Jason Joyce
To save money for the organization, Isthmus staffers, including Bob Koch and Linda Falkenstein, above, continue to help distribute papers.
Slate senior editor Sam Adams writes about culture and edits the magazine’s television coverage. He also writes a newsletter on Substack, “Things We Lost in the Fire,” about film and culture.
On Dec. 19, Adams tells the story of a friend who was coming to visit him in Philadelphia and asked: “Is there anything fun going on this weekend?”
Adams, now a dad, allows that he doesn’t go out like he used to. He also writes that it was “fx!X%&* impossible” to find an answer to his friend’s question. “Songkick, which often emails me about upcoming local shows for artists I like, had a partial list, and Googling ‘Philadelphia concerts’ got me another, but there was no complete or definitive source to answer an incredibly basic question: What’s happening Saturday night?”
Striking out in this way hit Adams particularly hard because he is an alum of alt-weeklies, papers “fundamentally structured around keeping people informed of the cool and interesting things going on in their city.”
“Just compiling the paper’s event listings was a full-time job and then some, with an editor and a rotating cast of unpaid interns (sorry, it was the ’90s) spending all week sorting through emails and faxes and print-outs to provide what we [prided] ourselves on being the most complete possible record of everything, notable or not, taking place over the next seven days.”
But, he concludes, “alt-weeklies have mostly died off now.”
Now wait just a minute. Certainly alt-weeklies have faced the same challenges to survive that other news outlets have since the internet upended our world. And COVID dealt a whammy, wiping out nearly all revenue to most alts. Membership in the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the trade organization founded in 1978 with about 30 members, is down from a high in 2009 when the group had 135 member papers. But alts persist! Today the group has about 100 members and has changed with the times to include digital-only publications.
So, yes, we are fewer and different, but not “mostly died off now.” And, to Adams’ original point, any Dane County resident welcoming a guest to town can still — more than 40 years after Isthmus’ founding — turn to Madison’s alt in print and online to find “anything fun going on” that weekend.
But Adams’ post did get me thinking about Isthmus’ current place in the media landscape — how we’re a hybrid organization in many ways.
We are similar to our colleagues in AAN who cover our local communities with a wide lens, publishing stories on news, politics, arts, music and food; but we’re a lone wolf in that group in that we don’t publish weekly or online-only. We’ve been publishing in print monthly since August 2021, and that’s a whole other animal.
We’re also different from many of our fellow members in the Institute for Nonprofit News, who focus solely on investigations and news and, in many cases, are digital-only.
Our revenue model is also different; as a nonprofit, we can receive tax-deductible contributions from readers and grants from foundations, unlike most AAN publications. But, unlike most INN publications, we partner with local businesses to accept advertising, which adds layers of complexity to our process: partnerships must be nurtured; ads must be sold and in some cases designed, and processed for digital and print display. Then invoices must be issued and collected.
Our hybrid existence means that we are constantly making our way in this new world, without one clear model to follow. It can be both exciting and terrifying. One constant and guiding principle, though, is that the demand for local news in Madison and elsewhere has not diminished even as the industry struggles. Here’s how we tried to meet that need in 2022.
We continually assess the kind of content our readers desire and that we can deliver with our current resources and small staff. We discovered this summer at the AAN conference that we are not alone among alt newspapers in having fewer than a handful of editorial staffers handling all content for the organization. Some of these outlets have prioritized short news blurbs as a way to increase digital page views and, by extension, increase revenue. One paper pitched this approach hard at the conference. But we don’t see that as an answer to our revenue challenges because we don’t think that’s the kind of content our readers want. Instead, we have continued to focus on in-depth news and features.
We have teamed up with news partners, sought new collaborations, and worked on rebuilding our stable of freelance writers, artists and photographers.
I was particularly happy that we were able to run in print a recent report by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism on a little-understood Wisconsin law that allows pregnant persons to be forced into treatment or detained if they are believed to be abusing drugs or alcohol. It’s a long piece and one, I believe, best presented and consumed in print. Art director Tommy Washbush provided the story’s main illustration, which was distributed for use free with the story to news outlets around the country.
In September we started running a weekly column on isthmus.com by veteran state Capitol reporter Steven Walters. Since September, Walters has written about the state’s huge budget surplus, state COVID grants for small businesses, local referendums for emergency services, changes in the 2024 presidential nomination calendar, and the 2022 election. He also pens this month’s cover story.
Other veteran journalists and Isthmus alums have showed up in the pages of Isthmus this year including former Isthmus editor Marc Eisen, who wrote about Epic Systems’ recent past and future; Erik Ness, who found some encouraging news to write about regarding climate change solutions; and former Isthmus news editor Bill Lueders, a prolific contributor, who has written on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, recycling, the funding snafu facing the Madison Public Market, and more.
Associate editor Linda Falkenstein led our coverage of the arts and food scene as we continued to chronicle our community’s recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Theater critic Gwendolyn Rice has been crucial to our arts coverage, keeping readers apprised of performances by American Players Theatre, Forward Theater, and Children’s Theater of Madison, among others. Calendar editor Bob Koch, who also oversees our music coverage, made sure our listings and Isthmus Picks continue to give the context and background readers need to make informed decisions about entertainment choices.
We also stayed true to our mission of training young journalists, working with interns Christy Klein and Ta’Leah Van Sistine. In late January we will be welcoming our spring intern, UW-Madison journalism major Jane Houseal. And unlike the old days remembered by Adams, we now pay interns for their written work.
On the revenue side of things, we added some more fire power with the hiring of entrepreneur and former Madison Ald. Mark Clear, who joins Barbara Bolan in working on sales and development. Among other things, publisher Jason Joyce led our efforts in another successful year-end fundraising campaign, where we exceeded our goal, raising more than $62,000 in donations and an additional $30,000 in matching grants.
Looking forward, I’m thrilled to share that as of Jan. 5 Tommy Washbush joins the Isthmus staff as our full-time art director. He’s been leading our design efforts as an independent contractor since we returned to print in August 2021. He is eager to refresh the design of our website and print edition and create some new merchandise offerings as well.
We will also be hiring a new staff writer in the not too distant future to fill the position Dylan Brogan held until he left Isthmus in October to join the podcast company CityCast. It should also be a big year for our board of directors, which has recently created a new committee structure to lead efforts to fundraise for Isthmus Community Media, develop personnel policies for staff and create strategies to increase readership and engage the community in content development.
So Isthmus is still kicking, as are many other alts. And if you’re looking for something to do this weekend, check out Isthmus Picks and our full calendar of events.
