Part of the cover of Washington City Paper after the election of Donald Trump. (Image via Facebook)

Part of the cover of Washington City Paper after the election of Donald Trump. (Image via Facebook)

A week after the announcement that the owners of Washington City Paper are trying to sell it, the editor-in-chief of the famed alt-weekly says her staff has gotten over the shock and gotten back to work.

“It seems like we’ve got a lemon, but we’re working on a really good batch of lemonade,” says Alexa Mills, the paper’s third editor-in-chief in as many years. “No one is walking to work here feeling like a sad sack …In the first meeting, we said, ‘Nobody wants to buy a sad sack.'”

Last Friday, corporate owner SouthComm told City Paper staff that it was putting the paper on the market. The Tennessee and Wisconsin-based publisher bought WCP and Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing from Creative Loafing Inc. for an undisclosed amount in 2012.

Now, the clock is ticking. SouthComm wants preliminary bids by November 1, and hopes to close a deal by the end of 2017. “If a buyer doesn’t emerge we’ll have to figure out what to do,” SouthComm CEO Chris Ferrell told Washingtonian. “I think there will be lot of interest in Washington City Paper.”

Since the news of the sale broke, City Paper has adapted to being the subject of a big local news story by covering it. Arts editor Matt Cohen, a former editor-in-chief at DCist, has carved out a new “sub-beat” in reporting out potential models for what could come next.

Mills says he spearheaded the tongue-in-cheek post weighing the pros and cons of potential new owners like Dave Grohl and the D.C. government, with the rest of the staffers pitching in. Since then, he’s come out with a story on one potential path to financial sustainability—becoming a nonprofit publication—and there’s another in the works.

But the very first story that acknowledges the paper’s uncertain future was an announcement that readers could start purchasing love, like, and lust-based classified ads for $5 as part of a two-week run. That’s not because WCP wants a cash infusion to sweeten the books for potential buyers, though.

Mills says she first got the idea to run a classifieds section last February, but the classifieds manager told her the holidays were a better time because that’s “when people feel lonely.” With a hazy outlook on what could come next, she decided to kick the project into high gear.

“We’ve gotten quite a few, but we want a lot more” submissions, says Mills. “I will say we have a lot of sweet classifieds we’re getting. We want more of the spanking, BDSM, wild classifieds and weird ones. It makes for a better page and you’re seeing, ‘Wow! All these people want different things.'”

Many prominent former editors and staffers of the paper have made clear their desire for City Paper to find a new owner.

Mills declined to comment about conversations she’s had with SouthComm, but says that her role empowers her to have discussions with any interested parties.

And if there’s more information coming out about the future of the publication, Mills says you’ll be able to read about it in Washington City Paper: “One thing we can guarantee is that we’ll stay in touch with our readers.”

This post has been updated to reflect that the SouthComm that owns WCP is based in Tennessee and Wisconsin.

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