How would you like to be the proud new owner of The Pitch right now?
Allow me to answer that question for you, you wouldn’t.
Because when you’re choking out a monthly print magazine in a world where even hourly information can seem passé and print advertisers are scarcer than West Coast baseball scores in the local newspaper of record, you’re fighting an uphill battle of monumental proportion.
Which is why after six long, red-ink-churning years of trying to make financial sense of Kansas City’s lone major alternative newsweekly, SouthComm out of Nashville threw in the towel. Dumped it off on a couple of refugees of Johnson County on the last day of last year. A couple who already have sold off the pitch.com URL to some mystery outfit in Berlin, Germany.
And this just in, the Godfather of alt weeklies in this country – The Village Voice – just announced that it is shutting down after 63 years. Think off it, 63 years…during many, if not most of those it turned a tidy profit.
Whereas, according to sources the Pitch may never have.
You know, made a profit.
So now what?
Former Village Voice writer Norman Mailer – who killed his wife – back in the day at the Voice
The editor of the Kansas City Star is literally begging locals to subscribe so the newspaper can stay in biz.
The mighty Village Voice is toast.
The Johnson County Sun has been gone for coming up on nine (or is it 10?) years and the Washington Post sold Newsweek for a buck…that’s in four quarters for those of you who are playing along at home.
Not only that, but while we’re on the subject SouthComm bailed out of its pride and joy Nashville Scene (which it bought from Village Voice Media in 2009) three months ago.
Anybody starting to see a pattern here?
Hey, at least the Voice went out in style:
“Today is kind of a sucky day,” the publisher told the staff.
Certainly anti-PC, but wish Mailer was still around to give us his take on the Voice’s demise.
p.s. – will never forgive the sob for dying before he finished his ‘fictional’ history of the CIA.
The Pitch is gasping for air like a fish that has been throw up on the bank out of the water. They like another local irrelevant blog think that by deleting the posts and those making them from their sites is saving people from seeing what they already know. Putting your words or thoughts on a matter out there for all to see isn’t always going to please everyone. If you can’t deal with that find a new gig to play at.
Personally I haven’t seen The Pitch do anything in the past few years that really captured my attention other than to run off some of their better writers just like another media outlet that is having to inhale oxygen by the tank cars full to try and stay alive.
If the Pitch can just hang on a few more years, they will become, in eventual quick time, the only print newspaper left in the Kansas City market. I see the Star being finally put out to pasture inside of 2 years, before it even gets a chance to hit KC octogenarians with the Star’s special brand of embittered bias and Beltway-like bull$hit during the 2020 election season.
So stay the course, Pitch: Nobody’s ever gone the distance with the Star, and if you can go that distance, and 2020 comes and your still standin’, people gonna know for the first time in your life, Pitch, that you weren’t just another bum from the neighborhood.
Sorry Rage…
The only way the Pitch is going to make it is if the new owners or someone picks it up, runs it as a not-for-profit, internet only pub.
Hey, I could be wrong…they still sell vinyl records right?
Even after they get a load of my little pep talk? I dredged up inspiration from an Academy Award-winning best picture for that. C’mon, Pitch — It’s only a couple years: Think “Pitch-Perfect”!
What exactly does that mean for Voice Media Group? Will they continue to publish their other properties (Phoenix New Times, Denver Westword, etc) or are those toasted as well?
I heard Southcomm sold The Pitch fire sale style for less than $75,000.
Excellent question…
I will check, because the New Times and Westword were two of the most established – and I think – profitable alt weeklies ever.
As you may recall, New Times was the parent company and they were running around gobbling up alt weeklies like there was no tomorrow until…they lost a big lawsuit, print began to tank and in fact, there was no tomo and they had to fire sale the company.
I remember CJ, I think, telling me how they would fly there key people to exotic locations like the equator and do all kinds of touchy-feely activities once a year.
From there to nothingness.
If they got $75K for the Pitch, I feel sorry for that couple who bought it.
For the millionth time, I’ll remind \you of Newsweek selling for a buck.
How much would YOU pay to start losing however many thousand dollars a month (week)?
There was a time when you could get the Voice only at the downtown ‘A Time To Read’ along with NME and, of course, racier mags in the back. Or you could get it at the UMKC library and read it there. Only later did it reach the ‘burbs – Borders in OP and, I assume, a few other places. Either way, reading it often provided joy and outrage at the same time.
Hard to believe that Rupert Murdoch once owned it in the late 70s. He later called the experience one of the most maddening of his professional life, which some of us could count as a point in favor of the paper.
Thanks Rick for the mention of “Time to Read News” on 12th st. just west of Main. Spent a lot of time there with HC back in the 60’s but it was in the back of the store where you accurately described the content. You obviously were a bit more cerebral than we were.
Speak for yourself, Stomps!
(Just kidding)