Shakeup at CBW

The smaller of Portland’s two alternative weekly newspapers endures some big changes

By Sam Pfeifle

END OF DAYS: Chris Barry and Chris Busby outside their former haunt.

You might not believe it, but the alternative weekly business model is one that should deliver a profit. Go ask the Village Voice or the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

So, on Wednesday, March 6, when Casco Bay Weekly, Portland’s 13-year-old alternative weekly, took the unexpected step of firing all but one of their editorial staff members, it shouldn’t be surprising that it was because they were bleeding red. Retaining only listings editor Tom Mahoney, the paper’s owner, Dodge Morgan, fired editor Chris Busby, long-time political columnist Al Diamon, and staff writers Allen Dammann and Chris Barry. (The Phoenix has reached an agreement with Diamon to keep his column alive in our pages.)

“Our situation with you and the editorial staff has reached a breaking point,” Morgan writes in the March 6 memo sent to staffers notifying them of their firing. He goes on to say that staff reductions have been asked for and refused by Busby, and that “I have been notified by the editor that any staff reduction in the editorial department will be met with the resignation of all members of the editorial staff. [Publisher] Lael [Morgan] and I have been advised of this verbally and in writing by editor Busby, who has stated that he represents all of the staff . . . A company, any organization, cannot operate under those kinds of threats and insubordinate behavior.” (Dodge Morgan could not reached for comment.)

Busby doesn’t necessarily disagree with Morgan’s assessment of the financial situation, but he says that “looking at the number he was demanding from me, there was no way we could put out a paper we’d be proud of.” That number demanded that Busby reduce the editorial budget to $135,000 per year, which would include all editorial salaries, freelance fees, payment to illustrators and photographers, expenses

incurred in the researching of a story, and everything else associated with producing the content of the paper — what people read and look at. To put that number in perspective, Busby’s budget for last year was $215,000. $135,000 represents a 38 percent reduction.

Some have questioned whether the move was entirely financially motivated. However, despite publicly controversial stories in recent months about the Coast Guard’s inability to defend Portland Harbor, an orgy that occurred at the editor’s apartment, or, with their final paper, a story that graphically details what goes on behind closed doors in Portland’s nudie booths, Morgan says the move to fire the staff was purely a financial one.

And former staff writer Barry supports him on that point. “They never came to us and told us what not to write or to change a story for financial reasons.” Busby concurs: “Dodge always seemed philosophically in favor of a paper like ours.” Of course, as Barry notes, “We’re not going to laud them for that. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

Quite simply, “For many, many years, Dodge has been floating the paper financially,” says Busby. “The bottom line is that he’s not willing to fund it anymore.”

In the meantime, CBW publisher Lael Morgan (Dodge Morgan’s former wife) has already taken steps to replace the fired staff, taking on the title of editor for herself, and naming Sharon Bass as deputy editor. Bass clearly has experience in the market. She served as deputy editor at the Maine Times until leaving to become a reporter for Casco Bay Weekly from June of 1997 through March, 1998. Also, a new staff writer has been hired in Theresa Flaherty. You might recognize her name from her days at USM’s Free Press or from her freelancing work with us at the Phoenix. Along with listings editor Mahoney, that drops the total editorial staff number from five to four — though Lael Morgan will now do double duty as publisher and editor.

Publisher Morgan says the reorganization was both necessary from a financial standpoint and in line with what papers around New England and the country are doing. “[The firing of the staff] doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been watching what’s going on,” says Morgan. “Every newspaper in New England has made some cuts. We were averaging about a third more than most papers, so we decided to bring it back to what was normal.”

Richard Karpel, Executive Director of the Association of Alternative Weeklies (AAN), says he doesn’t think he’s “seen it before, where the whole editorial staff was fired. Just for obvious reasons it’s unusual.”

He agrees that some alt-weeklies have taken hits after September 11 and the recession that the event exacerbated. However, he’s seen it much more in the large markets. “I think [the impact has] been mixed,” says Karpel. “But the larger market papers are the ones that have suffered the most and that’s because the larger markets have deflated the most when the bubble was popped, and by that I mean not just September 11 but the economy as a whole. The area of advertising that has decreased the most significantly is national advertising, and the larger markets are the ones that get that.

