’Sup. As of this week, I’m the new editor of the Phoenix. Feel free to drop me a line: I’m @carlycarioli on Twitter, or shoot me an e-mail ateditor[a]phx.com.
If you didn’t already know and love the Phoenix, you probably wouldn't be reading this. And I want to thank you for supporting local, progressive, independent journalism. I came to the Phoenix over 15 years ago and never left, because I believed — and continue to believe — in what the Phoenix stands for: writing that’s passionate, skeptical, intellectually curious, unconventional, and engaged with its readers.
I’ve been thrilled to write for and edit a newspaper that published some of my early heroes: writers like Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, and Susan Orlean, writers who were by turns irreverent, innovative, and irascible. (Thanks to a new partnership, you’ll soon be able to read all 40-plus years of our back issues — right down to the vintage concert ads — through Google’s News Archive project.)
It’s even more thrilling to be editing today’s Phoenix, because this is our moment: the mainstream media is crumbling, corporate boardrooms are losing their choke-hold on popular culture, and new technologies are empowering all of us to be more creative and to build stronger communities. This isn’t the apocalypse; this is the promised land.
Whether you’re perusing our fish-wrap edition on the Green Line or reading thePhoenix.com on your phone, I urge you to take a new look at us over the coming weeks, and to tell us what you like as well as what you don’t. I think you’ll find a voice that rings true. It’s David Bernstein’s nationally-recognized political coverage (not to mention his must-read Twitter feed), and Chris Faraone’s gutsy, street-smart reporting. In a city that has pillaged its arts coverage, we’ve got Peter Keough, Boston’s toughest film critic, and Jon Garelick’s award-winning jazz writing. There’s also former Something Awful columnist David Thorpe’s brilliant skewering of the music industry, erstwhile Rolling Stone correspondent Matt Taibbi’s sports-crime blotter, and Maddy Myers’s flame-war-inducing feminist video-gaming critiques.
We’ve got some fantastic new talent coming on board, including a ridiculously awesome new music editor, Michael Marotta. (And yes, we finally got sick of “The Pill” winning our annual readers’ poll for Best Club Night. The only solution we could think of was to hire him.)
Our readers have always been early-adopters and forward-thinkers. Unlike other media companies, we don’t think you’re competing with us. We think you’re one of us. And we’re excited about what we can create together.
