I have known that the mainstream media offered little in the way of a promising future my whole adult life—not for me, anyway, ever the misfit. But I had no idea how much trouble the American institution was really in until I read a 2021 article in The Atlantic by McKay Coppins about a capitalist superpredator devouring newsrooms like some kind of mythic monster. It’s called Alden Global Capital—that is, when it’s not being referred to as “a biblical plague of locusts” or “the lizard people” or “corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism.“
Founded by a pioneer of venture capitalism who reportedly told his son that life was a game whose winner would be determined based on how much money you had when you died, the media group buys newspapers the way a parasite infects the body. According to Coppins, upon buying a new paper they would “gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring as much cash as possible out of the enterprise until eventually enough readers cancel their subscriptions that the paper folds, or is reduced to a desiccated husk of its former self.” Alden’s plan was not to create a sustainable business model to support an institution whose continued existence is vital to the health of any free society. It was to murder it by sucking it dry. They regularly reduced newspapers to a staff of one single reporter, who would be shamelessly relegated to some (literal) attic or basement where they’d go on drowning in Post-it notes scrawled with tips for stories they’d never in a million years have the time to follow up on or write, until they either quit or were fired for telling the truth about their working conditions.
Reading this, I wept hot tears of rage and swore ANTIGRAVITY would avenge them with every minute of its continued existence as an independent—and politically conscious—publication. Such bravado is made possible by our poverty-as-independence approach, wherein editors and contributors alike scrape together a living elsewhere to avoid having the kind of expenses that require a capitalist overlord. As long as we survive, we are free.
The trouble is, we’re not surviving. The Alden Global Capitals of this world may not own this magazine, but some version of them owns just about everything else. That kind of voracious consumption has also been directed at the extinction of independent businesses, whose ad revenue is how we print our paper and pay our people. It is July, and the economy is bad, so advertisers are trying to pull ads for summer, bringing us closer to the day—at this rate, in the very near future—where we cannot continue to publish this magazine (contemplate, if you will, all those Louisiana election days without our companionship).
Research shows that most consumers of media have no idea how dire things have gotten. Anecdotally I’d say that’s true of our readers as well—I’ve corrected many under the misapprehension that the hair salon in the CBD that bears the same name is our office. Usually I manage to calmly clarify how far outside the realm of possibility that truly is, repressing my desire to break into hysterics, but it’s only a matter of time before I start responding more colorfully. As we face our demise, I have begun to realize that our venture has become unsustainable not only because we are starting to dip into the red, despite arguably having the leanest business model of any publication, anywhere. ANTIGRAVITY’s commitment to excellence requires us to give this publication time and attention, both of which are getting more expensive along with everything else, and we’re running out of energy. Frankly, we’re starting to crack.
In many communities, grief over the loss of their local publications persists. John Temple, former editor of a Colorado newspaper that was shut down not long before its sister publication, The Denver Post, was gutted by Alden Global Capital, writes with sadness of the connections severed within communities that lose their local publications. With the benefit of hindsight, he wonders if there was something more that could be done had they tried to think outside the box. As he puts it, “instead of inventing something new, instead of risking a different kind of failure, we killed a paper with a 150-year history.” Temple urges those still standing not to make the same mistakes. In considering the future of local media, he suggests, “we’re going to need to be more radical… because the alternative of losing local media entirely is unacceptable.”
ANTIGRAVITY’s business model is already radical. What money we have we distribute as horizontally as possible, and we provide high quality reported features, political analysis, and culture writing outside the tedious closed circuit of the transaction. You can have ANTIGRAVITY any time, and pretty much anywhere, you need it. If you want to return the favor, you can go to one of the singular New Orleans businesses that support us, knowing that your money will not be plummeting into the abyss of corporate profits, never to be seen again. Rest assured our commitment to community means we won’t be going down without a fight. For the next few months, we’ll be pounding the pavement and selling ads to find a way to stay alive. But we can’t fight for ourselves if you don’t fight for us. If you are as committed to our survival as we are to yours, we need you to let us know. As always, please consider actually telling the businesses that advertise with us that doing so makes you want to spend money there. We’ve made it easy and compiled an Advertiser Directory in the back of every print issue. And if you have other ideas for how you’d like to plug in, don’t be shy—we want to hear them.
If we do find a way to turn the corner, to resist extermination by lizard people and hungry locusts as I believe in my heart of hearts we can, I promise that we’ll only get better. Just look at this July issue: 64 pages of in-depth, local coverage even in the doldrums of a New Orleans summer! We’ll distribute more funds to the brilliant and deserving artists who find homes within these pages, and find new ways to wield the power of the pen. We’ll take our cues from Bertolt Brecht, who wrote, “art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” —Holly Devon
illustration by Sadie Wiese1The print edition erroneously credits this illustration to Laura Frizzell. ANTIGRAVITY regrets the error
June 2025 cover by Kallie Tiffault
