The Real Paper
Encyclopedia
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
alternative weekly newspaper with a circulation of 50,000. It ran from August 2, 1972, to June 18, 1981, often devoting space to counterculture issues of the early 1970s. The offices were located on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
.
The Cambridge Phoenix began October 9, 1969. In the summer of 1972 editor Harper Barnes was fired in a journalistic dispute with owner Richard Misner. Most of the staff went on strike. During the second week an agreement was made which resolved the strike without Barnes being reinstated. Soon afterwards, on a Friday, the staff was ordered out of the offices and informed of the purchase of the paper by Stephen Mindich, owner of the more established (and more commercial) competitor Boston After Dark. Mindich purchased the title to publish as The Boston Phoenix with his staff (few Cambridge staff were retained, the notable exception being sportswriter George Kimball
George Edward Kimball
George E. Kimball III was an American author and journalist who spent 25 years as a sports columnist for the Boston Herald before retiring in 2005...
) hoping to eliminate his direct competition. Because of the solidarity developed during the strike, the Cambridge group immediately went into meetings and decided to continue the original aims and objectives of The Cambridge Phoenix by creating The Real Paper as an employee-run collective. Bob L. Oliver, The Real Papers founding art director, was responsible for editorial and advertising graphic design from July 1972 to July 1973. Oliver designed the paper's logo based on the original Phoenix type style.
Le Anne Schreiber, writing in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
(January 3, 1983) described the internal conflicts:
- Paul Solman and Thomas Friedman are in the business of providing alternatives. In the early 1970s they were among the founding editors of the now-defunct
WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...
, Boston's alternative to the networks... Lessons emerge from case histories of actual companies and individuals. Although it is told without hand-wringing, the saddest of these stories is what happened to the staff of The Real Paper when the associate publisher's wife moved in with his best friend and colleague, the publisher. Lines were drawn, and suddenly everybody was a close friend of somebody who was now the enemy of another close friend.
- In a traditional organization, the conflicts that arose would have been solved by firings or resignations; but at
Journalists
By the early- to mid-1970s, The Real Paper served as a springboard for a number of journalists, including music critic Jon LandauJon Landau
Jon Landau is an American music critic, manager and record producer, most known for his association in all three capacities with Bruce Springsteen.He is currently the head of the nominating committee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame....
and film critic David Ansen
David Ansen
David Ansen is a reviewer and senior editor for Newsweek, where he has been reviewing movies since 1977. He came to Newsweek after several years as the chief film critic at Boston's The Real Paper...
, who left to write for Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
. Theater critic Arthur Friedman, who moved on to the Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
, died February 18, 2002. Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
columnist and TV commentator Joe Klein
Joe Klein
Joe Klein is a longtime Washington, D.C. and New York journalist and columnist, known for his novel Primary Colors, an anonymously written roman à clef portraying Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign. Klein is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a former Guggenheim...
reported on Cambridge politics during the turbulent 1970s. Mark D. Devlin
Mark D. Devlin
Mark Dennis Devlin was the author of Stubborn Child , a critically acclaimed memoir published in 1985. He died on March 10, 2005. The cause of death was not released but he had battled mental illness, alcoholism, and physical problems for many years...
, who was first published in The Real Paper by editor Mark Zanger, later wrote the critically acclaimed memoir, Stubborn Child (Atheneum, 1985).
In September, 1978, Gerald Peary
Gerald Peary
Gerald Peary is an American film critic, who has been a reviewer and columnist for the Boston Phoenix since 1996. He was formerly the Acting Curator of the Harvard Film Archive and is currently the General Editor of the University Press of Mississippi Conversations with Filmmakers Series...
moved from New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to Cambridge to become a first-string film critic and staff member for The Real Paper, continuing to review for The Real Paper until it folded in June, 198l. Stephen Schiff
Stephen Schiff
Stephen Schiff is an American screenwriter and journalist. He grew up in Littleton, Colorado and began his writing career at The Boston Phoenix, where he became the chief film critic and film editor , and hired and trained such critics as Owen Gleiberman and David Edelstein.In 1983, he was a...
covered films for The Real Paper and the Boston Phoenix before moving on to Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and then establishing a career as a screenwriter (Lolita, The Deep End of the Ocean, True Crime). Other film critics contributing to The Real Paper included Stuart Byron, Kathy Huffhines (later with the Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...
before she was killed in a parked car by a falling tree limb), Patrick McGilligan (who later wrote biographies of Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Nicholson and others), David Rosenbaum, Bhob Stewart
Bhob Stewart
Bhob Stewart is an American writer, editor, artist and film maker who has written for a variety of publications over a span of five decades. His articles and reviews have appeared in TV Guide, Publishers Weekly and other publications, along with online contributions to Allmovie, the Collecting...
(later film critic for Heavy Metal
Heavy Metal (magazine)
Heavy Metal is an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, known primarily for its blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica. In the mid-1970s, while publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to jump-start the French edition of National Lampoon, he discovered the French...
magazine), David Thomson
David Thomson (film critic)
David Thomson is a film critic and historian based in the United States and the author of more than 20 books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.-Career:...
and Michael Wilmington (later film critic for the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
). This team of critics provided a total coverage, reviewing everything from major openings in Boston to the local Orson Welles Cinema
Orson Welles Cinema
The Orson Welles Cinema was a movie theater at 1001 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts that operated from 1969 to 1986. Showcasing independent films, foreign films and revivals, it became a focal point of the Boston-Cambridge film community....
