'Coreweekly' Closes up Shop

By: Nekoro Gomes Most college student journalists who apply to newspapers typically hope for freelance gigs or small-time positions that may or may not evolve into an internship or a job after graduation.

So when University of Wisconsin-Madison student Nathan Comp saw an advertisement in his local Capital Times for journalists to staff a new youth-oriented weekly aimed at the city's college student and downtown populations, he expected yet another low-level offer. But after spending six hours meeting with publisher Catherine Nelson, Comp was floored when he was offered a job as editor for the weekly. "I had never even submitted a resume," he says.

Too bad the gig didn't last.

Coreweekly, an alternative youth pub backed by Capital Times Inc., publisher of the Wisconsin State Journal and the Capital Times, was shuttered by its corporate parent on Jan. 26, shortly after publishing its 75th issue. While some may have been surprised that it lasted that long, the paper's sudden termination was a shock felt by the staff from Comp all the way down.

Tim Zigelski, a Coreweekly freelancer, says, "We had just had our Christmas party and everything seemed to be going well. I was really impressed with the direction of the newspaper." He adds that a lot of the editorial staff felt the same way: that Coreweekly had achieved an editorial voice and a growing readership with its coverage of the city's nightlife and music scene.

It had certainly come a long way from Aug. 26, 2004, when Coreweekly's first issue was released by a staff of college students and recent graduates who had never met each other, worked on a full-time publication, or even had office supplies. Clayton Frink, the Capital Times' president and one of the figures responsible for pulling the plug, explains, "It really just didn't get revenue traction. We thought the product was pretty good, we just never got enough advertising support to sustain the publication."

And in Madison, Wis., a city with a reputation for progressive politics and independent publications, the corporate daily-owned "alternative" weekly had its fair share of critics. "They wanted the concert promoters, they wanted the bars, they wanted the restaurants, they wanted the tattoo parlors, and they tried to come up with an editorial voice that would speak to that market," says Marc Eisen, editor in chief of Wisconsin alternative newspaper Isthmus. "It wasn't an editorial vision, it was a marketing vision."

Former Coreweekly writers like Comp and Zigelski balk at the image of their former paper as the product of a big, bad corporate behemoth, when in reality the weekly had a bare-bones staff and a shoestring budget. "The fact that it was owned by a corporate newspaper, I never really sensed that at all," says Zigelski. "It just seemed like a separate entity ? and for one thing, it didn't pay that well."