Washington City Paper will temporarily reduce its print publication schedule to one edition per month. In an announcement Thursday, the alt-weekly cited a major drop in ad and event revenue in the wake of the pandemic.
In the note, interim editor Caroline Jones and City Paper’s publisher and chief revenue officer Duc Luu said they tried to find ways to continue printing weekly early in the COVID-19 crisis, but the financial hit was too severe.
“Consolidating circulation provided a little relief, but five months later, it’s no longer enough,” they wrote. “And so, in an effort to protect staff and salaries as best we can, we will be temporarily reducing our print publication schedule to once per month.”
“A monthly schedule will still allow us to reach Washingtonians in print—those who lack access to broadband internet or a computer, those who just like to pick up a physical copy on the street, and those who love our crossword puzzles,” they wrote, adding that readers will continue to see regular publishing on City’s Paper’s website.
The announcement comes at a perilous time for national and local media outlets, with many facing financial fallout related to the pandemic.
Jones and Luu thanked “the 1,100 members who have stepped up to support our work over the past year,” as well as its advertisers.
“As we transform into a more member-supported newspaper, sustainability is our chief priority,” they wrote. “We’re committed to making decisions that will protect the future of your legacy alt-weekly.”
The next print editions will be released on October 15, November 12, and December 10.
The announcement comes days after former City Paper staffer Morgan Baskin shared a letter on Twitter on Tuesday that she had sent to Jones, Luu, and owner Mark Ein, articulating “the extent to which City Paper has degraded and demoralized its employees and freelancers, particularly during the pandemic.”
Baskin, who said she stopped working at the paper full-time in 2019, had been helping edit articles two days a week. She said after it took more than two months to get over $4,500 in back pay for freelance editing and writing this spring and summer, she was informed this week “via a string of curt Slack messages” that the scope of her work would be cut in half with less than one week’s notice because of a further reduction in the publication’s freelance budget.
“I won’t pretend to know the answer to how to keep an alt-weekly alive during a global pandemic,” Baskin wrote in her letter. “But I know that the journalists here, sick with worry and losing sleep over how to do right by their jobs, deserve more than this pattern of appalling and, frankly, unprofessional disregard for their well-being.”
She continued, “I also won’t pretend to know what the $1,600 I make a month from City Paper means to a man like Mr. Ein. To me, it means being able to pay my rent.”
Baskin, who is no longer working with the publication, added that working at City Paper was “often one of the great joys of my life,” but said she was denied a raise on her $41,000 full-time salary, joined a staff that did not have health coverage, and that editorial leadership discouraged staff writers from unionizing.
Baskin tells DCist/WAMU she hasn’t heard a response to the letter.
Ein, a businessman and philanthropist, bought City Paper in 2017. He, Jones, and Luu did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Baskin’s letter.
