My friend and longtime colleague Josh Mamis finished up his seven-year gig as publisher of the the New Mass Media chain of alt-weeklies earlier this month, a result of the latest round of corporate cutbacks at Tribune Corporation, which owns The Hartford Courant, which owns New Mass Media, publisher of the Hartford Advocate, New Haven Advocate and Fairfield County Weekly.
Before he became publisher, Josh was co-CEO of New Mass. Before that, Group Editor. His longest stint was ten glorious years as editor of the New Haven Advocate, during a time of great growth and prestige for that scrappy paper.

I won’t dwell on the downsizing—there are no surprises, only sighs, in print journalism job-slashing these days.

I left full-time Advocate duties myself three years ago, by my own volition. (I still freelance regularly for the papers.) I occasionally pop in to clarify some business and wave at friends.

I will miss seeing Josh at his desk. I would come in complaining about some recent injustice and exit whistling a Sondheim tune. Josh has the amazing ability to turn any conversation with me into one about the state of American musical theater. He was also an attentive editor who, whenever I overwrote (which was always) would resist the slash-and-burn approach and provide thoughtful line-edits which would

My time at the Advocates actually predates Josh. I remember him coming in for his interview as editor. The buzz in the office was that he was the only candidate who hadn’t worn a tie. He had lived many places, including New York City and South Africa, but he was then living in Vermont, a place I’ve come to learn that is distinguished by its passion for community journalism and local activism.

When then-publisher Gail Thompson gave Josh the Editor job, he visited all the writers at their desks, gave us pep talks, and calmed our fears about the transition. The paper he’d been at, the now long-defunct Vanguard, had once done a story on my father (who toured Vermont annually with his marionette theater), and we talked about that. Throughout the search for an editor, I had been badgering Gail Thompson not to avoid the most common sort of candidate—writers with inflated opinions of themselves—and to find someone with actual editing skills. Josh had those skills. He immediately formatted the paper so it flowed more easily from news to features to reviews to comics to personal ads. He gave the writers, especially myself and news junkie supreme Paul Bass, extraordinary freedom and leeway. A lot of people think it was my doing, since I was always the designated comics-lover at the paper, but it’s Josh who initially conceived of our groundbreaking All Comics issues, in which every story in the paper was rendered in comics form, requiring our usual reporters and columnists to collaborate with local illustrators. We did that logistically harrowing issue for three years in a row. Among the finest of the freelance artists we’d contract for those issues was Josh’s wife Julie Fraenkel, who for one Comics issue memorably visualized a Letter to the Editor regarding an obsessive Kiss fan, and for another, graphically blandished the lunchtime crowd at a strip club.

Some of the old Advocate gang held a shindig for Josh last night at BAR. It was funny to be with them again and be thinking of the 1990s as the good old days of the Advocate. There were some tortures then as there are now—being thinned down so we could be sold to the Courant, seeing some fiery colleagues implode before my eyes. But, in hindsight, this was indeed the golden age. The papers were fat, informative and entertaining. We not only gained readership but (with Gail’s stewardship) developed previously lackluster advertising bait like our dining listings and “Best Of” awards into powerhouses of profitability which somehow also maintained an air of journalistic integrity. The Advocate began to have a shape, an image, an influence.

That was Josh at the Advocate. There will still be Josh as a friend, and since it’s been years since I gave up my own desk there, for me it will be swell to chat with him without having to discuss work. We can cut right to the Sondheim songs.

Yesterday is done
See the pretty countryside
Merrily we roll along, roll along
Bursting with dreams

Bending with the road,
Gliding through the countryside.
Everybody merrily,
Merrily,
Sing ’em your song,
Rolling along!
—Stephen Sondheim, “Merrily We Roll Along