Like all good revolutions, ours started in a bar.

            A year ago, we met inside the Spitfire Saloon at the edge of Cleveland, on West 117: the bar’s owner, Stosh Burgess; former Free Times marketing guy, Ray Leonardi; former Free Times classifieds sales leader, Alice Leslie; and me, a guy who had written for Scene and Free Times before being fired by New Scene’s owners when I suggested they couldn’t run a newspaper if they didn’t have the cajones to publish real stories.

            Our new alternative weekly, The Independent, launched last August. We divvied up 8,000 copies and distributed them hap-hazzardly around NE Ohio. By our last issue, we were printing 20,000 copies and had a distribution system that got the paper out across Greater Cleveland and A-K-Rowdy in 24 hours. What started as a once-every-six weeks pamphlet had become 24 pages of unrivaled free content that came out every three weeks.

            But today, we’re stopping the presses.

            What happened?

            Advertising.

            Miraculously we managed to pull together enough advertising to break even on the issues towards the end. The only problem was that some advertisers could only be bothered to pay once every few issues. Eventually you can only float and juggle so much capital to pay the printers while you’re waiting for the checks to come in. In the meantime, there are writers and sales reps to pay—those of us with a share in the company, by the way, never saw a dime.

            That’s not to say all our advertisers were cheapskates. The majority were wonderful to us. Melt was reliable from the first issue. The Improv and Funny Stop funded an entire section of the paper. Water Street Tavern in Kent was loyal from the start. Things like Roc Bar closing up didn’t help—they were our biggest advertiser. In the end, the paper became a monster that wanted more than we could feed it.

            This isn’t how papers are started. You can’t do it a piece at a time. We learned that the hard way. You have to start with a sizable investment, allow yourself some time to grow. It’s amazing it lasted as long as it did—a testament to the hard work of our sales team and writers who brought the good stories—and, of course, to Stosh who kept us afloat for so long.

            So what happens now?

            The hope is that we can find some investors who realize Cleveland needs another voice, who see the vacuum left by the loss of the Free Times. There have been talks…

            But it could take awhile.

            I hope we’ll be back.

            There’s even a part of me that’ll miss delivering. Sometimes, Morgan, the bartender and owner of Moriarity’s bar near Short Vincent, would give me a dash of scotch when I dropped off his copies of the new issue.

            I love that stuff. And I fucking love Cleveland. I love that it’s so hard to make it here.

            So, we’ll see.

            In the meantime, thanks for picking up The Independent when you could.

-James Renner