The (mostly) unabridged history of the Reader Weekly, Part One.

It all began at a funeral. Robert Boone was at a funeral for a relative, (a young lady killed in a drunk driving accident) on the 4^th of July in 1997 when it occurred to him that life is fleeting and that if you are going to have any more big adventures the time is now.

Boone had always sought out alternative newsweeklies when traveling, and regretted that Duluth did not have one. Additionally, it seemed to him that the Duluth News Tribune (DNT) seldom had penetrating questions for any of the Saints: St. Mary’s, St. Luke’s, St. Scholastica, and, oddly, Duluth Mayor Gary Doty.

He had also noticed that the DNT had been unable to keep up with the Minneapolis Star Tribune regarding breaking sports related scandals at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD)

He suspected that the DNT didn’t pursue some of these stories intentionally. (He later discovered, after talking to the Star Tribune’s Larry Oakes, that his suspicions were groundless regarding the UMD sports scandals. The Star Tribune had found those stories first because a UMD wrestler had a relative that was an intern at the Star Tribune.)

Later the Reader would discover several other examples of stories that the DNT did not want to cover.

Boone left the funeral resolved to start a local alternative newsweekly. He enjoyed the arts and hoped to provide a platform for different voices and viewpoints beyond the mainstream. Twenty days and $1,000 later, the first Northland Reader hit the streets. The Reader began as an every other Thursday publication and changed its name to Reader Weekly when it switched to a weekly schedule in January 2001. The first paper was 36 pages, with a print run of 8,000 copies, distributed throughout Duluth and Superior.

After making inquires, Boone arranged for Terry Hart of Superior to handle the initial layout and design.

Before the first issue hit the streets, there was already a crisis. Through the grapevine, Tony Rogers had heard of the new venture and offered to be the editor. He had experience and planned to write a cover story for Issue #1 while giving his notice at his current job. Three days before deadline Rogers disappeared, leaving no indication if the promised story was still coming. Deadline day came and Boone and Hart realized they had no cover, nor did they have a feature story. Some of the text and cartoons got much larger very quickly.

The first issue was immediately rather popular and things went a little more smoothly for the next couple of issues. Talented local writers and cartoonists began replacing some of the earlier syndicated content. Richard Thomas became a regular contributor, submitting a cartoon.

By Issue 4, Paul Lundgren walked into the office, announcing that he wanted to be the Reader’s editor. Lundgren persuaded Boone of his merit by announcing that he had recently been fired as editor of the Budgeteer. Lundgren suggested a regular column, “Thoughts thunk while thinking” which quickly morphed into the sometimes insane and often inspired genius of “The Next Level.” Lundgren offered to help as a volunteer until his unemployment ran out. When the time came, Boone’s intention to hire Lundgren as the Reader’s first employee was blocked when ad sales would not allow for such largesse. Learning of this barrier to the fledgling paper’s growth, activist Eric Ringsred volunteered a donation of $1,000 to help hire Lundgren.

(The Reader started for $1,000 at the same time Murphy McGinnis paid HT Klatsky $60,000 to redesign the Budgeteer.)

Biggest Goofs: Big Mac Attack

Lundgren attracted a cadre of smart, hip writers, among them Jon Eckblad, Barrett Chase, and John Ramos. Although not immediately profitable, the paper was very popular, and distribution was expanded to Cloquet and Two Harbors.

Biggest Goofs: Where’s the issue? Around issue #10. A day and a half before deadline, Lundgren looked on the Reader’s sole Macintosh computer (the Reader also had a IBM clone for simple word processing) for the issue that he had been working on for the last week, and realized that the issue was completely missing.. Lundgren and Boone worked some 40 hours straight to recreate the issue, only to realize that they had missed the last FedEx deadline for shipping the many zip disks to the printer. Exhausted, Boone jumped in his car and drove the disks to the printer in Mankato. Boone slept in his car for an hour while the paper was being printed, then followed the printer’s truck back to Duluth to begin distribution. The cause of the 56-hour ordeal was never discovered; but given that Lundgren was very proficient on computers and Boone was nearly 100% less so, the culprit seemed obvious.