(located one block away) to film showings in churches, coffeehouses, museums and college auditoriums.
Like Ansen, food historian and dance critic Laura Shapiro also moved on to Newsweek after writing Real Paper pieces such as "Books and People: The Cambridge Ladies" (October 17, 1973), as noted in a 2004 interview by Alison Arnett:
- Shapiro is a child of the '50s. She grew up in Needham, the daughter of a good cook and caterer. Her father, Harry, who lives in Boston, played French horn for the Boston Symphony and at 90 is the manager of the Tanglewood student orchestra, Shapiro says. After graduating from Radcliffe, Shapiro planned to get a degree in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley. Biding her time, she took a summer job at the former Cambridge Phoenix (later The Real Paper) and soon decided she was having too much fun to go back to school. Shapiro was hired by Newsweek in 1984 as the dance critic and later began writing about food. Her first book, Perfection Salad, chronicles the beginnings of the food industry.
Rock and roll's future
In addition to Landau, The Real Paper featured music reviews by James IsaacsJames Isaacs
James Isaacs is a music journalist and former disk jockey.In the late 1970s and the 1980s, when WBUR, Boston University's radio station broadcast many jazz and classical music programs, James Isaacs had a jazz radio show...
, Jim Miller and Mark Rowland. Landau's prophetic 1974 article in The Real Paper in which he famously claimed that "I saw rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
future and its name is Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
" is credited by Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and for the football memoir Fever Pitch. His work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.-Life and career:Hornby was...
and others with fostering the artist's popularity. Landau wrote:
- But tonight there is someone I can write of the way I used to write, without reservations of any kind. Last Thursday at the Harvard SquareHarvard SquareHarvard Square is a large triangular area in the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, Brattle Street, and John F. Kennedy Street. It is the historic center of Cambridge...
theatre, I saw my rock and roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the first time.
- When his two-hour set ended I could only think, can anyone really be this good; can anyone say this much to me, can rock'n'roll still speak with this kind of power and glory? And then I felt the sores on my thighs where I had been pounding my hands in time for the entire concert and knew that the answer was yes.
- Springsteen does it all. He is a rock'n'roll punk, a LatinLatinoThe demonyms Latino and Latina , are defined in English language dictionaries as:* "a person of Latin-American descent."* "A Latin American."* "A person of Hispanic, especially Latin-American, descent, often one living in the United States."...
street poetPoetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, a ballet dancer, an actorActorAn actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, a joker, bar band leader, hot-shit rhythm guitarRhythm guitarRhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
player, extraordinary singer, and a truly great rock'n'roll composerComposerA composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. He leads a band like he has been doing it forever. I racked my brains but simply can't think of a white artist who does so many things so superbly.
Between the lines
Harper Barnes, the 1970-72 Phoenix editor, was a book columnist for The Real Paper and The Chicago ReaderThe Chicago Reader
The Chicago Reader is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded in 1971 by a group of friends from Carleton College...
in the late 1970s. After writing for The Real Paper, advice columnist Monica Collins wrote for local and national newspapers and magazines; she currently does the syndicated column "Ask Dog Lady."
In 1975, The Real Paper was purchased by Ralph I. Fine, David Rockefeller, Jr.
David Rockefeller, Jr.
David Rockefeller Jr. is an American philanthropist and an active participant in nonprofit and environmental areas. The eldest son of Margaret "Peggy" McGrath and David Rockefeller, he is a leading fourth-generation member of the prominent Rockefeller family, serving on many boards of the...
, and others, taking a more commercial slant. After a 1978 peak, money from investors slackened, and the publication began to lose steam with a $250,000 loss in 1980, followed by many staff changes before the 1981 collapse.
Jeff McLaughlin, describing the 1981 Boston arts scene in the Boston Globe, (January 4, 1982), wrote:
- Hardest hit was journalism. Financial problems caused
The Phoenix (newspaper)
The Phoenix is the name of several alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts including the Boston Phoenix, the Providence Phoenix, the Portland Phoenix and the now-defunct Worcester Phoenix...
won new readers with The Real Papers demise, but its arts focus is more national than local.
Fred Barron
Fred Barron
Fred Barron is an American television producer and writer.-As a writer:*After You've Gone*According to Bex*Union Square*My Family*Caroline in the City*Dave's World*The Larry Sanders Show*Sessions*Displaced Person...
, who had written for both The Phoenix and The Real Paper, used his alternative newspaper experiences as the basis for a screenplay, Between the Lines, filmed in 1977 by Joan Micklin Silver
Joan Micklin Silver
Joan Micklin Silver is an American director.She was born in Omaha, Nebraska and received her B.A. From Sarah Lawrence College....
. The success of that film led to a short-lived TV sitcom, also titled Between the Lines.
The Real Paper has been issued on microfilm by Bell and Howell.