Boston Phoenix closing

Shutting down immediately. Had just become a glossy mag.

http://www.boston.com/culturedesk/2013/03/14/phoenix/QqQzavbEwKfG70lq9GCWVO/story.html

 

Very sad news for me. My first home in the business, and a paper that I was more than proud to work at when I was there. Feels like seeing your childhood home torn down for a mini-mall.

 

Used to hang out with Phoenix guys such as Gee, etc. at the Eliot Lounge in early 80s when I was in school. Talking journalism with these guys was the reason I got into the business. Fuck. This just sucks.

 

This was great.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/71085/the-ashes-of-the-phoenix-saying-good-bye-to-a-boston-institution

 

Nice job, Charlie.

 

Had never heard that Dawkins story. Of course Michael might have been too stunned to process the line since seven days earlier he'd said Philadelphia wasn't mentally tough enough to beat the Celtics. Kidding, MG.

I don't even know how I first stumbled upon the Phoenix but started reading it when I was still in Minnesota and had no connection to the East Coast. Obviously saw a great story linked somewhere and then continued to read it. So the Internet brought me to the Phoenix, but ultimately played the leading role in killing it.

 

This part was wonderful:

What’s the prayer of thanksgiving for a hundred days of fellowship, drunk on words, all of us, as though there were nothing more beyond the next word, the next sentence, the next paragraph locked into place? Please say that the muse is something beyond the balance sheet, something beyond technology. Tell me that she’s alive the way she once was when you’d feel her on your shoulder as one word slammed into the other, and the story got itself told, and you came to end and realized, with wonderment and awe, that the story existed out beyond you, and that it had chosen you, and you were its vehicle, and the grinning muse had the last laugh after all.

God, it was a carnival. I saw the publisher twice get into punch-ups, once with a staffer and the next time with a janitor. And, in both cases, it was at a Christmas party. We never got paid much, but we did get paid, and we were able to write about what we wanted to write the way we wanted to write it.

 

It's funny. I remember covering the 1981 76er-Celtic game seven much more clearly, because on the last inbounds play, Dr. J got open near the basket and I was the only person in the building who saw it. The court was lined with hundreds of delirious fans ready to rush the court, and I vividly remember thinking "if Mo Cheeks sees him too, these are my last seconds on earth."

 

Charlie's piece was of course excellent, and echoed a lot of my sentiments, but in an e-mail exchange with a co-worker this morning, he revealed that as a college student at the time I worked at the Phoenix, the part of the paper he thought was most entertaining to read were the classified ads for hookers. Somehow, that made me feel even fonder of the place. It was never respectable (neither was the Herald), and who wants to work in a respectable newsroom?

 

Wonderful:

http://gawker.com/5990638/newspapering-is-a-business-the-death-of-the-legendary-boston-phoenix

 

This is why newspapers used to be a blast:

There was the rail-thin cop reporter who cursed like a sailor and left work daily with the janitor, a cartoon of a Boston sports fan who sold pot while he emptied trash cans. The prototypical vampiric music editor who was immeasurably aloof and, pretty much, proudly, a giant know-it-all raving asshole. The bitterly meticulous arts editor, a man who, it was widely reported by the males on staff, would mutter "motherfucker" violently to himself at the urinal, a man who once broke down into a high-pitched screeching fit because someone had absconded his veggie-burger sandwich from the communal fridge.

And there was Clif Garboden. Until 2009, Clif was the Phoenix's senior managing editor, and he had been on staff for more than 30 years. He sat in a corner of the Phoenix newsroom, hunched at his computer with the posture of a question mark. His face had no angles. He wore sweaters over collared shirts and khaki pants. He enjoyed smoking and grumbling. His 1989 Buick Park Avenue, which he bought for $6000 with 43,186 miles on the odometer, was named Jerome. (I know this because he devoted an entire essay to the car.) He once received a death threat from a mime.

 

(Clicks on link, checks byline)

I agree. Excellent piece.