As summer approached, staff meetings at The Boston Phoenix grew more frequent amid mounting concerns about layoffs, an announced move to new offices, and the future of the Phoenix itself.
One indication of the meetings’ importance was the presence of owner and publisher Stephen Mindich. He has guided the paper’s fortunes since the 1970s, making it the centerpiece of a youth-oriented media conglomerate, yet he had scaled back day-to-day management duties while his son Brad ran the company.
Comments
Interesting to see such an in-depth look at the Phoenix that contains no mention of the scandal surrounding its early years. At the beginning of the '70s, there were two competing free weekly arts papers in Boston: Boston After Dark (B.A.D.) and the Cambridge Phoenix. For those of us who were young and involved in what was then referred to as the counter-culture, B.A.D. was the stodgy old rag and the Phoenix the alternative, with far more interesting and (to us) relevant content. Then in 1972, following a writers' strike at the Phoenix, Phoenix management sold the rights to the name to Stephen Mindich, then owner/manager of B.A.D.
Mindich fired the entire writing staff with the exception of the sports columnist, and overnight the B.A.D. became "The Phoenix." The actual Phoenix staff, barred from using the name, came together and founded The Real Paper, and for a few years which one you picked up each week was a clear political statement about who you were. In the decade or so of its existence, The Real Paper launched the careers of many later-to be famous journalists and critics, including David Ansen, Jon Landau, Arthur Friedman, and Joe Klein.
Joan Micklin Silver's 1977 film Between the Lines is based on the Phoenix/B.A.D.story, and worth a viewing.