It’s official! Street Roots is changing its format to online
satire. We’ve given up on the idea of reporting real news. We’ve begged and
borrowed to fund our journalism department for far too long.
Newspapers are changing. Profit margins are down and Street
Roots can no longer afford to produce the quality content that readers have
come to expect.
With a changing media
environment and all of the cheap labor that exists on the Internet, we’ve
decided, who needs quality journalism, anyway? At least the kind where you spel
and fact check, talk to actual “news” sources and present an issue in an
educated manner.
We’re fairly confident that there’s a significant amount of
access to local news that already exists for free. For example, Byron Beck can
cover most of Portland’s art and entertainment, bloggers can carry local sports
coverage from their garages and government public relations departments will
write any hard news that needs to be covered.
Street Roots believes that by making up the news in each
edition of the newspaper, we’ll actually be able to give a more in-depth look
at what’s actually happening in Portland.
Local foundations have asked us, “How do you measure the
impact that your journalism has?” Our response to that is simple, “How about
measuring the impact not having any local journalism has?”
I’m going to quote myself (I love quoting myself) by saying,
“Producing a newspaper every two weeks that actually delivers engaging content
while helping more than 400-plus individuals experiencing homelessness and
poverty is overrated. We think we could just as easily help people by giving
the public a newspaper made up of inconsequential drivel that doesn’t actually
talk about solutions to problems facing our city. That’s why we’re really happy
to have consultants from the Portland Mercury and The Oregonian helping us
change formats.”
Please take a gander through our annual satire edition and let us know
what you think. If you like what you see, you can show your support with the
envelope we’ve attached in this edition of the newspaper. We’re going to need it.
It’s readers like you that make Street Roots what it is.
We humbly, yet very, very, very aggressively ask you today
to “Give! Please, for Pete’s sake, Give! Give a little, Give a lot, but Give!
We couldn’t do what we do without you. Oh, oh, it rhymes, rhymes. Why is this
paragraph still in quotes you ask? We don’t know.” It doesn’t change anything,
does it? We hope not. We do appreciate your support and that’s no laughing
matter. This isn’t even funny anymore? Was it ever? Stop, Israel. (Thinking to
myself.) Your last paragraph could easily have been the last.
Thank you for the love! Give! Please …
This article appears in 2013-04-01.