Man Bites Dog, Paper Sues Readers

The sky has been falling on the newspaper business for some time, as revenue and readers migrate to the Web.

But one alternative weekly, Washington City Paper, isn't taking this downturn lying down. The D.C. weekly is fighting back by "suing" its own readers and filing for bankruptcy to buy time to "figure out the Web."

The paper's press release cites "diminished staff and the flagging confidence of its readers" and seeks to "continue to publish under court protection from its readers, who have wielded an unreasonable degree of power over the publication's future."

City Paper, which has 680,000 readers, even went so far as to post a four-page "bankruptcy filing."

The document details the various woes the 26-year old paper encountered in the Internet age, including being forced to reduce its 5,000-word cover stories for conducive web-reading. It also describes venturing into service journalism to lure back advertisers and the backlash this brought on from readers.

"'Hipsters' who viewed the service journalism as a sellout to corporate America tended to leave their expressions of disapproval on the Web sites of other publications, thus denying City Paper the Web-page views ("pageviews") that are the currency of the new media landscape."

City Paper, or should we say, the debtor, filed under Chapter 86 of the Content Bankruptcy Code under the Alternative Weekly Provision, in the United States Bankruptcy Court of the Fourth Estate, which of course does not exist.

The filing also lists injunctions against retailers that refuse to carry City Paper's distribution racks and to bar an entity described simply as "monkeyrotica" from leaving comments on the newspaper's website.

The accompanying FAQ section of its bankruptcy filing ticks off the cutbacks this and other newspapers are operating under in the harsher climate.

"Recent changes in the economy and readership have made numerous elements of content production unsustainable as currently practiced. Among those elements are expenses for travel, expenses for court document fees, expenses for listings databases, expenses for notebooks, expenses for notebook-related accessories..." And the list goes on and on.

"Who's responsible for this content bankruptcy?" the FAQ section asks. And the answer is simply, "You."

Andrea Chalupa