Bakersfield's Blackboard Free Press dies... again - By N.L. Belardes
A moment of silence, please...
I received an email from Richard Bramer today informing me that The Blackboard Free Press will remain six feet under.
Read on:
Nick:
I regret to inform you, the readers of your blog and Bakersfield at large that Jason and I have spoken at length and cannot find an amicable way of resurrecting the Blackboard.
Thanks to everyone who offered their help and my apologies for not mentioning each of you by name. I've spoken to dozens of people who were volunteering their time and effort to the project. Perhaps at some time in the future we can try this again, but personally, I'm moving on to other projects for now.
God bless
Richard Bramer
Curious, I then asked, "Why not start up another paper under another name?"
Bramer responded:
Another paper? I don't really see the point. Other papers exist and will probably be struggling to survive. I didn't want to just start any old paper, I wanted to help with the survival of a Bakersfield icon, so to speak.
Flowers and wreaths can be sent to The Bard of Bakersfield. Maybe he'll write a trucker song about it.
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Saturday, December 16, 2006.
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I believed from Richard's meeting and from what Nick printed on the website he really wanted to bring something good back to the community. A paper with good content that would grow and give people something to look forward to. I imagine the Blackboard has been sold to the Californian already so the old editor can get out of his debts. It was common gossip he owed all kinds of money on the Blackboard (as well as sent out emails about problems with his personal life - I can imagine how many people knew about his personal life because I got forwarded them by a friend. How embarassing and unprofessional.) If The Californian takes over, The Blackboard will turn into another Mas or Southwest/Northwest Voice. Just what Bakersfield needs. Far from a free press. Probably it will just die now though and we'll keep seeing papers that go nowhere, like all of the other ones that have blew through town.
I don't care in the end. I liked the Blackboard better before it turned into into a pot platform and vanity project. Good riddance to the paper that went down the tubes. But sad that the Blackboard is gone. It was part of history here. But so much for history and tradition. This is just another example of how much Bakersfield sucks. People don't support each other, and especially artists.
Karma will take care of everything in the end. Bakersfield is not ready for an underground press paper that will actually last due to small hearted and greedy people. Just sign me "pissed off"
this just stinks. why am i not surprised? i don't even want to know the details... good try, bramer, i imagine. you wrote some good pieces for the blackboard back in the old days. i know people were excited about this thing continuing, & that was sure nice to see, but oh well, forget it, jake (richard): it's bakersfield.
best wishes to you & to nick & readers from me, the creator of the blackboard paper (nov 2001-jun 2004)... as if anyone cares anymore, and so be it; let's all move on & i for one will focus on the positives... though damn, i wish there were someplace to write besides blogs! the feel of real newsprint can't be beat. :)
btw, i was upset last night when i got home from out of town & read this... thank you, nick, for keeping us all updated on "the latest"! and last night, i didn't give appropriate credit to jason r for printing the bbd for two years. and again, thanks to richard bramer for wanting it to continue... i agree that if he were able to continue publishing, it would have preserved a "bakersfield icon," not just have been the alt-press du jour (having said this, best wishes to all of them that try!)... i guess there's a reason for everything & this isn't meant to be at this time! r.i.p, blackboard. -jenny
Damn.
You could sign me "pissed off" as well...
I don't think there is anything I could say that wasn't already said by 'anonymous"...
The last thing Jason deserves is sympathy from anyone. We all make our beds, now Jason needs to lie in his, even though he would prefer that everyone get together and buy him another bed-but this one with satin sheets-just so he can soil it again. Sorry, no thanks.
The best thing to do now is move on. Get back to the business of writing, painting, drawing, sculpting, acting, self-promoting, posing, or whatever it is that you do that is part of "our scene".
I'm sorry if that last graph sounded cold...Just shaking off a little bitterness and frustration...There is a new alt press in town, although I haven't read it yet, I'll make it a point to pick it up.
Something else to think about is this- empty shoes can always use filling. If the latest alt press farts out, you can always start your own!
-Jaded Creative Hustler
I agree, folks who are unhappy with alt press of any kind could start their own. Why not? A new icon is always in need of development. Just look at Fresno Famous, though now they've been sold to the Fresno Bee.
Just goes to show you the validity of online multi-user blog development in conjunction with a paper press. If you have media wanting to purchase what you do, then you know you're reaching people MSM wants to reach. Thus niche markets...
You never know what the future holds.
I am seeing a lot of anger at Jason Ricketts on here. Is he the only one to blame for the failure of the Blackboard?
Or are we all as a community?
