The colour of alternative money

Will the real scum-sucking pigs at the AAN please stand up?

COMMENTARY by PHILIP PREVILLE

It seems that no one, not even the alternative press, is immune to intellectual dishonesty.

This past weekend, the Mirror hosted the annual convention of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), an organization which brings the Mirror, Hour and Voir together with the likes of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Toronto's Now magazine and the Village Voice. The Mirror's membership, however, became the centre of a massive rift in the AAN, the likes of which has not been seen in a long time.

The controversy surrounded the Mirror's recent partnership with Quebecor and its bilious owner, Pierre Péladeau. An AAN bylaw states that no member paper may be owned by a daily newspaper; Quebecor, of course, publishes the Journal de Montréal. But ownership has become a murky issue within the AAN itself: once a small group of individual papers with individual owners, the AAN is fast becoming a new millionaires' club. Stern Publishing, which owns the Voice, now counts nine AAN papers under its wing; Phoenix-based New Times Inc. owns seven. As a whole, alternative weeklies--which have always decried the evils of the profit principle--now find themselves burdened with the weight of tremendous profitability.

The AAN's board of directors, sensing that there was more dogma than principle in the no-daily clause, moved to strike it from the record. In the ensuing debate, New Times Inc. executive editor Mike Lacey, armed with material provided to him by Now magazine's Michael Hollett, called daily owners "scum-sucking pigs," and proceeded to quote some of Péladeau's more disturbing public comments--stuff about women, Jews, the usual Péladeau fare--to support his claim. AAN members voted to keep the no-daily clause intact.

With that out of the way, attention turned to exactly where, when and how the convention's gracious hosts would be hoisted on our own petard. After an agonizing hour and a half of invective thinly veiled by parliamentary language, the Mirror received a stay of execution. The matter is to be decided in Washington D.C. next year, by which time Hollett and Lacey may have expanded both their empires and, by extension, their duplicity.

Truth be told, it's Péladeau's money they fear as much as his views. The entire convention was a battle among magnates for control of an industry, dressed up in rhetoric about "what's good for journalism." For all anyone knows, "scum-sucking pig" might very well be an appropriate description of Pierre Péladeau's character. Certainly the AAN is a private club and it can kick the Mirror out if it wants to. Ultimately, however, the label "alternative" is earned through the content you provide, not the person who bankrolls you. And the fact remains that scum-sucking pigs come in all shapes and sizes, not just daily owners. It would not be surprising to discover that many such swine currently root away at the bosom of the AAN itself.