History
The paper was founded as an alternative newspaper in May 1967 by Pierre Coupey, Milton Acorn, Dan McLeod, Stan Persky, and others, and originally it operated as a collective.
In April 1967: "The proposed paper is christened the Georgia Straight over beer at the Cecil Hotel. The name aims to play on the fact that the weather forecasts will offer free publicity: they're always issuing gale warnings for the Georgia Strait." —The first issue appeared on May 5, 1967 and cost a dime. It was originally a biweekly. On May 12 Dan was taken away in a paddy wagon and jailed for three hours for "investigation of vagrancy." College Printers refused to print the second issue, but an alternative was found.
The paper was raided and fined by the Vancouver Police for publishing obscenities, and was often banned from distribution for its criticism of the local police and politicians, especially Mayor Tom Campbell. Those controversies ended in the 1970s, as the paper moved to become a more conventional news and entertainment weekly, albeit with a progressive editorial slant.
Often known simply as The Straight, this large "tabloid" format unconventional publication is delivered to newsboxes, post-secondary schools, public libraries and a large variety of other locations around Metro Vancouver every Thursday.
In October 2003, the provincial government sent The Straight a bill totalling more than $1 million for outstanding provincial sales tax. In British Columbia, print publications must have at least 25 per cent editorial content to be considered a newspaper, and to qualify for exemption from PST on printing bills. The extensive "Time Out" listing of the paper, detailing the what and where of virtually every public event in the city, was judged to be advertising - pushing the paper below the required thresholds for a newspaper.
As reported by the CBC, publisher Dan McLeod said this re-interpretation of the rules was a politically motivated attempt to silence a persistent critic.
We're the only paper that is consistently critical of the government in our editorials week after week, and we're the only paper that's being fined a million dollars," he said. "So I put two and two together.
However, not everyone agreed with McLeod's interpretation of events and pointed out that The Straight had a significantly lower editorial-to-advertising ratio than many other alternative and university papers. This highly public battle garnered considerable attention, and the BC government later issued a statement reversing their decision, stating "clearly the Georgia Straight is a newspaper..."
As noted by McLeod, the paper is known as a vocal critic of government, notably the former Liberal government of Gordon Campbell.
An attempt in the mid-1990s at publishing a second Straight newspaper in Calgary, Alberta, the Calgary Straight, was brief.
Bob Geldof worked as a music journalist for the Georgia Straight in the 1970s before he returned to Ireland and joined the Boomtown Rats.
2006 The Straight moves into its own completely renovated four-storey building at 1701 West Broadway. Architect J. Kerrigan Sproule upgrades a commercial building constructed in 1948 by adding one more level of underground parking and a fourth-floor amenity space with spectacular views of the city. The fourth-floor addition includes a kitchen, lunch room, exercise room, large patio area, and a shower for employees. (We hope the cyclists make use of it.) Extensive landscaping, including 11 trees and various shrubs, transforms the Pine Street side of the site and the back alley. The emblematic Mr. Wuxtry appears on a flag hanging on the Broadway side of the building. The Straight's move comes as this section of the Broadway corridor experiences significant growth with the addition of several new restaurants and retail outlets. —A readership survey conducted on behalf of The Georgia Straight in 2007 found that:
In its core market of the City of Vancouver, 61 percent of all adults 18+ reported reading a copy of the Georgia Straight within the past six issues. By comparison, 48% of respondents indicated reading the Vancouver Sun within the past six issues (past week). The Province followed with 41% reading a copy within the past six issues (past week). The free daily, 24 Hours, had a weekly (past six issue) readership of 38%, followed by Metro at 25%. —The Georgia Straight however is a weekly newspaper so comparing six weeks of issues to one week of issues is not the best comparison.
Read more about this topic: The Georgia Straight
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)