As a contributor of The Blackboard and long time confidant of Jason’s, here's what I'm going to point out since I know facts rather than speculation.
I love how the first anonymous individual says no one supports local artists, and then tries to tear apart Jason – another fellow artist – with speculation and pointing out his one weak moment. If anything that’s what I hate about Bakersfield, since it seems to be a repeating theme here. Jenny and Jason tried to do something good in this community, both did a tremendous thing, and created five years of success at it. When Richard Bramer gets put in his place after trying to steal the Blackboard, the anonymous poster snipes at Jason’s single weakest moment, makes comment on a number of things he or she knows nothing about, and ignores Jason’s three years of strength. How small!
Should we even go through the five years of material accumulated by the Blackboard? Dozens of interviews with musicians, artists, movers and shakers, and people in the film industry? Jello Biafra, Mike Ness, Dave Alvin, and on and on. The fact Ed Jagels talked to the Blackboard when he wouldn't talk to the Rolling Stone or the Californian (a fact that even stung Robert Price when he made comment of it on his blog). I recall most of that publishing was done under Jason’s tenure. The anonymous poster hit on Jason's one weak moment with introducing his personal life and divorce into the newsletter, but I also remember Jason admitting how unprofessional it was and apologizing for it. I know Jason feels bad about that; I can hear it in his voice when he talks about it.
Here are the facts the anonymous poster knows nothing about.
The Californian is not getting the Blackboard, nor will it ever. Jason turned them down when they offered him money, and turned them down again when they came around after he closed the business down and tried to get a hold of whatever assets they could. I know for a fact he is handling the debts on his own. Jason stresses on the debt the most in the wake of the newspaper's closing.
The marijuana platform was Jason's ex-wife's decision, and one he fought. I recall the many conversations I had with him and how he struggled to overcome that decision, like turning to porn or 1-900 numbers like the last pages in the LA Weekly. I think he chose the lesser of two evils by maintaining the marijuana advertising. Unfortunately, that was where the money was, it locked him into “illegitimate advertising,” and, in my opinion, helped bring about the downfall of the newspaper since no “legitimate” advertiser would touch the newspaper with all the marijuana ads. Jason did what he could to keep a free press in a community that honestly doesn't support its artists.
I don’t know of any “vanity projects” the anonymous poster talks about, since The Blackboard was all about promoting work within the community, like Nick Belardes’s novel The Lords of Bakersfield, art showings, music gigs, book signings and on and on. Perhaps the anonymous poster doesn’t have any hard work to promote, so it would be easy to label an article about other people’s work a “vanity project.”
The facts are simple, and could be traced through the email communications Jason forwarded to me (usually with a smiley face: Jason found it more funny than bothersome). Richard Bramer bought a business license stating he had a newspaper called The Blackboard and then wrongly assumed he owned the infamous independent everyone knows and loves, a difference of night and day. This was obvious when he posted on this blog asking for the archives. Jason made sure Richard knew he was stealing newspaper’s intellectual property, but also offered to turn the whole newspaper over to Richard in hopes that he would continue it, with the understanding the printer got paid. Richard wanted no part of the debt, a very real portion of the whole business, and Jason called off the discussions and asked Richard to quit contacting him. Richard then started harassing Jason, leveling accusations of squeezing him for money, kicking puppies and lots of non sequitur nonsense. Debt is a very real portion of the whole newspaper. One can’t pick and choose what portions of a business to be responsible for.
I'm glad Jason stood up to Richard, if anything, just to protect the integrity of the defunct newspaper. I feel he wanted to leech off the reputation that Jenny and Jason built from scratch. Nor does he want to put in the hard work Jenny and Jason did to build a newspaper from the ground up, as he stated in another post when asked about starting a new newspaper. I'm sure Richard told everyone he had the best intentions, but if that were true, he would start his own newspaper to promote the arts, theater and politics, rather than try to steal someone else’s hard work. I think Richard prematurely made a press release to Nick’s blog stating he was the editor of The Blackboard without investigating what it would take to legitimately be the editor and owner, and when Jason stood up to him, he threw a fit.
I also don’t understand everyone who attacks Jason for shutting the newspaper down. Could it be that we have a bunch of people who look for something for free and want to put nothing into it, other than getting their articles published verbatim, spelling and grammatical errors included? I know no one has contacted Jason to ask his side of the story on this (although Jason has made it next to impossible for anyone to contact him – ahem, Jason, I’m clicking my tongue at you on that!), no one has stepped up to offer to help with the debt, and only takes turns taking potshots and sideline quarterbacking. Maybe this community doesn’t deserve a free press, and it can stay locked into an ignorant realm of not supporting the arts, anonymously sniping at the one or two people who have the balls to put their real names on a project, and whining when it finally shuts down from anemia.
