Oh, Sweet Irony: Tim Whitaker Makes His Bucket List
If you’ve worked at one of the alt-weeklies in town — and our reader research suggests that pretty much all of you have or know someone who has, at this point — there is no object of greater dread than issues like the Summer Guide. The “guides,” as they are known, are seasonal: Fall Guide, Holiday Guide, Education Guide (that one is always, always death), and so on, with the big daddy of them all being the Summer Guide. The Summer Guide is important to alt-weeklies because it’s pretty much the precise moment advertisers start pulling out for the summer — the papers start to get noticably thinner after Memorial Day — and the Guide is traditionally the paper’s last gorge on ads before everybody starts to go away; it’s hell on the ad reps, who are under tremendous pressure to sell as much as they can now, for fear that the summer will be deadsville. On the editorial side, the Summer Guide is a creature of thoughtless ennui, a dare nobody wants to take to come up with the been-done-100-times content the Summer Guide seems to require. (Because after all, if you need a guide to enjoying your summer, you’re doing it wrong.)
But it’s a funny thing: Words and phrases like “everybody going away,” “fear,” “deadsville,” “been-done-100-times,” and “thoughtless ennui” were just what went through our heads when we saw today’s Philadelphia Weekly Summer Guide, whose cover story is “103 Things You Should Do in Philly Before You Die,” and more specifically, the man most likely behind it, longtime PW ed-in-chief Tim Whitaker. How do we know? Why, it’s rather simple:
A) Back in the day when we were toiling in the PW mines, Whitaker loved lists. Why? Because they didn’t require a lot of work.
B) The whole “Bucket List” concept speaks directly to Whitaker’s aging boomer demo, whom, it turns out, is pretty much the only reader demographic the Weekly is holding on to these days. Witness some of today’s greatest hits:
· Wolf-whistle Sharon Pinkenson.
· Dine on the killer food at Malone’s, the legendary wiseguy bar at 18th and Ritner.
· Go to Mass at Gesu Church, the stately Victorian Cathedralesque Basilica at 18th and Stiles.
· Party with Fergie—but not at Fergie’s.
No diss to Fergie, but come on.
And most importantly, Reason C): There’s nobody left to come up with this half-hearted shit: In the last two months, PW editorial staff has lost Steven Wells, Kia Gregory, Cassidy Hartmann, and, most recently, art director Sara Green. All of whom, we are told, left of their own accord.
Now, there’s always turnover at alt-weeklies, but never this fast, never this much. And while we contacted the former three recently dearly departed on that list above, none of them felt good about going on the record for this piece. For some, it was because they’re still freelancing for the paper, and for others, it was more of an “onward and upward” vibe. But we heard the same things over and again from everybody we talked to — and from present PW employees as well: The paper is fucked. There is a culture of passive-agressive undercutting there. The senior editorial there is either lazy, out of ideas, or just doesn’t give a shit. Worst of all, they’re out of touch. The buck with all of this, of course, stops with none other than Tim Whitaker. On his watch, the paper has gained, and then squandered, one editorial talent after another; no one who’s gotten good has ever stayed there for long. We can give you a list: Violet Phillips. Jill MacDowell. Karen Abbott. Jessica Pressler. Steve Volk. And even yours truly. But the list goes on and on, and we all have the same story: We just couldn’t deal with it anymore. And in today’s cover story, maybe Whitaker is letting on to something many in and around the paper already suspect: He’s on his way out. Time to make the bucket list.
