Orange Is Finished
January 26th, 2007 by Wayne Garcia in The Morning PapersOrange publisher Carla Floyd confirms to me this afternoon that Media General’s 20-week foray into the world of faux-alt weeklies is over. Floyd said the publication didn’t perform financially and didn’t "meet our business expectations."
Its editor, Mitzi Gordon, says she was fired this week after we published details of a spat she had with the higher-ups over a story about The CUNT Shop, an online fashion store. Last week’s run of Orange was destroyed after its press run when Gordon’s superiors discovered the word "cunt" repeatedly printed in the story.
Floyd wouldn’t discuss the personnel matter.
I’ll have a full account of the death of Orange in the next issue of Creative Loafing.
January 27th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Wayne, I probably wouldn’t know The Orange went under if you didn’t write about it. Nothing against the people who worked on it, but it wasn’t generating readership.
January 27th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Wayne, it’s hard to generate readership when they can’t even generate content.
Seriously, it took all of 3 minutes to pass through one of those things. By their own admission they wanted it 58% ads and photos. Where’s the meat??
I’m all about an al-weekly or faux-alt-weekly or whatever I can browser through while waiting around or enjoying a cup of coffee, but looking at pictures of people I don’t know at a bar I’d never hang out at next to a giant ad for The Todd is not going to make me seek it out again.
For the record though – I think that whole we-gave-it-20-weeks-and-it-didn’t-take-off thing was a load of crap. I’m not going to pretend to know anything about publishing, but I am pretty sure anyone who does puts themselves in a position to go deeper than that before making a decision like that.
I’m sad to see Mitzi go, one would have perhaps hoped she would have just been absorbed back into the Trib. She was damn good people.
January 28th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
You knew the paper was on its way out when all of this started up. I mean, read the linked MySpace area. The editor publicly slammed her bosses. That isn’t cool.
If you’re going to do alt-weeklies, the LEAST you have to do is be able to cuss. I mean, Creative Loafing is many things, but it wouldn’t be a true alt-weekly if they were not allowed to say or cover the things that the other papers can’t. When the first issue of tbt* censored the word “ass,” I knew there would be problems.
As to Orange, good riddens.
January 29th, 2007 at 9:10 am
print is dead, long live the internets.
January 29th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Print is dead? How many times has print heard that over the past century, yet continue to dominate?
All print has to do is realize how the market has shifted, and shift with it, just as it did with the advent of radio, just as it did with the advent of television.
Will the Internet change the way print works? You bet. But will it kill it? Hardly.
January 29th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
“print is dead, long live the internets.”
Long live small caps and quick use of slang terms that shows amateurish writing skills. I look forward to the Sticks of Fire staff doing independent reporting when print publications cease to exist. I have done some interviews and independent reporting on my blog. I interviewed two candidates and got Scott Montgomery on record on why the St Petersburg Times held back on the Mark Foley story. It’s difficult when I don’t have a media outlet behind me. I’m the first one to admit I rely greatly on the media services.
The Weekly Standard and Washington Times don’t make money. They can still stay in business. (Both publications have conservative owners with deep pockets.) Moneymakers like The New York Times and the Washington Post aren’t about to go under.
Is there anyone at Sticks of Fire that has something original to say? The two bloggers who have been published either:
a). fixated on writing about her breasts.
b). fixated on making people angry at her.
If the media is dead then God have mercy on the people forced to get their news from blogs.
January 30th, 2007 at 8:52 am
dcdave’s “print is dead” statement echoes not only Harold Ramis in Ghostbusters but ignores the central point in this debate: the technology of spreading information changes all the time, and will continue to change; it is the methods of gathering info and determining what is and isn’t news that have been fairly static for a few centuries but are finally in flux. and that’s a good thing. Right, Dr. Venkman?
January 30th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Feeling no risk at arguing semantics, if “print” means traditional media, then “print is dead” is solidly wrong statement. If “print” means the paper that leaves your fingers black, then it’s at least a possibly rushed statement.
And feeling no risk at expanding my continuing debate with Michael Hussey to another blog: do you just have a hard time dealing with the possibility that not every blog was meant to deal seriously with the issues of our time? Even you make some concessions with your frequent music posts.
If blogs were only written by pseudo-journalists, the craze never happens. One of several reasons for that is blogs don’t make money for an overwhelming percentage of their writers. Until the blog starts creating a living wage, most bloggers will just do it as a pasttime. I don’t know many people who interview political candidates as a pasttime.
For those that do, kudos. But to expect everyone to do that is silly. Sure, Sticks could probably do without several less writers to just comment on the news (you might start with me); Pushing Rope could probably do without so many Afghan Whigs posts.
Ultimately the blog is a reflection of the writer(s), and there’s only so much criticism you can lob at free expression (as long as no one is getting beat up).
