I recently had the pleasure of seeing the documentary “Boiled Angles: The Trial of Mike Diana” about the only defendant ever prosecuted for drawing offensive comics. Someone in the film mentioned becoming aware of the case back in 1991 when she read a story in Creative Loafing.
Everything in the film seemed so long ago in the era before the World Wide Web. It seemed anachronistic to hear a reference to something from 2020 in a film about 1991, but then of course it occurred to me that things were the other way around: Creative Loafing has come to 2020 from 1991 and even earlier. For many Tampans, Creative Loafing has been with them all their lives.
Editor’s note: Since March, CL has asked readers for support in our effort to keep bringing the community this free newspaper online and on newsstands. Some Press Club members have gone even further and written letters of support like the one above. If you’d like to make a one-time or recurring donation, please visit cltampa.com and find the “support” tab. Thank you.
Free speech needs the freedom from legal consequences, but it first needs a voice. It needs paper, ink, pixels, writers, photographers, illustrators, graphic designers. And readers. The alternative weekly is a staple in most major cities. It occupies the space between newspapers of record and the chorus of self-publishing citizen journalists that gave us tracts, then zines, and now blogs and podcasts. There are no alternative-weekly tycoons living in Bayshore mansions; alternative weeklies are a labor of love, a collaboration between writers and readers and the communities they live in. It’s something people in a community do together. The alternative weekly covers the stories that are too small, too fringe, too esoteric, too risky to invest any of the coveted square-inches of real estate on the front pages of daily newspapers, yet still too complex for just one person to handle on their own.
But sometimes the alternative weekly serves as the incubator for the fledgling story that grows up to become part of our collective history, the story that we never would have heard about if the alternative weekly hadn’t brought it to our attention. Without it, we’d be missing something. Creative Loafing is Tampa Bay’s alternative weekly. Like I said, it’s been with us for so long that it’s hard to imagine Tampa Bay without it.
Sincerely,
James Michael Shaw, Jr. Legal Panel Chair, Greater Tampa Chapter ACLU of Florida
Support local journalism in these crazy days. Our small but mighty team is working tirelessly to bring you up to the minute news on how Coronavirus is affecting Tampa and surrounding areas. Please consider making a one time or monthly donation to help support our staff. Every little bit helps.
Subscribe to our newsletter and follow @cl_tampabay on Twitter. Follow Creative Loafing Tampa Bay on Google News, too.
This article appears in Oct 8-15, 2020.