Twenty-five years ago a mighty wind hit Charlotte. I'm not talking about Hurricane Hugo (that came a couple years later), I'm talking about Creative Loafing. Before CL arrived here on April 4, 1987, Charlotte had no general alternative voice like New York City's venerable Village Voice, the L.A. Weekly or even Raleigh's Independent Weekly. It had the Charlotte Observer for mainstream readers, the Charlotte Business Journal for bankers and bean counters, and mercifully, it had the Charlotte Post covering issues of importance to the African-American community.
But Charlotte had no smart-ass critics out probing the city's arts, music and entertainment scenes, filling you in on what was or wasn't worth spending your hard-earned cash on. It had no underground journalists bum-rushing the shindigs of the city's elite, acting as thorns in the sides of politicians and boosters. It had no skeptical reporters out checking over the shoulders of the mainstream media. Basically, Charlotte had no news organization that would question the status quo.
The owners of Creative Loafing's Atlanta mothership saw a void here and swooped in. It scared the Charlotte Observer so much that the august daily created its own fake alt-weekly — get this: it was called BREAK — to compete with CL. The Observer's ploy proved to be an abysmal failure, a laughing stock of corporate mainstream newspaper-speak trying to be hip for the kids.
Creative Loafing was a natural for Charlotte. Its writers spoke like you spoke, hung out in the places you hung out in, asked politicians the questions you'd ask them. Like its alt-weekly predecessors, CL didn't try to be falsely objective. Rather, the paper subscribed to gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson's view of objectivity — "Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long" — and told it like it was, with solid reporting, but from each writer's own learned perspective.
Who knew that this paper — and now strong website — would continue serving as your voice for another quarter-century? Over those years, a slew of CL reporters and critics have won numerous awards from the N.C. Press Association, the N.C. Working Press and the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, including original editor John Grooms, current arts and culture critics Matt Brunson and Tricia Childress, and such stellar former Loafing contributors as Frye Gaillard, Vance Cariaga, Ann Wicker, Fred Mills, Timothy C. Davis, John Schacht, Sam Boykin, Karen Shugart, Tara Servatius and Kandia Crazy Horse. And those are just the names acknowledged on certificates. There also are the countless unsung stars whose work slipped beneath the CL award-givers' radars — the great Hal Crowther, Jerry Klein, John Rodgers, Judy Goldman, Mary Coyne Wessling, Lynn Farris, Scott Lucas, Perry Tannenbaum, Jared Neumark, Rhiannon Fionn, Jarvis Holliday, previous CL editor Carlton Hargro ... the list literally goes on and on.
We offer these names because Creative Loafing's writers are its heart, soul and blood. Without them, we would not exist. And to celebrate this issue, we've compiled the 25 pieces in CL's 25-year history that we felt made the biggest impact on our city, or that told the biggest stories in a way that only Creative Loafing could tell them.
To celebrate the next 25 years — with CL now part of the Nashville-based SouthComm media family — we also introduce our brand-new redesign this issue. You may have noticed the new cover logo. It combines our recent nickname CL with our real name Creative Loafing. We're proud of the Creative Loafing name and we wanted to get it back on the cover. We've also redesigned the inside in a way that allows for more substantial stories without sacrificing the great art and photography. You'll see more of this when we return to our regular format next week, with all the departments intact. And in next week's issue, I'll have much more to say about the person responsible for this redesign, CL's talented and amiable creative director, Melissa Oyler.
As for me, I was thrilled to return to CL last summer, to its incredibly inspiring culture of journalistic talent, wit and smarts, and I plan to stay here and help to move CL forward — in print, digital and whatever other platforms come along in our technologically accelerated world — for another quarter-century. So keep reading us, keep bitching about our opinions, and keep posting your own views. If our writers are our heart, soul and blood, our readers and website users are our collective conscience.
We hope you're enjoying CL's 25th anniversary year as much as we are. We're 25, dammit!
