High Plains Reader

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications.
Primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of the article are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please include more appropriate citations from reliable sources, or discuss the issue on the talk page.
This article has been tagged since October 2007.

High Plains Reader
Type	Alternative weekly
Format	Tabloid

Owner
Publisher	Raul Gomez, John Strand
Editor	John Strand
Founded	1994
Price	free
Headquarters	322 Broadway, Suite C Fargo, ND 58102
Circulation	20,000-30,000

Website: www.hpr1.com

The High Plains Reader is an alternative newspaper serving the Fargo and Grand Forks metropolitan areas, with an estimated readership of 20,000 to 30,000 weekly between print and online readers. The tabloid was founded in 1994 by Ian Swenson, Peter Ryan, and Len Schmid in Grand Forks, North Dakota and is currently owned by Raul Gomez and John Strand who purchased the paper in late December of 1996. After a flood and fire destroyed their Grand Forks office, the Reader moved its office to Fargo, while still covering both Fargo and Grand Forks. In 2004, the Reader celebrated its 10th anniversary in different venues in the Fargo-Moorhead area, including Ralph's Corner Bar.

[edit] Features

The paper features reviews of bands, movies, and theater in Fargo-Moorhead, plus a calendar of weekly events. Its editorials generally take a more leftist tack than those of The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.

Recurring portions of the High Plains Reader include the weekly editorial, generally written by editor John Strand; the "Dear John" section for letters to the editor; the cover story; a theater column; movie reviews, one by writer Greg Carlson, who covers current movies, and one by Christopher Jacobs, who often writes about his own film productions and DVD releases of rare and classic movies, a Best Bets section, generally giving brief synopses of upcoming events, focusing mostly on local musicians; and a calendar section, a detailed list of daily events for the upcoming week.

[edit] Controversy

Regular columnist Ed Raymond withdrew his "The Gadfly" column after the Reader began carrying Allison Moorhead's sex column in late 2004, which had a controversial and short (two column) run at North Dakota State University's newspaper The Spectrum.

The column was not in a question-and-answer format, but rather, offered general information about sexual activities, including accounts of the writer's own. Critics saw little more than shock value in the column.

Moorhead stopped writing for the Reader in early 2005. Ed Raymond returned to writing his column the following June.