The Boys Club

The last time I went to an AAN (Association of Alternative Newspapers) convention in Canada, it was hosted in Toronto about 10 years ago. It was a fine time. City Paper was being considered for admission and webreezed through, which at the time was a mark of editorial distinction.

Violet Phillips, then CP's editor, and I savored the victory, the great food, the company of our excellent peers and the seemingly endless view from the Victorian-townhouse office of the host newspaper, NOW.

Ah, the Cuervo Gold... the fine Colombian...

This year, the 20th anniversary of AAN, the convention was held again in Canada, in Montreal. CP's publisher-guy, Paul Curci, asked me to come along for the fun.

I declined, for I'm not much a fan of blood sport. Besides, having sold City Paper last year, I've resigned from this club, described by one publisher as a "bunch of self-absorbed white guys."

Absorbed in themselves, and absorbing each other.

In the last year or so, Stern publishing, owner of the Village Voice, bought the LA Weekly, purchased Seattle Weekly and acquired both of Minneapolis' weeklies, killing one of them in the process.

In Pittsburgh is now owned by Philadelphia Weekly; DC's City Paper is owned by the Chicago Reader, Oregon owns Santa Fe and Baltimore is owned by the Scranton Times.

The most conspicuous consumer, though, is the Phoenix New Times, which in addition to Phoenix, owns Miami, Denver, San Francisco and a bunch more to make up seven.

But the New Times' seven have been dwarfed by the newest entry into the club.

The genial host of this year's convention, the Montreal Mirror, was recently consumed in part by Quebecor. Quebecor is a Canadian conglomerate with about as much muscle and even less heart than America's own leading newspaper monopolist, Gannett Newspapers.

This upset some folks, especially New Times, for whom I have little love. Known colloquially in the weekly club as the "Evil Empire,"New Times tried to "acquire" CP years ago, threatening to establish a new paper in Philly and drive me out of business — as they had done to local papers elsewhere. (I tricked them into going away.)

But now New Times itself was looking up the snout of Quebecor, a regular ebola virus.

The Boys huddled, they self-absorbed, and then they decreed. They had met the enemy, but unlike Pogo, it was not us, but them.

The "them" in this case were not absentee owners, not newspaper chains, not foreign magnates, but corporations that happen to publish daily newspapers.

Calling daily newspaper owners "scum-sucking pigs,"New Times' Mike Lacey led the charge to oust the Montreal Mirror. In the end, the Mirror was put on some kind of probation for a year.

The rationale escapes me, for the Baltimore City Paper has been owned by the Scranton Times, a daily, for seven or eight years now.

Nonetheless, the AAN convention's host, the new boy on the block who maybe owns a province or two, was sent to wait in the yard until the local bullies figured out what to do with him.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.