The Phoenix: Ashes to Ashes

THE BOSTON PHOENIX celebrates its 15th anniversary this week with a fat issue full of excerpts from the more than 800 papers it has published. "The Vietnam Era" reads the heading on the news-in-review section, and the pages that follow reflect more than anything on the war in Indochina and in America in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is no accident that Vietnam--not " the '60s" or "the counterculture" or anything else--gets top billing; it was this war and the response to it that gave birth to the phoenix and virtually every other underground newspaper in the country. And it is the absence of the war that has turned them into pallid imitations of what they once were, that has transformed underground into alternative. "I would choose to call the phoenix simply a metropolitan or urban weekly..." publisher Stephen Mindich writes in his tribute to the paper. That is the truth, and that is the problem.

Vietnam was so cataclysmic that it changed, for a few years, everything. Everything. From it grew rage, but more importantly questions and, sometimes, creative answers. From it grew thinking and, in some ways less important, involvement. For the only time in our lives, people were unhappy with all the world, and still hopeful for it. It was a time of potent men and women, who were going to create the world anew.

Even the theater reviews meant something. This is how Emily Heinzberger wrote about Hair: "'City censor' Richard Sinnott, actually the head of Boston's licensing division, publicly denounced the show after seeing a preview performance. Un-American, he calls it. Sheeeeeet, man, Nothing at $10 a seat can ever be called un-American."

That the Phoenix is very different now is undeniable, and not its fault. When it was gusty and brash--and when the writing went right to the edge, and often, even usually, a long way over--it's because Harvard Square was the same way. The Square was the center of academic hippieness, and along with a few other campuses one of the most politicized places on earth. No one wore shoes; everyone wore buttons. Hawkers sold the Phoenix at every street corner, and to every driver who had the misfortune to hit a red light. There was a community--a physical community, and also an ideological, intellectual community--for the paper to ground itself in.

These days, the paper appeals to a demographic bracket. Its readership has largely crossed the Charles, moved into townhouses on Beacon Hill or Bay Village or elsewhere in the Back Bay. They have good grooming habits, and politics is not such a big thing because, after all, this is a damn nice townhouse. There are still many points of common agreement--the New Right is outrageous (this week's paper includes two accounts of an anti-abortion conclave); capitalism has its excesses (a very good story about the seamy business at an aerosol factory that ended with three workers dead). A lot of the writing is still tremendous, in some cases better than at the village Voice, the only more alternative paper in the country with a bigger reputation. But, Mindich again: "If the publication is to become and remain successful, it must speak to its readers about what they are interested in. If we didn't change as the times were changing, we would cease to exist."

Journalists don't change as quickly as the times, though, The content of the Phoenix mirrors the brass-and-hanging-plants lifestyle of the day, but there is a cynical edge to the writing. It is the cynicism left when one--for whatever reason--discards strongly held notions and replaces them with little else.

Without the historical ties, whatever bite is left in the Phoenix would be gone--a point proved in part by this city's newest weekly, the Cambridge Express. Published by a New Hampshire concern also responsible for a putrid arts and lifestyle rag in Keene, the Express clearly is an attempt to capitalize on the death of the Real paper (indeed, you can find the Express on the rack marked "Real Paper" in many local drugstores). Perhaps it is unfair to judge a magazine after only three issues. Notice, though, that the Express puts its calendar listings in the front, seven pages of how to eat, drink and be amused, before even a single article. But at least the listings are well-written. Anthony Lewis graces this week's cover (with a graphic depicting the front page of the New York Times, though Mr. Lewis resides exclusively at the opposite end of the front section); Herb Swartz's story is titled "A Man Who Loves Words Too Much to Take Them Lightly." Herb Swartz loves words too much ever to cross out any, hence he produces sentences like: "Thus, Lewis's Cambridge/Boston situs is unique to The Times, and given that it is America's newspaper of record it is a more startling uniqueness of Cambridge/Boston, one which boasts a local scrivener whose words are read the world over." If the Express--which rejects pictures in favor of text--is to survive, it needs the sort of writing a few of its reviewers are providing, and not bland, badly written and slightly breathless accounts. It should be noted too, that the Publisher, the Associate Publisher and General Manager, and the Associate Publisher and Sales Director are all listed above the Managing Editor on the paper's masthead.

Cambridge Express may well be successful; its higher-ups insist they are well ahead of all their financial objectives. If they are, it is damning proof of how totally historical the Phoenix's 15-year retrospective really is. There is one great paragraph in the current Express--part of a scenario about two people who meet an automatic money machine. "My impression is that if these two had met five, or certainly, ten years ago, their genuine passion would have reflected a public spirit which suggested that what was worth wanting was worth attempting. Presently, they have encountered a public dampness which dictates that what is worth having is worth putting into Money Market funds..." The diagnosis is very correct; the problem is that the Cambridge Express and the Boston Phoenix are doing next to nothing about it. In fact, by creating the impression that they are somehow an alternative, somehow in the same mold as the old Phoenix or the old Real Paper, they may be playing their part to prevent any restiveness.

In 1970, Stephen Mindich, writing another Phoenix review of Hair, had this to say: "We are still at war in Indochina and may even be moving toward war at home. The insanity of both is mind-boggling and no matter what Hair says specifically, at its core it is saying loud and clear: let warmth, love and peace among all men prevail. Instead of darkness, let the sun shine in." In November 1981, not a decade later, Mindich, now "publisher and president," talks about his rag. No, about his newspaper. "Many of our alumni today enjoy key positions with distinguished media outlets all across the country... We are grateful for the support we have had from our readers and our advertisers without either of whom we would not exist. The Phoenix has played a proud role in the changing face of print journalism during its 15-year history, and looks forward to continuing to play such a role in the future." Break out the Perrier; let's party!