Saturday, July 19, 2008

Free Times Ends Its Short to Middling Life
With a Nice Salute by Barber, Roldo & Co.

This week's issue of the Cleveland alternative weekly the Free Times was its last. As we noted a few weeks ago, a Pennsylvania-based publisher has bought both of the town's alt-weeklies, and will combine them, beginning next week, into a single paper, to be called Scene. We liked the classy send-off the FT gave itself, by asking veterans of the weekly to recall what it all meant. You'll find them all here. In the lead piece, our friend and long-time comrade Cindy Barber, once the editor of the paper and now co-owner of the hipster heaven, the Beachland Ballroom, tells a lively story about the old days, and nicely sets the scene for what will follow (we've mentioned Cindy earlier, here, here and here). Some more good news about the merger: we hear the online archives of both papers will remain available.

4 Comments:

At 9:01 PM, Blogger Maria said...

I just read the farewell stories, wandering to your blog afterwards, John. They were wonderfully written. As a long-time reader, I appreciated the look back. How quickly fifteen years passes. Best wishes to all involved with the paper.

 
At 9:46 AM, Blogger John Ettorre said...

You're certainly right about how quickly that all happened. Hard to believe how long ago that paper started up, because I remember sitting in those start-up meetings like it was yesterday. I also remember there being talk by the new owners of making it into a co-op, meaning the ownership would be shared by everyone. Fat chance, I thought.

 
At 11:14 AM, Blogger Kevin said...

At the moment, the Free Times archives are available, but Scene's appear to be gone. I hope they come back.

 
At 11:19 AM, Blogger John Ettorre said...

They will be back eventually, Kevin. At the moment they seem to be putting all their web efforts into the FT, which is odd given the name change. But the reality is that the papers didn't really "merge." The Free Times continues in everything but its name.

 

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