Ever since I was an intern at the Reno News & Review in the summer of 1996, I have been something of a newsweekly nerd.
Every time I’d visit a new city, I’d scour newsracks and bookstores for the local newsweekly. I love the mix of hard-hitting local news, compelling commentaries and unmatched arts-and-culture coverage.
Sometime in the mid 2000s, I visited the Coachella Valley for the first time, when my significant other and I came to visit a friend. I did my usual find-the-newsweekly thing … and I couldn’t find one. There was the Desert Post Weekly, a weak Gannett-owned faux-newsweekly in which the locally produced stories could be counted on one hand. There was The Desert Entertainer, which seemed to specialize in coverage of events that took place at the local casinos. And that was it.
Meanwhile, Garrett and I started to fall in love with the place—the culture, the mountains, the diversity, and so many other things.
I decided to look into starting a real newsweekly in the Coachella Valley. Over several years, I crunched numbers, did interviews and got bids; I put together a business plan; and in the spring of 2008, I presented the plan to Wick Communications, the company I have worked for since November 2001, and for which I have been the editor of the Tucson Weekly since January 2003.
My plan was to start a print weekly, the Coachella Valley Independent, with a staff of about seven folks—in other words, I wanted to hit the ground running. However, the budgeted first-year financial loss—in the neighborhood of a quarter-million bucks—was unappetizing to the Wick folks, and understandably, they said no, especially since the economy was at that point showing sides of weirdness. Several months later, we’d all begin to realize that weirdness was actually the first manifestations of the Great Recession.
In the years since, I have visited the Coachella Valley several times every year, falling in love with the area a little more each time. During every trip, I’d think of that business plan. And I’d pick up every publication I could find. Some publications—the Desert Star Weekly and then later, the Coachella Valley Weekly—came. Others—like the LGBT-focused The Bottom Line—went. While some of the valley’s publications had their positive moments (as well as not-so-positive ones), I learned some of them were selling editorial articles to advertisers—and not labeling those articles as advertorials. That, combined with the continuing mediocrity of the daily Desert Sun, was disheartening.
As it stands right now, if a Coachella Valley reader wants honest community news coverage, or an unbiased food review, or just good, compelling writing, where can they go?
Enter the Coachella Valley Independent.
I, along with my partner, Garrett, have decided it’s time to make the leap. I have given my notice at the Tucson Weekly, and in January, we’re moving to the Coachella Valley so I can dedicate myself to the Independent full-time. We’re winging it as we do this on our own; the plan is to spend a good chunk of the year building up the publication online, and if all goes well, in the fall, we’ll launch a print version.
Seeing as we’re building this from nothing, there will be growing pains. We started the website from scratch, and as of now, it’s probably about one-third built. (Call it our very, very beta version.) Most of the content currently on the site is nowhere as in-depth as the content will be when we’re here full-time. And we’re doing this on a budget that makes the word “shoestring” sound generous.
But we’re going to pull this off. We love good, honest, true, fun journalism, and the positive effect it can have on communities. As we say on the (very, very beta version’s) “about” page: “We believe in true, honest journalism: We want to afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted. We want to be a mirror for the entire Coachella Valley. We want to inform, enlighten and entertain.
“We will never let advertisers determine what we cover, and how we cover things. In other words, we will always tell it how we see it. For example: Some other publications in this valley do puff-piece reviews or feature stories on advertisers to make said advertisers happy. We will never, ever do that. If we lose an advertiser due to an unflattering story, a negative review or something else, so be it.”
Welcome to the Coachella Valley Independent.
Get ’em.
Success Jimmy! As an early 70s J-school grad I too routinly look for those print pubs in my travels. I will look forward to your weekly, and I’ll certainly miss you in Tucson.
You’re my hero, Jimmy.
Best of luck, Jimmy. I laughed out load when I read that you projected a $250,000 loss year one. That’s EXACTLY the number we had in our business plan for the Tucson Weekly back in 1983. And we couldn’t raise a dime to fund it. It was until I devised a plan that only had my partner, me and a paste-up person on staff, and a bootstrapped approach, that we agreed to begin. Of course, I got an unplanned $100+K subsidy from my printer that first year, a story I’ve told in TW. Anyway, it’s a whole different world now, and I’m sure you will make it fly. It’s nice you can work with your life partner on this. Sorry we never really got to know each other during your tenure here. Stay in touch. —DB
Sounds like you are in the right place. Congratulations on the start up. I wish you the best of luck. You can expect that I will be looking for the print version next time I find myself in the area. Tucson will miss you but we will all be cheering for your success at the CV Independent.
To all the hard working staff of the Desert Star Weekly who worked for four long years, week after week, putting out a real alt weekly on newsprint – and the Internet – and building something out of noting, it is insulting to read such misinformation presented as fact.
The Desert Star Weekly was a business that paid their dues, sinking more than $250,000 to get if off the ground. The publisher took no pay for four years, but that did not matter because it was important to have an alt weekly in the Coachella Valley.
The Desert Star Weekly began in 2008 as an alt weekly and ran continuously week after week, building up from nothing to something with a distribution of 800 desert locations from Indio to the Marine base in 29 Palms. Jimmy Boegle really should tell the truth because he absolutely knew about the product.
It was impossible for Boegle to miss all those big red metal boxes spread all over the desert with the logo plastered on the side? A dozen of big distribution boxes were bolted to the street in downtown Palm Springs. Dozens more elsewhere. How could he miss the weekly newspaper that the local libraries said was the most popular for library patrons. He didn’t and Boegle’s not telling the truth says a lot about his character.
What loyalty does Boegle have to our desert communities when he confides about his 2008 inspiration to compete with the Desert Post Weekly? Instead of jumping in to solve the problem he played it safe in Tucson while an alt weekly was built with the blood of desert sands. Instead of helping the Coachella Valley or the Desert Star Weekly he made damn sure it would not be admitted to the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, saving that for himself.
Boegle doesn’t want to mentioned a weekly that reached a peak readership of 20,000 for the newsprint product and a peak Internet readership of 5,000 unique views until it was sold last April to a newspaper group out of LA and OC that dropped the alt weekly format and adopted a community newspaper format devoid of controversial news – simply recycling press releases. Boegle has a very good reason to make no mention of that.
Why did end that way? Ask Boegle. It’s no coincidence the timing coincides with Jimmy Boegle’s coming to the valley. He had a role to play in killing one alt weekly and played that role very well, working behind the scenes to put an end to a productive business to be replaced with something else he doesn’t want to mention.
Some people in the journalism business think it is evil to not tell the truth and wicked to twist the facts. It’s something you learn from life not from a communication degree from Stanford University.
Boegle simply does not want to mention the role he played in establishing he CV Weekly nor does he want to mention it even existing. Instead, pretending his product can be the one and only true alt weekly. How pretentious.
When will Jimmy Boegle finally start telling the whole story instead of twisting the truth to make himself appear sympathetic and righteous?
Please, stop insulting all the good people who contributed over four years of hard work creating and maintaining the Desert Star Weekly when it was an alt weekly. Just say the truth. You didn’t like that it existed because it was something you dreamed of, so you helped destroy it to put your own alt weekly in its place. That’s the truth, so say it.