From the Editors: August 2025

Erin Phillips

Legendary cartoonist Dan Perkins aka Tom Tomorrow was the keynote speaker at the recent Association of Alternative Newsmedia conference in Madison that the staff of the Erie Reader attended and was inspired by.

Pretty much immediately after our glorious 2025 40 Under 40 issue was published at the beginning of July, the small but mighty Erie Reader team (which is all of four people) hit the road to Madison, Wisconsin for the annual Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN) conference. This was my second AAN conference and I was extremely excited to learn and absorb the knowledge and experience of people from all across the country who do what we do here. That is: to publish alternative print media and figure out how to survive.

Gathering together, we all share what has worked and what hasn't. We share story ideas. We share creative cover art. We brainstorm revenue avenues. This year, our own publisher Adam Welsh sat on a panel with our favorite lawyer ever, Paula Knudsen Burke of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and discussed with a room full of people how to "Survive Lawsuits and Legal Threats in the Current Environment," because we've (unfortunately) had to do that before.

And each year there is a keynote speaker, meant to inform or inspire us all to continue doing what we're doing despite the seemingly mounting evidence that print media is on its way out the door.

This year's keynote speaker was Dan Perkins (aka Tom Tomorrow) who is a well-loved weekly cartoonist of the strip "This Modern World," famously a part of one of the OG alt-newspapers, the Village Voice. His work is now syndicated (the Village Voice ceased publication in 2017) and is ubiquitous, instantly recognizable, topical, irreverent, beautiful, and so very alt.

His message to us all was one of hope for print media. He said that this moment in American history is primed for an alt-weekly resurgence. That the inundation of all of our collective eyeballs with endless, horrifying (mis)information, advertisement, opinion, influence, and doom will inevitably drive humanity in the opposite direction.

He told the story of his young-adult son who, upon entering a room in Perkins' house full of records, posters, comic books, clippings, and alt-newspaper archives, said that he was so sad that he'd probably never have a room like this: full of tangible, collectable, readable items. Forms of entertainment that are slower, with no parasitic blue light to worm its way into our brains and keep us from sleep. Perkins said, "There is a yearning among young people for an analog experience they never got to have," and he called upon all of the editors, writers, and publishers in the room to "be the alternative to the hellscape." He said, "As the billionaire media figures out more and more ways to bend the knee, know that adversarial local journalism matters." And as Gannett (which owns the Erie Times News) and other massive news corporations, are currently hurling career journalists from their sinking ships and leaning on AI to increase profits, we're still here actually writing, bringing Erie the adversarial, non-billionaire-influenced news. Essentially, working hard to be the alternative to the hellscape.

After only a few days among our ilk in Madison, any of our faltering resolve was solidified – to help keep Erie as great and welcoming a place as we can, to report on what matters, to give the underdog a leg up, to support local arts and music, and to be adversarial despite political or internet reactions. After all, if we're to believe Tom Tomorrow's message, print media will long outlive the internet. Put down your phone, pick up a paper, slow down a minute, and, as always and with vigor, support local.