A Rough Start to 2025 for Alternative Newspapers; No, Birkenstocks Are Not ‘Art’–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Feb. 20, 2025

Indy Digest: Feb. 20, 2025

The first months of 2025 have not been kind to alternative newspapers, as three journalism stalwarts have announced major changes due to economic issues.

In February, Triad City Beat, which had served Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point, N.C., for 11 years, closed up shop. TCB put out a call for help late last year, asking readers for donations; they raised enough money to continue for a few more months, but not enough to sustain the operation.

“Despite the donations and the community support, there have been insurmountable obstacles to keeping the organization operational, including lack of a business leader and inadequate future funding,” managing editor Sayaka Matsuoka wrote on Jan. 31. “Our co-founder and publisher, Brian Clarey, resigned from Triad City Beat earlier this month and is now working full-time for (the University of North Carolina Greensboro). He was tasked with making difficult life changes after a devastating car accident last year forced him to find a new job.”

Closer to home, the San Diego Reader published its last print edition, with zero fanfare, in February. The Reader will continue to publish online, founder and editor Jim Holman told The San Diego Union-Tribune. Holman cited the rising costs of printing and distributing the weekly print edition, which had been published since 1972, as contributing factors, but said the inevitable shift from print to digital was the primary reason.

“It’s just a technological, cultural shift you can’t deny and you can’t fight,” he told the Union-Tribune.

Finally, the Chicago Reader, which has been publishing for more than 53 years, is working its way out of a financial crisis that led to layoffs and pay cuts in mid-January. In a Jan. 14 announcement, the Reader said: “A combination of financial losses, operational challenges, and external pressures has brought the Reader to an imminent risk of closure.” 

Fortunately, the publication’s call for donations brought in enough support for the nonprofit newspaper to, as of now, continue publication and make progress on its “path forward.” In a Jan. 31 note to readers, publisher Amber Nettles said the Reader had gotten more than $125,000 in one-time donations as of Jan. 30.

The closure of TCB hit close to home for me, as the paper’s founder, Brian Clarey, started the paper just a year after I launched the Independent, and we often used each other as sounding boards in our papers’ early years. I consider him and Sayaka to be friends. Similarly, I know some of the Chicago Reader folks very well. I serve on the AAN Publishers board of directors with both Sayaka and Reader publisher Amber Nettles, and I’ve watched as they’ve tried valiantly to keep their figurative ships afloat.

I am also heartbroken for these cities. TCB’s final issue includes a couple dozen notes from readers who talked about how important the publication has been to them and their community. Readers of the San Diego Reader’s print edition who don’t consume news online will no longer have a source of vital information. And the mere thought of a Chicago without the Chicago Reader seems unfathomable, as it’s such an institution.

The lesson here is one I’ve mentioned many times before in this space, and will likely mention many times again: Journalism—real reporting, quality writing and good editing—costs a LOT of time and money to produce and distribute. If you don’t support the media outlets you enjoy and value, they will die. 

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• In yet another instance, the federal government haphazardly fired some employees, realized they’d messed up, and is now trying to re-hire them—and this time, it’s the people working on the country’s bird-flu response who were mistakenly let go. NBC News says: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday that, over the weekend, it accidentally fired ‘several’ agency employees who are working on the federal government’s response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak. … ‘Although several positions supporting (bird flu efforts) were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters,’ a USDA spokesperson said in a statement. ‘USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and we are continuing to hire the workforce necessary to ensure the safety and adequate supply of food to fulfill our statutory mission.’”

• Related: A professor of public health, writing for The Conversation, says the layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are significantly harming the ability to fight diseases: “Prior to the February cuts, the CDC employed over 10,000 full-time staff in roles spanning public health, epidemiology, medicine, communications, engineering and beyond to maintain this critical public health infrastructure. In addition to the centers’ wide variety of functions to protect and promote public health in the U.S., a vast amount of research in the U.S. relies on CDC data. … Several of these datasets and CDC websites were removed at the start of the second Trump term, and while they are currently back online due to a federal court order, it remains to be seen if these important sources of information will remain accessible and updated going forward. … Physicians are reporting that their ability to respond to the surges in respiratory viruses they are seeing has been hobbled by the missing data and by prohibitions on CDC staff communicating outside the agency.”

• Our partners at Calmatters report that in some parts of California, federal deportation threats are leading to school absences: “E., a mother of three in Salinas, is extra careful when she takes her kids to school. She switches up her routes, leaves at different times, and is always on the lookout for immigration agents, especially during pick-ups and drop-offs. President Donald Trump’s threat of mass deportations is never far from her mind. … Although there have been few, if any, reports of immigration arrests at or near schools recently, E. and countless other parents are gripped with fear that if they go to the store, work or school, they’ll never see their families again. The fear stems from Trump’s heated anti-immigrant rhetoric, as well as his recent removal of schools, hospitals, courts and other ‘sensitive locations’ as safe zones for undocumented immigrants. ‘This is an immigrant city, and just the threat is enough to scare people,’ said Mary Duan, spokesperson for Salinas City Elementary School District. ‘The specter of deportation is driving people underground.’”

• Los Angeles Times columnist Anita Chabria asks the question: “Could conservatives save our democracy?” A snippet: “Yes, folks, we’ve reached the point in this disturbing timeline where some of the strongest voices speaking against the Muskian overthrow of government are coming from the far right. In a recent interview, (Steve) Bannon, a former advisor to President Trump and current uber-right podcaster, came out hard against Elon Musk. ‘Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions,’ Bannon said in an interview with UnHerd. … But my favorite pushback against the broligarchy came from conservative Christian commentator Jon Root, responding to the messy messaging on former-Twitter between Musk and Ashley St. Clair, an influencer who claims she just popped out Musk’s 13th baby via IVF but is now being ghosted by the billionaire.” Click the link for more; it’s quite fascinating.

• Today’s recall news involves … Trader Joe’s acai bowls! KTLA says: “Trader Joe’s has issued a recall of its Organic Acai Bowls over the potential that the product may contain plastic, the company announced late last week. A representative for Trader Joe’s (said) on Thursday that the frozen product had been removed from sale as of Feb. 14 and is not currently available at stores. ‘Out of an abundance of caution, please discard any Trader Joe’s Organic Acai Bowls, as the product may contain foreign material (plastic), or return them to your neighborhood Trader Joe’s store for a full refund,’ reads an announcement posted to TraderJoes.com.”

• And finally …have you ever looked at a sandal and thought, “Wow, that’s art!” Yeah, neither has one particular court in Germany. The Associated Press explains what in the heck I am talking about: “Birkenstock, which is headquartered in Linz am Rhein, Germany, and says its tradition of shoemaking goes back to 1774, filed a lawsuit against three competitors who sold sandals that were very similar to its own. The shoe manufacturer claimed its sandals ‘are copyright-protected works of applied art’ that may not be imitated. Under German law, works of art enjoy stronger and longer-lasting intellectual property protections than consumer products. The company asked for an injunction to stop its competitors from making copycat sandals and order them to recall and destroy those already on the market. … The Federal Court of Justice … dismissed the case. In its ruling, it wrote that a product can’t be copyrighted if ‘technical requirements, rules or other constraints determine the design.’”