Historical Records

Much to my amazement, the VCU library said they had all but six of the printed copies of the Richmond Music Journal. Since I did 12 a year from 1993 to early into 2005, that’s a lot of issues.

I was able to quickly supply electronic copies of three of the newer ones they were missing, and the other three I took to the Library of Virginia where they promise (I hope) not to lose them while they make microfilm copies of them for the VCU library.

While I was waiting for them to come get my precious papers, I paged through them. One of them, June 1997, claimed to be the biggest Journal ever. It was 40 pages, and so full of ads, it was unbelievable. I think I actually did bigger papers a few times after that, but then there was a long and rapid decline. Still, I was just amazed at how good and comprehensive the paper was in its heyday of 1994-1999.

In September 1999, I went to work for the Mechanicsville Local, which was a dream come true because my ambition in life since childhood was to work for a small community newspaper. I put out a weekly paper of 36 to 52 pages every Monday, and except for a sportswriter who did about 10 of the back pages, I wrote the whole thing.

I covered Mechanicsville and Hanover government with the same controversial intensity with which I covered local music in the ‘90s and managed to piss off a few readers and advertisers, just like I did on the Journal. The publisher, a woman from West Virginia with an accounting background and no journalism experience at all, wanted a shopper, an inoffensive paper that just raked in the advertising dollars and never generated any controversy, so after two years I was given the boot. Two-thirds of the rest of the staff soon followed me out the door after the paper was bought and sold repeatedly, and finally was eaten alive by Media General, the publishers of the evolving Times-Dispatch. Sigh. It was fun while it lasted, just like the Journal was.

In a fit of disillusionment, I tossed my more than 120 Locals, but I held on to the Journals. I’m glad Ray Bonis at VCU did, too. All those crazy stories and interviews and photographs of more than a decade of the local music scene will survive. I like to think that was the last good decade of local music, but old-timers always tell me it was the ‘70s, or maybe the ‘80s, or the time when the drinking age was still 18.

The other, obvious, thing I learned was it's better to own your own little paper and work for yourself. You won't make any money, but you'll have more control. And anyway, I found out after I left, the Local paid me nearly $10,000 a year less than they had the men who did the same job before me.