The Real Paper

The Real Paper was a Boston alternative weekly newspaper with a circulation of 50,000. It ran from August 2, 1972, to June 18, 1981, often devoting space to counterculture issues of the early 1970s. The offices were located on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Cambridge Phoenix began October 9, 1969, founded by Jeffrey Tarter. In the summer of 1972 editor Harper Barnes was fired in a journalistic dispute with owner Richard Misner. Most of the staff went on strike. During the second week an agreement was made which resolved the strike without Barnes being reinstated. Soon afterwards, on a Friday, the staff was ordered out of the offices and informed of the purchase of the paper by Stephen Mindich, owner of the more established (and more commercial) competitor Boston After Dark. Mindich purchased the title to publish as The Boston Phoenix with his staff (few Cambridge staff were retained, the notable exception being sportswriter George Kimball) hoping to eliminate his direct competition. Because of the solidarity developed during the strike, the Cambridge group immediately went into meetings and decided to continue the original aims and objectives of The Cambridge Phoenix by creating The Real Paper as an employee-run collective. Bob L. Oliver, The Real Paper's founding art director, was responsible for editorial and advertising graphic design from July 1972 to July 1973. Oliver designed the paper's logo based on the original Phoenix type style.

Le Anne Schreiber, writing in The New York Times (January 3, 1983) described the internal conflicts:

Paul Solman and Thomas Friedman are in the business of providing alternatives. In the early 1970s they were among the founding editors of the now-defunct Real Paper, Boston's well-regarded alternative newspaper. Later in the decade they both became producers at WGBH-TV, Boston's alternative to the networks... Lessons emerge from case histories of actual companies and individuals. Although it is told without hand-wringing, the saddest of these stories is what happened to the staff of The Real Paper when the associate publisher's wife moved in with his best friend and colleague, the publisher. Lines were drawn, and suddenly everybody was a close friend of somebody who was now the enemy of another close friend.

In a traditional organization, the conflicts that arose would have been solved by firings or resignations; but at The Real Paper, which had been set up as an egalitarian business - with every employee holding an equal number of shares as long as he or she worked for the paper - there was no way to settle or to escape internal conflict. The fact that the paper had become profitable meant that no one wanted to leave and relinquish shares; but by staying together, given the bitter factionalism that had developed, the staff insured that the paper would become progressively less profitable.