Publisher's welcome:
Happy Birthday, Straight Goods

From gold rush to dot poverty

By: Ish Theilheimer, Publisher, Straight Goods

  The old-timers in the Ottawa Valley often begin their stories with "I mind when I was a lad..." A year after launching Straight Goods, I think we're permitted to reminisce about the good old days of the Internet.
  When our publication was still in its concept stage, the world was agog with an almost touching optimism about the prospects of the Internet and the new millennium. A year later, the bloom is off the virtual rose, the endless boom predicted by mainstream economists and stock promoters has busted, the US presidential election was stolen, Canada's election was a weird carnival, and the Montreal Canadiens are being bought by Americans. Oy vey, some millennium.
  Straight Goods was launched in post-millennial panic. Our original webmaster simply vanished, never to return calls or emails again, less than three weeks before launch. (It took a lot of digging to determine he was indeed alive, just permanently unavailable to us for some still unexplained reason.)
  Luckily for us, Michael Cowley-Owen was willing and able to step up to the plate and improvise an awful lot. The weekend we launched was a cold one, and with nearly no snow up until then, the pipes froze in our Killaloe farmhouse, so Straight Goods began without running water. Meanwhile in Maxville, 250 km to the east, Michael was dealing with a house fire in the family. And God only knows what crisis our editor Susan Sperling, her baby and her student husband Mark were dealing with in North York that weekend.
 

The Web has shrunk Canada

  The winter proceeded apace. Despite a great deal of chaos, we managed to publish some really important information and worthwhile journalism every day for five months, as our archives can attest. Then we ran out of money.
  Straight Goods was launched on the dream that if enough people read it every day, we would be able to sell enough advertising to make a living. The news was full of stories of overnight successes on the Internet like the one with dancing hamsters that drew a million visitors. A lot of people were saying "if you can get a million people to watch hamsters, imagine how many would...", and then fill in the blanks with their personal dream. Investors put billions into startups all premised on the same logic.
  A year later, it's like walking through a graveyard. Cutbacks and shutdowns are the name of the game in the Web industry. Whole websites exist to list the latest web casualties e.g. www.fuckedcompany.com. Many of those who survive do so in the kind of "dot poverty" Straight Goods currently experiences, waiting to find that magic formula that will make the whole thing work.
  And a whole lot of us have developed repetitive strain injuries from excessive keyboard and mouse use. I wince from elbow pain as I type these words.
  Life at Straight Goods has reflected the changes in the industry. Getting the first $100,000 was relatively easy, but fundraising became much harder over time as people became skeptical over the Internet's ability to make any money at all. Now we're not really trying to raise any more financing, just trying to stay alive by finding sponsors, encouraging voluntary subscription contributions (our last appeal raised nearly $2,000. Thanks to all who contributed!), and trying to find funding for specific projects.
 

Now that the novelty of e-mail and the Web have worn off, people are finding better things to do, like watching TV, fishing, making love or cookies

  In October, we scaled back and relaunched as a weekly with daily updated features. Instead of four or five of us working full-time and then some, it became a staff of one, plus a lot of very helpful friends and associates.
  When we launched a year ago, we dreamed of a mass readership for Straight Goods. We're not there yet. Currently, we get about 15,000 readers per month, not bad for a small Canadian mag just a year old with no advertising budget and no attachment to an existing business, organization, or media outlet. But it's nothing like the mass readership you need to make real money in advertising.
  It's hard to build readership on the Web. People would rather read a magazine or paper at the kitchen table or in the bathroom. When they get on the computer, they're mostly there to work - or look at porn. Now that the novelty of e-mail and the Web have worn off, people are finding better things to do, like watching TV, fishing, making love or cookies, whatever. Virtual it may be, reality it ain't.
  It's going to take some time to grow Straight Goods and its readership. We don't have friends with deep pockets, although we're starting to pick up sponsors who identify with and support what we're doing and want to be in touch with our readers. For this, we are quite grateful.
  The wonderful thing about a year on the Internet is the friends you meet and the information you get to pass along. The Web has shrunk Canada and made it possible to manage ongoing relationships with people as far-flung as Parker Barrs Donham in Cape Breton, Charlie Angus and Mick Lowe in northern Ontario, Penney Kome in Calgary - a constant source of advice and instruction, and BC correspondents such as Colleen Fuller, Murray Dobbin, the folks at CCPA, and our faithful intern Fara Taratabai who none of us have ever met in person but has worked reliably for us at burger-flipping wages for a year.
  To be able to manage all this from a hillside in the Ottawa Valley is amazing. To be able to forge friendships with so many terrific writers - and readers - mostly people I've never met in person, is very special. Straight Goods has connected a lot of people.
  Thanks for the pleasure of connecting with you!

- Ish Theilheimer
- Killaloe, Ontario
- January 22, 2001
- ish@straightgoods.com

[ Front Page ]