Top Ten Stories: Silence is Deadly: Intentional transmission of HIV by Paul Lundgren - Issue 11, Dec, 11, 1997

In June 1997, a young gay man named Jon Niemi met up with another gay man, John Boda, at The Main Club, a gay bar, in Superior. The two of them had sex later that night and soon after, began living together. When Niemi attempted to break off the relationship, Boda, in a moment that changed Niemi’s life forever, revealed that he was HIV positive and had, likely, passed on the infection.

After being tested at a local clinic, Niemi’s fears were confirmed. Boda was, indeed, HIV positive and had passed on the virus to him.

Boda fled town and Niemi filed a complaint with the Superior Police Department in December accusing him of intentionally spreading a communicable disease. When asked for a comment on the complaint, District Attorney Dan Blank refused to comment. The story highlighted the uncharted territory of the law in regards to the issue of HIV transmission.

According to Niemi, Boda was his first ever same-sex sexual partner and that he was not an intravenous drug user. It is horrible bad luck to become infected with HIV from one’s first sexual encounter, but, as they say, it only takes one time.

The Reader took some flak from the GLBT community following the story about Niemi’s infection. Ellie Schoenfeld, then the regional coordinator for Duluth representing Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP) wrote a letter-to-the-editor citing Niemi’s fault in the issue for not having safer sex. She also called us to task for revealing the identity of Boda as being infected with HIV, stating that such disclosures violate confidentiality and jeopardize an HIV positive person’s ability to be shielded from housing and employment discrimination. Our view remained that the confidentiality of a man who used a fake name and deceived another man with whom he knowingly transferred a deadly virus was considerably less of a concern that reporting a local instance where a potentially criminal action threatened not only Jon Niemi, but others as well.

Reader publisher, Robert Boone, went so far as to attend a GLBT community meeting about the story to address the concerns expressed in our “letters” pages. At the meeting, Boone was taken to task for “outing” gay people and endangering their confidentiality. Boone reiterated his ongoing support of the gay community and countered that he considered the issue not one of “outing” anyone but as an issue of what was tantamount to attempted murder.

#14 Outgrowing the capabilities of our first printer we switched to a plant that had full color capability. (Early issues of the Reader were black and white with a few pages of red or blue ink) We brag about full color.

Biggest Goofs: 1998 – We Kin Spel Gud!

In an embarrassing bit of irony, our cover story in Issue 29 about public schools getting tough with troublemakers featured a glaring spelling error right on the cover of the paper: ZERO TOLERENCE. Oops! Our bad. We hope to continue our zero tolerance policy of proofreeding erors as well

Biggest Goofs: April Fools Day Massacre: We piss off everyone! In late March of 1999, the Reader began planning its second April Fools Day parody issue. The first one had been very popular, spoofing the National Enquirer with a similar looking Northland Enquirer, and garnering the Reader another threatened lawsuit from the offended tabloid. While planning the issue, someone suggested emulating the Rolling Stone cover of a nude Janet Jackson, (with a man’s hands covering her breasts.) Our parody featured Carlson Book’s Bob Carlson; nude, with a woman’s hands covering his man boobs. Carlson was initially enthusiastic and a photo shoot went off well. It soon occurred to Carlson, that given his previous legal issues regarding young women, that perhaps it was an unwise image to reinforce.

As the deadline approached Boone told Lundgren that the cover would have to be changed. Lundgren refused. The two worked in stormy silence for many more hours, and finished the issue well past deadline. Boone again drove to the printing plant, this time in Eau Claire, intent on getting the disks to the printer in time to print on schedule. Once there he had the printer’s graphics guru design a new Northland Enquirer cover. After printing, Boone returned to Duluth with the papers. When Lundgren saw the replacement cover, he quit on the spot. As Lundgren had been overworked and underpaid for months, this was likely simply the straw that broke the camels back. Writer John Ramos immediately quit freelancing for the Reader in sympathy. Slim Goodbuzz debuted and disappeared from the Reader all in the same issue. Jon Eckblad moved out of town. Cartoonist Chris Monroe soon left as well. Within days, the Reader had lost most of its talented young hipster contributors.

The Reader also caught flack for a parody Lundgren wrote which described a young man killing eight students in Cloquet because he had a zit on his nose. The Columbine incident occurred a couple of weeks later, leading to questions of our propriety.

