For the past 40 years, City Paper (CP) has served as a beacon of alternative news and arts in Baltimore, an outlet for creative individuals to write and read stories outside of the constant onslaught of the mainstream media.
According to their website, the paper’s online content reaches more than 300,000 distinct readers each month. Its articles, which feature topics ranging from “sports to sex to cyberspace to City Hall,” are shared across the city of Baltimore, the U.S. and the world.
Now after decades of providing this service, City Paper will come to an end later this year due to a loss in advertising revenue. The legacy of the paper was celebrated at the City Paper’s Best Of party, an event on Sept. 21 that featured performances by local Baltimore artists like Dan Deacon and Bond St. District.
In the aftermath of this final Best Of party, City Paper staff have been forced to face the end of an era. Maura Callahan, the performing arts editor, weekly editor and copy editor for City Paper reflected on her overall experiences at the City Paper office in an email to The News-Letter.
She first described how she began working for the paper as an undergraduate student.
“I started at City Paper as an arts editorial intern while an undergrad student at MICA — this was back before CP was bought by The Sun, and we were still located in our old row house space on Park Avenue in Mount Vernon. I was a painting major and had no real interest in journalism at the time, but I was really into art theory. I got sucked into it by way of art criticism, which I still consider my main beat,” she wrote.
Callahan’s rise to staff started off as an extension of her internship.
“After my internship ended I kinda just hung around and worked part-time, mostly editing the calendar and reporting, then after I graduated I started full-time and became Performing Arts Editor, Weekly Editor, and copy editor,” she wrote.
Since CP printed its first issue in 1977, the paper has evolved in style and content. As Callahan notes, there have also been changes in the office environment itself.
“Our staff has shrunk significantly. I’ve said goodbye to a lot of people I feel very lucky to have worked with. Nowadays, it’s just me and a small handful of editorial staffers, some of whom have been here over a decade, sequestered to the corner of a once-full but now otherwise empty office. So the energy has shifted a lot over time.”
Despite the changes, Callahan is content with the current situation.
“It’s a good environment in the sense that we feel like we can challenge each other or hide under our desks and cry or pace around trying to figure out how to make a story happen,” she wrote.
Drawing from her background in the Baltimore arts scene, Callahan has written a number of articles that reflect her experiences and those of her fellow writers.
“My fellow editor Rebekah Kirkman and I have done some bulky collaborations together that I think will always be important to me,” she wrote. “Most recently, we wrote a discursive, reported manifesto of sorts on abuse and accountability in the arts scene. That was the most mentally and emotionally demanding story I’ve ever worked on, but since it came out it seems to have struck several chords here in Baltimore and nationally.”
In addition to her own articles, Callahan reflected on the pride she felt towards articles published by her colleagues, especially those that reflect the current political climate in Baltimore.
“I was also happy with our story on the aftermath of the shuttering of the Bell Foundry from earlier this year. From the staff, I love our issue covering the big and small moments during the Baltimore Ceasefire; it’s a nuanced portrait of the city beyond just that weekend,” Callahan wrote, discussing the CP’s coverage of the activist organized ceasefire that took place between Aug. 4-6, 2017.
Callahan continued, discussing some of the CP’s other work in documenting Baltimore’s political pains.
“From our editor-at-large Baynard Woods, there’s his detailed investigation into the in-custody death of Tyree Woodson, and from our editor-in-chief Brandon Soderberg there’s his beautiful essay ‘heroes’ and more recently his story on the protests and terrorism in Charlottesville and the subsequent removal of Confederate monuments here in Baltimore,” wrote Callahan.
When asked about the interaction between City Paper and Hopkins, Callahan presented a nuanced view that stressed the impact that Hopkins has on the city of Baltimore.
“Beyond internships, I really have no idea what City Paper’s presence is like on campus,” she wrote. “But I’m sure the paper has had an impact on the community considering Hopkins employs a huge fraction of the city and has an even bigger impact on the neighborhoods that surround it, for better or worse.”
Callahan clarified her thoughts on the University’s complex relationship with Baltimore. “Hopkins as an institution touches pretty much everyone in Baltimore one way or another, and so depending on how you define ‘the Hopkins community,’ it’s more or less safe to say that many of those people have read and been affected by City Paper.”
Mia Capobianco, a recent Hopkins graduate who interned at City Paper, elaborated on this disconnect between Hopkins and the paper.
“It always weirds me out when I remember that a Hopkins grad founded CP. The paper, with its awareness of Baltimore and deliberate unorthodoxy, feels so un-Hopkins to me. And Hopkins students, generally speaking, are not familiar with the paper,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I know this anecdotally, from peers asking me what I did last summer, and so many didn’t know what I was talking about, even though CP sits right outside their apartments! I assumed more students would read it, or at least be aware of it, but at Hopkins being oblivious to the “outside world” is sort of a well-cultivated skill.”
As a former editor for the Arts & Entertainment section of The News-Letter, Capobianco compared her experiences and observations working for the two publications.
“It seems counterintuitive, but the CP staff felt smaller and easier to get to know than that at The News-Letter. There are fewer editors, but they’re working full time and super proficient. Both CP and The News-Letter are pretty successful when it comes to maintaining a balanced focus—one that is local and community-based, while still allowing coverage of broader events and phenomena and, importantly, the reporting on such subjects often feels relevant to, or resonant with, their readership,” she wrote.
Capobianco saw parallels in The News-Letters and the Paper’s approach to journalism.
“I believe it’s really important that The News-Letter is independently funded and operated, and I think that was the basis for a lot of the good work CP has done as well,” she wrote. “Further, both environments are welcoming and accepting and grant their staff a generous amount of freedom, in most cases abetting a more balanced, authentic focus.”
After years writing and editing for the CP, Callahan was suddenly left without future employment with the announcement of the end of the paper. She described her initial reactions to this news.
“First, it was all panic—what am I gonna do, where will I go, which organs will I sell. Like really, I very quickly upon learning I’d be losing my job started applying to become an egg donor,” she wrote. “I still don’t know what I’m going to do, but now I’m mourning the death of the paper as a loss to Baltimore, beyond just a personal loss. I grew up here, and I’ve never known a Baltimore without City Paper. The panic has subsided, now I’m grieving.”
While she remains unsure about the legacy of City Paper, Callahan stressed the need for publications that capture the life and spirit of Baltimore communities.
“I have no idea what the legacy will be, really, but I think and hope this isn’t the end for this kind of voice in Baltimore. The city needs it now more than ever,” she wrote. “The paper has always tried and I think succeeded in capturing what it feels like to be alive in Baltimore right now, in the moment, so if nothing else, it’ll serve as a historical document far more illustrative of life here than mere numbers and stats and cold ‘objective’ reporting.”
