbs Chicago” e-newsletter:
“LGBT print media outlets nationwide have faced a brutal climate in 2009, as advertising revenue and circulation plummeted. In November, gay publisher Window Media shut down [D.C. area’s]Washington Blade after 40 years. Also ending runs in November were the Atlanta-based gay weekly Southern Voice, Houston Voice, David Atlanta, South Florida Blade and 411 Magazine.”
The gay New York Blade suspended publication in 2009, another gay media setback. For now, Chicago still has three functioning gay news media outlets (Gay Chicago Magazine,Windy City Times, and the Chicago Free Press) and an additional three entertainment publications (BOI Magazine, Night Spots and Grab Magazine) But as the way people get their news continues to change, one has to wonder how gay news will be delivered to the next generation, and if any of those print publications will wind up yesterday’s news. Who will die and who will survive is an unknown. But although print will probably never perish altogether, count on it that the web will be the venue where the next wave of gay media publications will shine.
Sidebar story: A Brief History of Gay Chicago Media
(attribution requested: Gay Media Overview by Tracy Baim.)
Chicago gay media not only boasts a long history of strong gay media publications such as Gay Chicago Magazine and the Chicago Free Press in its glory days. It can also boast having the first known gay publication in the United States period, the Friendship and Freedom newsletter. The Society for Human Rights and Henry Gerber published the newsletter in Chicago in the 1920s. No copies are known to exist, perhaps a sign of those old times.
The next gay media vehicle was the Mattachine Midwest Newsletter, a pocket-sized publication that offered gay mid-westerners news and information from the 1960s through the 1980s.
But it wasn’t until after the Stonewall riots of 1969 that Chicago gay media really started to take off, with three newspaper-format publications popping up in the early 1970s: The Paper,Chicago Gay Pride, and Killer Dyke. Frank M. Robinson, who started Chicago Gay Pride and also published the short-lived Paper, went on to become speech writer for Harvey Milk.
Following Robinson’s efforts came the Chicago Gay Crusader, a serious newspaper started by a young man named Michael Bergeron with his activist partner, William B. Kelley. TheChicago Gay Crusaderbrought news to the gay community during the pre-AIDS years of 1973-1976.
After the Gay Crusader shut down, two other papers took its place: GayLife, originally published by Grant Ford and later Chuck Renslow, and Gay Chicago Magazine, started by Ralph Paul Gernhardt and Dan Di Leo in 1976. GayLife covered the community overall, while Gay Chicago focused primarily on the social scene. For the next ten years, those two publications would be the main gay news outlets in Chicago.
Tracy Baim, who became managing editor of GayLife in the mid-1980s and once considered buying it, has an interesting story of her own, earning the distinctive status of being heavily involved in not one but three major gay Chicago papers. She started Windy City Times with Jeff McCourt, Bob Bearden, and Drew Badanish in 1985. By 1987 she and most of the staff, frustrated with the paper’s management, left to start Outlines, a new paper that would go head-to-head with Windy City Times as the “serious” supplement to Gay Chicago’s mostly social revue for the rest of the 1980s and 1990s.
By 1999, Windy City Times was experiencing more staff restlessness, and several contributors left to start the Chicago Free Press, which quickly gained steam and recognition.
Baim purchased Windy City Times in 2000, something she had wanted to do since the mid-1980s when she started it. Her Outlines and its outgrowths, Nightlines (now Nightspots),BLACKlines, and En La Vida (later Identity online), were eventually merged into the new Windy City Times, which would continue into the 2000s to competition from both the Chicago Free Press and Gay Chicago Magazine.
Grab Magazine, published by Stacy Bridges and Mark Nagel, is among the more recent LGBT publications that have formed. Smaller print media publications have also begun to emerge, such as Boi Magazine published by Mike Macharello. And as the publishing industry in general has continued to move online, several new internet-based gay outlets have appeared, such as ChicagoPride.com, DykeDiva.com, and MTMChicago.com.
Gay Chicago Magazine, which at one time was only part of a regional network of gay media ventures (published by the same group) including Midwest Times, Gay Milwaukee, Gay Detroit and Gay Ohio, eventually became the sole focus of its publishers, Dan Di Leo and Ralph Paul Gernhardt, and has since become an undeniable staple of gay Chicago.
Gernhardt continues to run Gay Chicago Magazine today. At 34 years in print, it remains the longest-running gay publication in Chicago history.
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The complaints of the former employees of the paper are largely true and are disturbingly ironic given the circumstances of the paper's founding. Having said that, I feel compelled to come to the defense of the quality of CFP's current editorial content. Much of the paper is still written by the same contributors who have been with the paper since 1999. The current news and online content is being written by competent and experienced reporters under the direction of an excellent managing editor who has been writing for the paper since the first issue.
The departure of former CFP writers has been a great benefit to the GLBT community in Milwaukee and has significantly improved the editorial content of Gay Chicago, but individuals who picked up this week's CFP are still reading the best GLBT publication in the Chicago market.