#48 RT Editor. Noticing the Reader’s ad seeking a new editor; long time Reader cartoonist Richard Thomas applies for the job. Thomas had previously edited a community newspaper in Cleveland, and had a passion for low-income advocacy. Thomas also brought writing, graphic and photography skills to the position.

Biggest Goofs: Listing the drop off locations. In the early issues of the Reader, we thought it would be a great idea to list every single location where devoted readers could pick up a copy of the paper. Surely this would be a useful service, right? Little did we realize just how useful the listings would befor religious zealots. They used the location listings as their map in removing copies of the Reader from newsstands. They also used the listings as their directory in calling up advertisers and distributors of the paper to discourage them from doing business with us. Needless to say, we decided to stop printing that list. Hey, you live, you learn!

Biggest Goofs: Late May, 1998: The White Highway. While returning from Eau Claire with two pallets of papers in a badly overloaded truck, Boone encountered a driver suddenly changing lanes into his path. Forced to change lanes suddenly, Boone felt the load shift and as he headed for the shoulder, watched in the mirror as the two pallets (taller than the truck) slowly fell over. Thousands of papers littered the highway near the junction of Highway 2 & 53 in Wisconsin. As he scrambled to pull the papers off the freeway, passing semis separated each paper into many individual sheets. Within minutes the freeway was blanked with white newspapers for a 200 yard stretch. Soon a Wisconsin State Patrol pulled up to inquire if Boone was littering. Boone pointed out that he was picking up the papers as best he could, at which point the patrolman ordered Boone to drive his truck further and further into the ditch, content only when the truck got stuck, then he drove away. Boone picked up papers for eight hours, occasionally assisted by passing motorists; and an off duty Douglas County Sheriffs Deputy, who used his own truck to pull Boone out of the ditch. Boone returns for each of the next two days to collect errant newspaper pages.

Top Ten Stories: Douglas County Jailhouse Blues by Richard Thomas

Issue 50, June 10, 1999

What’s tens of millions of dollars to the citizens of Superior? Apparently not much, according to Jim Conner who was chairman of the Project Management Committee in 1999 when our story about the spiraling costs and ill-conceived planning to build a new “law enforcement center” became part of the public debate.

“It’s impractical to do anything with your hands tied,” said Conners of the city’s actions in fudging the rules on allowing the public to comment and vote on city building projects going over $1 million. Frustrated over the daunting prospect of the people of Superior voting down the proposed building plan, Conners went on to say, “The people don’t understand what the needs are.”

The Reader, more than any other publication, has put the spotlight on shady government dealings where the public is, quite bluntly, screwed over. Richard Thomas’ story on the government center debacle is a primary example. The old Superior city/county building was only thirty years old but in dire need of repairs. Inexplicably, the city had gone with a building design more appropriate for Florida than for Wisconsin’s punishing winters.

In the end, the new Government Center cost the city more money than its officials imagined and who could forget all the snafus that came along the new building? The Reader was the first publication to (accurately) report that the building couldn’t possibly be completed for under $28 million. We hate to say we told you so, but, well, we told you so. Just sayin’.

Biggest Goofs: Y2K Reader Issue 2.0

Remember all that crap about computers going haywire and the world practically ending as we know it at the minute the clock rolled us over into 2000? What the hell does “haywire” mean anyway? Hmm. Anyway, back to Y2K paranoia.

Anticipating the anticlimactic ending of the Y2K scare, we at the Reader devoted considerable time in creating a series of spoof news stories poking fun at the hysteria, including such memorable headlines as “Gates offers to buy United States” and “Miller Hill Mall announces new post-apocalypse hours.” You know, really funny stuff. Well, the issue was completed and we sent it off to the printer, quite satisfied with ourselves.

And then, it happened. When we received the papers, we discovered that a computer glitch at the printer had screwed up the sequence of some of our pages and had even omitted some pages! With the world around us suddenly less secure, we ran around town to retrieve the misprinted copies while our publisher managed to have the entire issue reprinted correctly. So, our first issue of the new millennium had to be printed twice, resulting in what we, at the office, cleverly refer to as Issue 2.0.

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