The Real Paper
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The Real Paper was a Boston alternative weekly newspaper that ran from August 2, 1972, to June 18, 1981, often devoting space to counterculture issues of the early 1970s. The offices were located on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Cambridge Phoenix began October 9, 1969, and when the staff of that weekly learned in the summer of 1972 about a planned purchase of their paper by the more established (and more commercial) Boston After Dark, the situation erupted with a two-week writers' strike. Banding together, this splinter group decided to continue the original aims and objectives of The Cambridge Phoenix by creating The Real Paper as an employee-run collective. Between July 1972 and July 1973, Bob L. Oliver was The Real Paper's founding art director responsible for editorial and advertising graphic design. [1]
Le Anne Schreiber, writing in the New York Times (January 3, 1983) described the internal conflicts:
- Paul Solman and Thomas Friedman are in the business of providing alternatives. In the early 1970s they were among the founding editors of the now-defunct Real Paper, Boston's well-regarded alternative newspaper. Later in the decade they both became producers at WGBH-TV, Boston's alternative to the networks... Lessons emerge from case histories of actual companies and individuals. Although it is told without hand-wringing, the saddest of these stories is what happened to the staff of The Real Paper when the associate publisher's wife moved in with his best friend and colleague, the publisher. Lines were drawn, and suddenly everybody was a close friend of somebody who was now the enemy of another close friend.
- In a traditional organization, the conflicts that arose would have been solved by firings or resignations; but at The Real Paper, which had been set up as an egalitarian business - with every employee holding an equal number of shares as long as he or she worked for the paper - there was no way to settle or to escape internal conflict. The fact that the paper had become profitable meant that no one wanted to leave and relinquish shares; but by staying together, given the bitter factionalism that had developed, the staff insured that the paper would become progressively less profitable. [2]
By the mid-1970s, The Real Paper served as a springboard for a number of journalists, including music critic Jon Landau and film critic David Ansen, who left to write for Newsweek. In September, 1978, Gerald Peary moved from New York City to Cambridge to become a first-string film critic and staff member for The Real Paper, continuing to review for The Real Paper until it folded in June, 198l. Other film critics contributing to The Real Paper included Stuart Byron, Patrick McGilligan, David Rosenbaum, Stephen Schiff (before he moved on to the Boston Phoenix), Bhob Stewart and David Thomson. This team of critics provided a total coverage, reviewing everything from major openings in Boston to the local Orson Welles Cinema (located one block away) to film showings in churches, coffeehouses, museums and college auditoriums.
In addition to Landau, The Real Paper featured music reviews by James Isaacs and Mark Rowland. Landau's prophetic 1974 article in The Real Paper in which he famously claimed that "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen" is credited by Nick Hornby [3] and others with fostering the artist's popularity. Landau wrote:
- But tonight there is someone I can write of the way I used to write, without reservations of any kind. Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock'n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.
- When his two-hour set ended I could only think, can anyone really be this good; can anyone say this much to me, can rock'n'roll still speak with this kind of power and glory? And then I felt the sores on my thighs where I had been pounding my hands in time for the entire concert and knew that the answer was yes.
- Springsteen does it all. He is a rock'n'roll punk, a Latin street poet, a ballet dancer, an actor, a joker, bar band leader, hot-shit rhythm guitar player, extraordinary singer, and a truly great rock'n'roll composer. He leads a band like he has been doing it forever. I racked my brains but simply can't think of a white artist who does so many things so superbly. [4]
Harper Barnes, Boston Phoenix editor in 1970-72, was a book columnist for The Real Paper and The Chicago Reader in the late 1970s. After writing for The Real Paper, advice columnist Monica Collins wrote for local and national newspapers and magazines; she currently does the syndicated column "Ask Dog Lady".
In 1975, The Real Paper was purchased by Ralph I. Fine, David Rockefeller, Jr., and others, taking a more commercial slant. After a 1978 peak, money from investors slackened, and the publication began to lose steam with a $250,000 loss in 1980, followed by many staff changes before the 1981 collapse.
Jeff McLaughlin, describing the 1981 Boston arts scene in the Boston Globe, (January 4, 1982), wrote:
- Hardest hit was journalism. Financial problems caused The Real Paper to cease publication, silencing a voice that was devoted to community-based efforts in the arts as in other cultural fields. The Phoenix won new readers with The Real Paper's demise, but its arts focus is more national than local.
Real Paper writer Fred Barron used the paper's history as the basis for a screenplay, Between the Lines, filmed in 1977 by Joan Micklin Silver. The success of this movie led to a short-lived TV series, also titled Between the Lines.