Everyone says Fresno is worse than Bakersfield, but Fresno has a free press that prints a color paper every month for more than ten years. Why is that? Take a look at the comments on this post – including this one – and you’ll see why.
The only place Jason Ricketts spoke out about the closure of the Blackboard Free Press was here on Paperback Writer: (Read)
Great comment about the sacrifices people make for the sake of community.
I think the attacks on Jason that were included in some of the above posts were over the top and largely the product of supposition and hearsay. I also agree wholeheartedly with the anonymous poster that the irony of lamenting a community of artists that don't support each other is thick indeed.
However, that same anonymous poster also included some discussion of my motives, which neither he nor Jason, nor even my own family can truly know. Those are, to date, still ensconced within my own noggin. Some of them I don't know myself. But let me say this:
Jason wanted me, personally, to assume his debt. I told him I would not. I told him I would re-organize the Blackboard as a not-for-profit and get his outstanding debt scheduled. The fact is, I have spoken to many debtors and they are always ready to go along with that plan. I have every confidence that the Blackboard's and Jason's debts can be scheduled and paid off over time by the paper. My plan to Jason was to do exactly that.
Jason's stand was, no, YOU pay it, and I'll sign off the whole paper. I told him repeatedly mine was not an interest in a paper, but in the survival of a Bakersfield icon. It was my repeated efforts to convince him of that fact that he once referred to as 'harassment'. Upon use of the word, our email conversation ended. I noted, however, that my supposed 'harassment' was answered by him, email by email. It began to look a lot to me like he wanted the last word - which he got. I haven't sent him anything since then.
More importantly however is the use of the word 'steal'. Steal it? I ask the public to make a judgement: was I to announce that I was interested in maybe doing something about the Blackboard and not have done anything in fact? Jason had, at that point, heard from all kinds of folks and was, by his own admission, tired of it all. I made a simple move to establish the seriousness of my intentions: purchase a business license. Everything I did afterward was soley to get hold of Jason to try and get his blessing and cooperation.
He clearly thought of this as an attempted theft from the beginning, as the insistence that the debt be mine personally - and not the newspaper's - so amply demonstrates. He wanted me to PAY - literally and figuratively.
I totally accept the blame for not being more convincing about my sincerity in all this. I have managed to piss off Jason, who has as far as I can tell, done nothing wrong. He is not an adept businessman. He knows that. He begged for someone who had talent in that area to help out. He and I spoke about me doing it, once upon a time, but I declined because I honestly didn't want to work for a profit seeking paper for a pittance. I told him then that if he made it a not-for-profit, he would have a lot of my time. He didn't want to go that route then, and so we are here today.
Huge misjudgement of me and my plans and intentions. A disenchanted and major pissed off ex-editor and owner.
And a community that is back to harping and guessing.
I hope that one day Jason has the opportunity to get the story from all the people I've spoken to and to whom I said, in no uncertain terms, that I would take no further steps without his blessing. There were some that were suggesting I go ahead and publish a thing close to the Blackboard, but different enough to bystep his claims to ownership. I told them I would have nothing of it. The project would go forward with Jason or not at all. That was my position all along, and that is my position today.
I recommend that everyone chills on this. A lot of us did our best on this project. I think a lot of its failure has to do with the natural communication failures represented by communicating through email, which can easily be misread, and through communication anonymously, which emboldens folks to extremes of language.
Bottom line, for me, is this: if you want to blame someone for the second failure of the Blackboard, you should blame me, just as anonymous above has done. It was my failure to communicate the plan to Jason that created the gap which continues to widen.
Like I said earlier, Bakersfield, I apologize. Sincerely.
And Jason, most especially: forgive me for any part I may have had in the creation of this thread of posts. I know you to be of much higher caliber than what some here have suggested.
And most of all, please don't doubt that I mean every word of this. My faults are numerous, and they include a certain aggressiveness when I am enthralled by a project, like I have been with this one. They do not include, however, a will or a desire to steal hard work from hard working people like Jason. If nothing else comes of all this, I would like mostly to disavow him of that judgement. I hope he is listening. I hold the smallest glimmer of hope that he is, and that there is still room for us all to move on. Bako needs a Blackboard. It needs The Blackboard.
One last thought: if stealing were the intent, why am I proposing a not-for-profit reorganization of the paper? What good would accrue me by such a theft?
Sorry about being so long winded.
Sign me 'not pissed off'.
Richard Bramer
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