http://www.baywindows.com/inde.....8;id=99195

And far better informed experts than you, or me, are placing blame on how the company was put together in the first place: people like Evans at Rivendell, and the writers at Washington City Paper, and Gay City News, and Edge Boston, and the former publisher of SoVo, and the list goes on. Your calculator and single opinion is no match for all those voices. Here’s some more:

http://www.gaycitynews.com/art.....952770.txt

http://www.gaycitynews.com/art.....792944.txt

“Chapter 7 bankruptcy – liquidation vs. reorganization…”

Chapter 7 is liquidation.
Chapter 11 is reoganization.

Chapter 7 = Party Over.

52 issues.
Assume a really robust ad page price of $2000 per ad page.
Assume 25 ad pages per issue (conglomerated of all ad types).
50,000 x 52 = $2,600,000.00 gross revenue. High estimate.

Its a free paper.

Printing costs are at least $750,000.
Distribution costs are at least $500,000.
Circulation costs are minimal, because its free – but still, for advertisers lets assume its $100,000.
Offices are maybe (low) $150,000, but I suspect more.
SG&A, again lets be cheap here: $200,000.
Other odd expenses, again lets be simple and cheap… $100,000.

So far we’ve spent $1.8 million.

That leaves a grand total of $800,000 for salaries, health coverage, travel… and all the other stuff that would probably make these expenses much higher (especially SG&A, and especially if you toss in legal). Throw in running a web site and voila! You’re out of business. This is what real media businesses (not staff with dreams of grandeur) face. The costs of going web suck the profit out of the old media balance sheet. Its a burn-rate game and the odds favor burning out.

Anyone worth their LGBT salt in DC knows the second viewpoint to be accurate.

And your emphasis on marketing is interesting, given that the paper’s editorial reputation was the most urgent surgery required in recent years, and is the basis for any pub’s ability to market itself.

Did ya see any Jeff Gannon guest editorials lately? Nope, you didn’t. See more federal and city policy ink recently? Yes, you did. The editorial triage was underway, but probably too late to correct the business hole dug at Windows inception and accelerated with additional purchases, as Evans of Rivendell pointed out.

Sure you would have loved that for yourself, Lady Ga-ass, so that’s why you think it’s ok for gay journalists. (I would add “not” but I don’t do 1990s stuff). You sound like an ambassador from the Republic of Douchebaggery, what you wouldn’t like is ok for others. Maybe you should have been part of Windows mgmt.

“…Evans, whose company buys advertising for the gay media around the nation, insists the issue isn’t advertising…Window Media has been in trouble for years, said Evans, who said he and others expected the publications to be shuttered years ago. “I’m surprised it (closing of Window Media publications) didn’t happen sooner,” he said. “Window Media has been through this process of gobbling up and buying everybody,” he said. “Now the chickens have come home to roost.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlant.....99719.html

So, folks, we have another tale of egos (David Unger, Chris Crain, William Waybourn) wanting a bunch of brand names on their wall, pushing their luck until OURS ran out as a community. And the workers are left with a note on the door, locks changed. No recourse since Windows management stopped a union attempt. See page 3, “Blade Employees Battle for Union Recognition”

http://www.newsguild.org/gr/pdf/010615.pdf

Just because the money is gone, doesn’t mean you won’t see new “front-men” for the same people involved with Avalon or Window, taking advantage of anyone they can find – again!

For those who wish to read the aforementioned article…

Actually this all was started by him. This is just the latest troubling news in Windows story. Debt loaded up, then a self-hating conservative male prostitute shoved in our faces as an editorial columnist, then they pissed off every local community figure of note, treated beloved staffers not in the best ways, now this, bad scene from the start. Check it:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.....p?id=23570

Shitty way to treat your employees. Lock the doors and throw a sign on the door saying please bring a box for your shit, the implication being that there will be plenty of security on hand to protect the executives from any backlash their employees may want to deliver. That’s almost as bad as when Polaroid fired me by sending a fax to my home office few years back.

I’m glad I work for myself now. While it is often a struggle and a headache (usually both at the same time) I don’t have to worry about this kinda shit anymore.

I was only able to meet my partner due to a loophole. For a brief period of time, maybe a couple of months, the paper permitted post office boxes to be posted in the personals section. This allowed me to receive letters.

However, they soon changed that policy, requiring phone calls to a 1-900 number that cost $2.99 per minute billed to one’s credit card. Imagine, you are looking for a partner and have to pay $2.99 a minute just to hear some stranger’s voice. A conversation might run you $20. Needless to say, I did not recommend the gay newspapers to anyone that I knew. They became completely useless for the purpose of connecting almost overnight. All because they were intent upon extracting the maximum amount of funds from lonely gays. Since the gay newspaper no longer served any practical purpose, it became obsolete. The papers were grasping, greedy and 95% advertising anyway, due to the myopic and selfish policies instituted by the empty suits.

A CEO may know something about business. But keep them away from the product, unless you want the product to be mangled.

Not true. Individual organs of the publisher may have been making money but if the overall company isn’t profitable there’s only so long that the company can continue to operate. I have no idea whether the Blade or David was making a profit but the company obviously wasn’t if it was forced into receivership.

I feel a twinge of nostalgia for SoVo. Back in the day when I was trying my hand at freelancing they were the first big outfit that bought one of my pieces.