“In Portland, there’s not enough national advertising that the loss would make much of an impact.” While Karpel allows that the poor economy has made it tougher for alt-weeklies, he says that, if he were to estimate, most papers remained flat or grew slightly last year.

“Obviously,” Karpel continues, “Casco Bay Weekly has a competitor that they didn’t have three years ago, and that might have some effect on them.” (Yes, he means us here at the Phoenix.)

Busby, Barry, and Dammann have another explanation for what led to Casco Bay Weekly’s financial situation: a complacent sales staff that wasn’t bringing in the revenue needed to support their editorial mission. When asked what could have been done to avoid the situation that led to them being fired, the three staffers agreed. “The simplest thing would be to sell more ads,” says Busby, who made sure to differentiate between classified salespeople and display ad reps — he even went so far as to say the classified department was so fed up with display that “I wouldn’t be surprised to see them walk out by the end of the week.” That hadn’t happened by press time.

“[The display reps] aren’t even out on the streets,” says Busby. “The ad department did nothing to market the paper. They sat on their asses and made a couple of phone calls. If there’s a recession going on, they’re not trying to correct it.”

Further, Barry feels that “because [Morgan] had been supporting the paper, their jobs were never on the line. They were coddled in that respect.” Busby insists that he offered to do more special issues, more supplements to the paper, in order to bring in more revenue, but the sales staff was resistant. “Jane Lord, our copy editor, said, ‘Why don’t you go back to special issues?’ I volunteered to do that, but Dodge was beyond negotiating at that point.”

When confronted with these claims from Busby, however, Lael Morgan has a simple, concise answer: “They’re all very bright writers, but I’m not sure their area of expertise is in sales. I hope not.”

Regardless of what led to the financial situation, as Dodge Morgan writes in his firing memo, Casco Bay Weekly “had losses in 2001 that absolutely cannot continue.”

Surely, cutting a staff member, along with a new commitment to budget consciousness, will help to ameliorate the financial situation. But won’t those things also affect the content? Busby, Dammann, and Barry think so. Busby says that those sorts of cuts “would cause the paper to take a major hit in quality.” And, as Dammann says, “regardless of quality,” if the cuts had been made, “the work would have been onerous.”

“We were already working 60-hour weeks,” says Barry, chronicling long hours during the week and on the weekend to get the paper together.

“Clearly,” Dammann emphasizes for the last word on the subject, “the paper has survived on the charity of its employees.”

Lael Morgan is of a decidedly different opinion. “It’s not going to be harder to deliver as much content,” she says firmly. “I think the content is going to be more varied and we’ll have more of it. In fact we’ll have more of if because we’re growing ad wise and we’re going to have more pages to work with.”

Besides the new staffers, it’s uncertain how many other changes will need to be made at Casco Bay Weekly. Long-time, front-of-the-book columnist Elizabeth Peavey has quit, and numerous illustrators, photographers, and freelance writers have indicated to the Phoenix that they will no longer be associated with CBW. Morgan says they’ll try to keep things pretty much the same in terms of the look and feel of the paper. “As my gun-maker always says: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ ”

To make matters particularly challenging for Casco Bay Weekly, their first paper with the new staff was scheduled to be their annual “Best of Portland” issue, their biggest issue in terms of ad sales and editorial page count each year.

“They’re fucked,” says Barry, though Lael Morgan says it won’t be a problem. Certainly, she wasn’t worried about it at the time of the firing. Former-editor Chris Busby says, “We told [Dodge Morgan] that we were willing to work through the ‘Best’ issue when it became clear we wouldn’t be able to come to an understanding.”

But Morgan chose to let them go well beforehand in a memo that ended: “Please clear out your personal property and leave the premises today.”

CBW’s “Best” issue is scheduled to hit the streets March 13. Readers can see the results of the editorial changes themselves.