Sir Brock, new man with new plan
It’s not easy being in the print publishing game these days…
Actually, it’s hard, which makes me shudder to think of the task ahead for Pitch co-owner, nice guy Brock Wilbur.
I can’t help thinking “nice guys finish last” and it has me fearing that my former alt-news baby might soon perish.
Not at the hands of a cocky wannabe like previous Pitch editor David Hudnall – who struck out after a year at Phoenix’s New Times after leaving KC – but rather an idealogical purist with an entirely different vision for an entirely different time. Alas, still facing painfully familiar economic realities.
Back in the day – mid ’80s-early ’90s – alternative newsweeklies mission was to stick it to fat cat newspapers like the Kansas City Star who were largely asleep at the wheel, going along with the status quo. With the odd story here and there about institutional failures, the shortcomings of conservatives and republicans and taking proper care of cats.
In the mid to late 1980s when I showed up, there were tons of untold stories about crime on the Country Club Plaza, Crown Center and elsewhere about the burbs dying to be told. They weren’t hard to find either, given that most dailies were hesitant to piss off advertisers and readers.
When I took over the early record store rag Pitch, weeklies like St. Louis’s Riverfront Times and Denver’s Westword were kicking butt and naming names in a manner unheard of in KC.
On top of which those other alt weeklies appeared to be minting money from businesses wanting to cash in on younger, more adventurous readers who found mainstream local news necessary but boring.
To that end, I dropped out of being a New York Stock Exchange financial principal for an embarrassingly low amount of dough and embarked on a career of pissing off lots of folks while entertaining others.
I took a sleepy local record store monthly and converted it into a hard hitting alternative news and entertainment source with some of the most amazing writers that little to no money could buy.
Now former (divorcing?) Pitch owners
After a messy falling out with the record store owner, I joined forces with the Star and set about pissing off any number of their underpaid beat writers and readers, while succeeding in pursuing what I saw as a twisted variation on “truth, justice and the American way.”
Fast forward to today, where bankrupt newspapers like the Star are hanging by threads, working out of PO boxes and trying to brainwash readers by skewing (flavoring?) news with “progressive” viewpoints.
All while leaving surviving alt weeklies like the Pitch on their third or fifth owners in the last decade or so.
Which brings us to Brock Wilbur and the question of whether the Pitch can survive?
“I think we’re doomed as well,” Wilbur concedes. “That was the attitude I went into it with when we bought it last fall.”
Looking over the financials of the divorcing former Pitch owners, “I’m not sure there was a month in all those four years that the Pitch was profitable,” Wilbur says. “So I went into this with the, ‘I think we’re doomed’ attitude, but now I don’t think we are. By much different measures, we’re doing better. I think we now have a philosophy that can work.”
Wilbur’s bottom line:
“I think we’re supposed to be the voice of the city and to create a positive chaos.”
With COVID 19 nearing an apparent end, the Pitch’s fortunes appear to be on the mend, despite facing what well could unfold as a drastic decline in the economic fortunes of this country.
Know what?
If anybody can pull it off, I think it could be the Brockster.
