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Editorial: The Coarsening Public Discourse
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Business New Haven
2/2/2004
By: BNH
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New and (unhappily) noted: The very same billboard at Exit 42 off I-95 that in 2002 provoked consternation with its screamer pitch for a production of The VAGINA Monologues at the Shubert in New Haven is now pitching a show soon to arrive at Wallingford's Oakdale Theater.
It's name? Urinetown. (The Musical!)
We're all for the First Amendment and everything (it's our favorite constitutional amendment), but do hassled motorists on I-95 - especially those with young ones in the car - really need this?
While we're on the subject, New Haven already has a publication devoted to sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll: the alternative weekly New Haven Advocate. Does it really need another?
The company that owns the New Haven Register, the Trenton, N.J.-based Journal Register Co., has announced that it will next month introduce a weekly paper targeted at the Advocate's presumptive audience: 18- to 34-year-olds.
The reason? Simple. The bean-counters who run the JRC look at the Advocate and see about $3 million in annual ad revenue from nightclubs, restaurants, dating services and yes, even phone sex. And they want a piece of it.
Daily newspapers have long coveted young-adult readers with their free-spending ways. But 18- to 34-year-olds as a rule don't read daily newspapers much, and no daily newspaper company has to date figured out a way to tap it successfully.
The Register folks say their new title, PLAY, will be a "lifestyle" publication heavy on things to do and light on politics (or at least light on anything likely to make Register Publisher Kevin Walsh's powerful friends squirm).
But young adults want to know more than where to get the best burrito or double latté. They want some blood and guts, too, and the Advocate's sometimes take-no-prisoners editorial stance does more than protect its anti-establishment reputation - it can be fun to read.
Members of Generation Y aren't all the shallow idiots they're sometimes stereotyped to be. Compared to the Advocate, the guess here is that PLAY will be lighter on the sex, lighter on the drugs, and maybe about the same on the rock 'n' roll. If they make a go of it, they truly will be pioneers in American publishing.
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