THERE'S A MAGAZINE you probably haven't seen called Speak.
It's from Frisco, and bears all the traits of all those other Frisco "alternative" magazines that have come (and mostly gone) over the past decade and a half.
Specifically: It's ruthlessly hipper-than-thou, parading a succession of counterculture celebrity profiles and essays on why these celebs and their worshippers are supposedly some intellectually/aesthetically/morally superior species to all us non-Californian redneck hicks.
Like many of those prior magazines (The Nose, Might, Mondo 2000) already have, Speak is running out of money and may have to fold. But publisher Dan Rolleri isn't going down without a fight.
Rolleri's tried to sell ads to big youth-appeal advertisers like Nike and Calvin Klein and the major record labels. So far, he's had few major takers, except from two Seattle outfits (Fantagraphics and the Alibi Room) and from the Philly-based "hip ad agency" representing Goldschlager liquors and Red Kamel cigarettes.
Speak doesn't really look like a forum for slick consumer ads; it's all black-and-white inside, it uses hard-to-read headline type effects, and it only comes out every two or three months.
But that hasn't stopped Rolleri from complaining.
In two consecutive editorials, he's ranted on about how the would-be big advertisers wanted him to make his mag more sponsor-friendly. Consumer-product manufacturers wanted colorful features about the buying and using of consumer products (PCs, sports gear, fashions, etc.). Record and movie companies wanted long, glowing stories (preferably cover stories) about celebrities the media companies were currently hyping.
In short, nothing like Rolleri's idea of a true "alternative" publication.
To paraphrase that immortal cartoon character Super Chicken, Rolleri knew the job was dangerous when he took it.
From the grisly fates met by those prior Frisco mags, he should've realized that if he was going to insist on a format different from (or in opposition to) those of today's big corporate media, he'd have to have a business plan that didn't depend on big corporate sponsors.
After all, even big ad-friendly mags often don't turn a profit for as long as five years.
Speak's website contains precious little content. The best online source for Rolleri's anti-advertiser rants is an anti-Rolleri rant in Salon (which is also Frisco-based and money-losing, but which, as a dot-com company, is able to attract venture-capital support). The Salon piece claimed Rolleri was wrong to claim ad-friendly magazines are "dumbed down" only to appease advertisers, but rather that magazines are trashy and stupid because readers like 'em that way.
That's a load of Libertarian bull.
Ad-supported media live and die, not on the whims of audiences, but on the whims of advertisers. CBS has more total viewers than the other broadcast networks this season, but The WB has more of the particular viewers sponsors give a damn about. The NY Daily News has more New York-area readers than the NY Times, but far fewer ad pages.
The task of Speak or anything like it is to build and service a community of readers without the likes of Nike.
IN OTHER NEWS: Judy Nicastro and incumbent Peter Steinbrueck were the only self-styled "progressive bloc" candidates to win Seattle City Council seats, thus ensuring two more years of the rancor and bitterness we've grown to love. Meanwhile, the state Initiative 695, which gave tiny tax breaks to ordinary car-owners and humongous breaks to luxury-SUV owners, passed handsomely. My theory why: The proponents used every trick of talk-radio demagoguery to proclaim themselves the "rebels" against authority figures, while the opponents used big bucks and barrages in all the other local media to basically tell voters that all the authority figures wanted them to vote no. Next step: Lawsuits.
IN STILL OTHER NEWS: The shock of the biggest intentional walk in regional sports history was only partly allieved by the Sonics' opening win against the still-lowly LA Clippers, who, now that they're sharing a space with the media-adored Lakers, seem even more the deliberately underemphasized #2 brand--sorta like the afternoon halves of jointly-owned newspaper monopolies (the late Spokane Chronicle, the late Minneapolis Star, etc.)
TOMORROW: Ben Is Dead is dead. Does that mean zines are dead too?
ELSEWHERE:
- Salon has finally discovered that The City That Thinks It's God has turned from counterculture-snobville to cyber-snobville. I could've told 'em that years ago....
- An official site for perhaps the only San Franciscan artists obsessed with art above celebrity....
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