In 2003, I accompanied my friend to his interview with the Village Voice about a protest he led at his small high school in Hamilton, Montana, that received national recognition. I’d worn my “Jesus is my homeboy” tee shirt — a trendy choice among sixteen-year-olds at the time — in an effort to be cool.
When welcomed into the small, bohemian New York City apartment that was the Village Voice’s headquarters, I immediately regretted my fashion choice. Here I was in a place that produced some of the most cutting-edge journalism in the country. The Village Voice was indisputably cool, and I felt like a poser among changemakers. Despite my complete lack of swagger, I felt a thrill being among the excitement at their office. There was a near-tangible hum coursing throughout the busy setting. Looking back, I know I experienced a tiny sliver of what made alt-weeklies so popular — the drama, the activism, it felt meaningful.
Twenty-two years later, I’m able to experience part of that thrill all over again with my team at Newspack as we combine forces with Foundation — the content management system (CMS) designed by alt-weekly fans for alt-weeklies.
The struggle to thrive in the digital space
Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the Village Voice was a pioneer of alt-weeklies that transformed journalism by publishing outside the confines of mainstream media coverage in dailies like the New York Times and the Boston Globe. Alt-weeklies across the country, including the Boston Phoenix, the Chicago Reader, and LA Weekly, covered counterculture, hyperlocal politics, events, arts, and published the beloved personal ads. The weeklies had a real pulse on their communities that the dailies didn’t.
For that reason, the weeklies competed alongside the dailies for attention from a different audience that tended to be younger and more liberal. They were an outlet for young writers and a destination for alternative coverage bordering on edgy and unconventional.
And for years, the alt-weeklies, beloved by their communities, thrived. But, as digital readership replaced print, and personal ads shifted to Craigslist, then to dating apps, alt-weeklies have struggled to survive.
But the need for counterculture journalism still exists, especially in today’s political climate.
For the love of counterculture journalism
Foundation CEO Wil Gerken and his team of committed tech-fans have been helping alt-weeklies navigate the digital landscape for nearly 30 years.
The first publication Gerken launched on the web was Tucson Weekly in late 1995. He wrote some software to debut Tucson Weekly with a fun “joystick-style” navigation that let readers flip through issues or browse back in time through columns. “My goal was to keep older content alive and accessible,” he recalled.
“At the time, very few alt-weeklies were online, so we were fortunate to get featured in a handful of web design books, magazines, and more. It felt great to play even a small part in shining a spotlight on alt-weeklies,” remembered Gerken.
In 1996, he attended the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN) conference with members of the Village Voice, Phoenix New Times, Boston Phoenix, Austin Chronicle, and others, and that experience changed everything. “I knew I wanted to dedicate my career to this space. Soon after, I formally launched DesertNet to begin working with more alternative weeklies,” said Gerken.
In the mid-90s, there weren’t a lot of alt-weeklies online yet, but there were dailies. Gerken wanted to help weeklies stand out by focusing on rich archives and evergreen content — music, film, and book reviews, interviews, and community event listings.
This drive led to the creation of FilmVault.com (no longer online), a simple site that aggregated film reviews from multiple weeklies. It let readers explore different perspectives on the same movie or dive deep into archives.
After that early success, DesertNet launched WeeklyWire.com (no longer online), a curated national weekly featuring selected articles, alt-weekly comic strips, and editorial oversight on top of backend automation. It helped bring more visibility to alt-weeklies, but financially sustaining it proved challenging.
Throughout all this, Gerken and his team kept refining the Foundation CMS to offer a full-service solution: hosting, website management, content repackaging, advertising, cross-linking — basically anything to let publications focus on their journalism without worrying about the tech side.
“It’s been a winding road, but at the core, our mission has always been to support the alt-weekly world. While it hasn’t always been the most financially rewarding path, it’s been deeply satisfying. Helping alt-weeklies thrive has always been at the heart of what we do,” said Gerken.
Keeping the art of alt-weeklies alive
Gerken and his team have built tools focused on empowering writers and editors and worked with their publishers to create successful, award-winning websites. Now it’s time for the next step in their journey.
“Looking ahead, it’s become clear that our best path forward is to fully focus our Foundation system on its events and listings features, while partnering with another company dedicated to the other aspects of Web publishing and monetization,” Gerken said in a note to Foundation’s publishers.
To make this goal a reality, they decided to partner with our team at Newspack because we share a commitment to independent journalism and software innovation.
One constant throughout Foundation’s journey has been its commitment to community events. This includes event listings and location-based guides to film times, user-submitted content, licensed third-party content, and new revenue opportunities within the events space. The Newspack and Foundation teams want to ensure this endures and continues to evolve.
The Foundation Events module will become part of Newspack’s hosted service, and we’ll retire the rest of the Foundation CMS later this year.
Gerken sees this partnership as the next logical step in supporting the alt-weekly publishers he fell in love with back in 1996. “I’m genuinely excited about this transition and what it means for the future — specialization in events while ensuring our publishers have a best-in-class CMS solution.”
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