We launched the West End Phoenix ten years ago at the Gladstone Hotel.
asserted
We → launch → Hotel
The Woodchoppers Band marched our kids across the ballroom carrying greasy stacks of the inaugural issue featuring stories about the long-departed Palace Arms, a comic by Alex Lifeson and Casey McGlynn, and a news item about a scoundrel who was leaving luncheon meat in parks for neighbourhood animals.
asserted
who → march → animals
The first thing readers did was raise the front page to their faces, sniffing it like fiends craving a lost inky drug.
asserted
readers → do → drug
Some brought the page closer still, cackling while wrapping it like a mummified bandage around their heads, while another person held it flapping above them like the wings of a mythical bird — a Phoenix, even — its rustling reminding us that newspapers also have their own sound.
asserted
newspapers → bring → sound
Over beers and whiskeys and alley weed, and at the end of an evening we’d dreamed up twelve months earlier, which is when we decided to make a paper while in the collective hollow of media’s massive digital wave, people rode home in taxis and Ubers giggling at the smudged jet black on their fingertips.
asserted
people → dream → fingertips
Words on screens blink, disappear.
asserted
Words → blink → screens
But newspaper writing sticks to your skin.
asserted
writing → stick → skin
When we started WEP, which is what everyone calls it, the suddenly abandoned print lane — not by the paper you are now reading, mind you — meant that our work was built, at least in the beginning, in a kind of vacuum.
asserted
work → start → vacuum
In 2017, thousands of community papers had closed and most publishers had fled to digital’s glass aquarium.
asserted
publishers → close → aquarium
Writers’ rates dipped embarrassingly low, and free media like daily subway tabloids devalued the kind of journalism that readers were used to supporting.
asserted
readers → dip → that
Alt weeklies collapsed when ad revenue migrated online, and reliable information systems were replaced by bad actors on META and other platforms fabricating dangerous lookalike journalism held to outlaw standards, a condition that continues to pollute the news cycle and compromise the veracity of reporting, to say nothing of putting fascists in power.
asserted
that → collapse → power
Because we were, essentially, trying to make something of value that you could hold in your hands, there wasn’t any particular valour in our vocation.
uncertain
you → try → vocation
But with the corporate consolidation of media properties and Jeff Bezos buying, then eviscerating, the Washington Post, starting an independent newspaper took on greater weight.
asserted
starting → buy → weight
Once we were in it, turning back seemed like an unacceptable choice.
asserted
turning → turn → choice
At first, the climate of our times meant that bringing the community press back to city neighbourhoods would be a lonely pursuit, but, almost instantly, we were enmeshed in a gathering of boosters and supporters — author Margaret Atwood wrote us our first donor’s cheque — and delivery volunteers, many of whom, it turned out, also worked for other media.
asserted
it → mean → media
We had reporters from CBC, Vice, ESPN, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail signing on, motivated to help get print across the city into mailboxes and homes.
asserted
reporters → have → mailboxes
Families with young children who, ten years later, have grown and are on their way to university and college, slung delivery bags across shoulders.
asserted
who → grow → shoulders
Ageless volunteers like Betty Ann Mackenzie, a senior’s yoga instructor, never missed a route, no matter the weather.
asserted
volunteers → miss → weather
One year, and despite consternation about whether anyone would be available to help, we delivered the paper on a Boxing Day morning; hundreds of volunteers tromping into a glorious December snowfall to get the news out.
asserted
hundreds → help → news
One patron came forward and offered to pay for our printing.
asserted
patron → come → printing
Another offered to support an investigative series to help honour a late friend, the social justice lawyer and advocate, Joe Burke.
asserted
Another → offer → friend
Musicians said they would play our fundraiser for a gifted subscription and a few writers offered their work for free, a gesture that we would not let stand (we pay everyone for their work).
asserted
we → say → work
In a time of distressed media narratives, WEP was a wagon that people seemed willing to haul uphill.
asserted
people → seem → that
Because traditional community journalism, in our time, is something people remember the way you remember what you once saw from the window of your parents’ car on a drive into the country — a field of horses, a barn engulfed in flames, an autumn moon — we were free to reimagine it.
asserted
we → remember → it
Instead of using software to build the word grid of our crossword, we enlisted a poet, Paul Vermeersch, which is what anyone should do when you want to make something just a little bit better.
asserted
something → use → what
For the first handful of years, novelist Claudia Dey wrote our classifieds, poetically addressing a reader’s need to free themselves of that lamp that no longer worked in their repainted room.
asserted
that → write → room
And, each issue, novelist Heidi Sopinka beautifully explored the animal world in our beloved Pet of the Month feature.
asserted
Sopinka → explore → feature
Once, she wrote about a pit bull she’d met on the grounds of West Lodge Towers, the apartment complex to which we devoted an entire issue.
asserted
we → write → issue
Her story of the owner and his pet ended up transforming the person’s life, and, one day, their psychotherapist wrote to tell us that he’d framed the story and put it in his office as a reminder of the dignity earned and value gained from having one’s story told.
asserted
story → end → dignity
Another time, the Justice Department wrote to say how Eternity Martis’s pivotal series “Black in the Jury Box” would be used in their efforts to address racism in the justice system.
asserted
series → write → system
We never dreamed our scrappy paper would produce such things.
asserted
paper → dream → things
When I worked, briefly, for the Yellowknifer newspaper — one of the inspirations to start WEP — publisher Bruce Valpy used to say, “As long as someone is snipping a story from the paper and putting it on their fridge in yellowing Scotch tape, I know we’re doing OK.”
asserted
we → work → tape
You can’t, or won’t, extract an online story and stick it to your wall, which is what countless readers do with our covers, drawn by wonderful artists like Chief Ladybird and Elicser Eliot, and if one digital story flicks over to the next like a parade of clucking fowl, newspaper pages hang around.
asserted
pages → extract → fowl
WEPs remain on a household’s front bench, living room table, or, inevitably, bathroom basket, for three-to-four weeks, read front to back.
asserted
WEPs → remain → back
You don’t need to charge your phone or replace its damaged screen to read a newspaper.
asserted
You → need → newspaper
You don’t need to lay it in rice.
asserted
You → need → rice
A paper demands that you pick it up, fold it, tear it, stain it with lunch, or roll it into a long cylinder.
asserted
you → demand → cylinder
It’s a baseball bat and you’re Alejandro Kirk.
asserted
you → ’ → ?
It’s wrapping for a gift you’re giving a beloved aunt.
asserted
you → wrap → aunt
It’s a mat on which you might train your puppy.
uncertain
you → ’ → puppy
…and 8 more, not listed.
The Aporia