That might be where the blog’s influence on traditional media services might be most fortunate – returning to a time when journalists were encouraged to offer an opinion. You can be fair and opinionated, contrary to the example of Fox News.
January 30th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
“Pushing Rope could probably do without so many Afghan Whigs posts.”
Ha! I got an email recently from someone saying she loved the Whigs posts.
Joel, one of the complaints from the lefty blogoshere during the Rachel flap was commenters at other blogs stating how bad the writing quality was. Joel, Pop Candy is a blog I read. It’s not political. It’s well done. I also love reading personal diaries by good writers.
I used to like Sticks of Fire in 2004. Not every post was political. I read Peer Review and defended them in these comments. I don’t agree with that blog’s ideology. I find it a good read.
Bad writing and dull subject matters equals boring blog.
Joel, you forget I was asked to write on that blog. Long before Tommy asked you kids. Tommy made it clear that all posts must somehow deal with Tampa news, culture and history. What amazes me is the bloggers at Sticks have such a short attention span that they can’t stay on those subject matters. Getting plastic surgery, buying a smoke or not liking a pizza doesn’t scream Tampa. Is someone at Sticks going to write about picking out belly button lint? I wouldn’t be shocked.
Joel, your criticism of my comments is like saying I don’t like basketball if I point out the Clippers are a bad team. It don’t wash. Now go run to a record store and buy a Whigs CD.
January 30th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Wow, this one totally derailed. I must say, it’s nice to see most of the attention slowly diverted away from me. However, a few quick thoughts in response to some of yours …
“The editor publicly slammed her bosses. That isn’t cool.”
Perhaps not. They weren’t too cool, either. They told me to be myself, then didn’t like what they got. Taking heat and losing face for the ripped story didn’t seem very appealing.
In hindsight, yes, the comment probably got me fired. (BTW, did someone out there actually say “score one for the old-school alt-weeklies”? Is this person happy that I’m now unemployed? Talk about shameful joy.)
What can I say? It’s done, and I’m sick of second-guessing my decisions. I suppose that after four and a half years, I still don’t understand the corporate world. Or perhaps don’t want to.
“If you’re going to do alt-weeklies, the LEAST you have to do is be able to cuss.”
Well, we certainly agree on this point. Enough said.
January 30th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
while suprised it went down the way it did, not shocked it happened.
January 31st, 2007 at 12:48 am
Mitzi, I’m sorry you got fired. You got a raw deal.
As for the comments going offthread: it’s one of the Stick of Fire writers defending that horrible blog. The same one that one of your former freelancers posted a fact-challenged piece about Orange. They just don’t like me for bringing negative attention to same fact-challenge blogger writing about how she plans on beating up homeless people on video camera.
Mitzi, what you did was tame compared to Tom McEwen’s sins. That man was writing postive columns about people he had long term business interests with. The Trib never public disclosed that. Even after the scandal became public.
I’m a blogger, but too many other bloggers are ready to throw stones at you without knowing the facts. Besides, last time I checked Tampa had bigger problems then a profanity word. How about rape victims being arrested.
I wish you well in whatever you persue.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:41 am
Before I keep derailing, I agree with Michael Hussey in regards to Mitzi – it’s a shame. I actually did read Orange most every week; I got a little tired of the clubbing pictures, but otherwise the material was refreshingly, well, fresh.
Back off track: “Bad writing and dull subject matters equals boring blog.”
I will not begrudge you this statement one bit. In several cases I’ll agree. There’s no self-righteous tone like your usual criticism; it’s hoenst and to the point.
Sometimes things do get decidedly un-Tampa over there, but you cited some pretty bad examples. The pizza happened to be from a restaurant in Tampa.
Heck, if it hadn’t just been a misguided and unsuccessful attempt to appear to be a friend of homeless people, the cigarette-buying could have been an interesting slice-of-life post. You learn a lot more about a city from day-to-day encounters with people than from the politicians.
I’d also like to point out that Sticks didn’t enter the thread until Michael mentioned it. It’s growing into an obsession, man.
As for the Whigs, I borrowed a copy of Gentleman from a friend a while back – it was kinf of boring. If there’s a better introduction to them though, I’m all ears.
January 31st, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Joel, I could say that you have a Pathological need to defend Sticks of Fire. The Stickheads always resort to the “the wasn’t a good post you cited” defense.
I actually been thinking about laying off Sticks. I already helped embarrass it in the blogosphere. I don’t feel like sending another flare up and have lefty bloggers inadvertently increase traffic and ad revenue.
Joel, I find you’re criticism of Gentlemen disturbing. Brian Eno has tainted you.
For the record: I like Eno’s work with Roxy Music. His production on U2’s Unforgetable Fire sounds muddled. The Joshua Tree production was superb.