The Art Issue

Twice since he founded the Syracuse New Times in 1969 Ken Simon sold part ownership of the paper, first to local investors and then to the Advocate Newspapers, owner of a chain of alternative weeklies in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Westchester County. Advocate owners in 1981 gained complete control of the company from Simon, and they appointed as publisher Syracuse University law school graduate Peter Orville. Absentee ownership hurt The New Times, however, and its size, revenues and print run decreased as its bills piled up.

This opened the door in August 1984 for Syracuse-area entrepreneur Art Zimmer—Advocate owners were about to shut down the paper for good before a “Z” was carved into the publisher’s chair. Zimmer claimed proprietorship of The New Times both as an investment and as a vehicle to publish his column, which had been dropped by a Syracuse daily. His wintertime, ski-centered “On the Slopes” column appeared in these pages until 1991.

“About a year after I bought The New Times,” says Zimmer, “I said to {staff photographer} Mike Davis, ‘What’s the big difference around here since I came on board?’ And he said, ‘Our paychecks don’t bounce anymore.’”

It’s been 25 years since Zimmer took the reins of the Syracuse New Times, and since then circulation has increased from 3,000 to more than 46,000 and the staff has grown from a trio of full-time employees to 20-plus. In 1986, Zimmer moved the paper’s offices from Armory Square—where the paper had pioneered development of that now booming area when it moved to the Butler Building in 1978—to its own building at 1415 W. Genesee St. The newspaper operates out of the second floor of the former Olum’s furniture store, while Zimmer rents out space on the two floors below to retail businesses. 

Joining Zimmer in his endeavor is his wife of 22 years, Shirley, who has been a part of The New Times staff since 1990. Currently, Shirley acts as financial officer, but at one time or another has also headed the classified, creative services and circulation and distribution departments. “She’s had very extensive background with the paper and to a large extent,” says Zimmer, “the success of the paper over the last 20 years has had more to do with Shirley than with me.” 

In the 25 years of Zimmer’s ownership, journalistic accolades have also mounted; during Mike Greenstein’s second stint as editor alone, the paper won more than 200 awards for writing, photography and design. After serving as editor-in-chief for much of the paper’s 29 years Greenstein stepped down from that post in June 1998, and Tina Schwab took over before resigning in 2001 to become editor-in-chief for The New Times’ sister publication, Family Times (now held by Reid Sullivan). Molly English-Bowers took the editor’s chair from Schwab in May 2001 and has held that position since. 

The paper, which publishes the annual Student Survival Guide, Lights on the Lake and SummerTimes special sections, was also instrumental in establishing the Syracuse Area Music Awards (Sammys) and the Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) Awards. Our Street Painting Festival during ArtsWeek decorates downtown sidewalks with chalk art every July.

During a recent Friday afternoon “fireside chat” in Zimmer’s office, he reminisced about his childhood, arrival in Syracuse, ascent to the most prestigious ski-writing job in America despite “not being able to write,” as well as his acquisition of The New Times and what he sees in the future for the publication.

Z is for Zimmer: The unabashed self-promoter (above) sports a New Times ascot as well as his familiar lapel pin. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

 

Q: I understand you grew up in Hamilton, which is not too far from Syracuse. What was life like there when you were young?

A: When I was young? Was I ever young? I grew up on a farm milking cows and baling hay. After the farm, I joined the Army. I was there for six years total—three years active duty, three years active reserve and was stationed all over. I went from here to Texas and back a couple of times which was a lot of travel for a very naïve and innocent little farm boy that had gone nowhere and done nothing. It was quite an experience to travel all over the United States when I was in the Army and it opened my eyes that there was more to the world than cows.

In high school, because we were extremely poor and farming was a tough business, I had to stay home and work the farm a great deal and was never able to take part in school activities and was never able to play sports because I had to work. I wasn’t much of a scholar at all; there were 43 people in my class and I graduated 43rd and came very close to not graduating at all. They graduated me because they wanted to get rid of me because I wasn’t much of an asset to the school.

Q: So when did you first come to Syracuse?

A: I hitchhiked to Syracuse in 1962 and came here almost flat broke with just $18 in my pocket and knew nobody and had no contacts. I didn’t plan on staying here very long, which was 47 years ago, and I’m still here.

Q: How did you start developing contacts in Syracuse and what did you like about the area that kept you here?

A: I had a couple of different jobs that I didn’t do well at. Then I latched onto a fairly decent job with the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) selling cookies and crackers, which was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had in my life. I was there about five years and it was a good job because each morning we’d go in and they’d give us a box of samples to go out and use on our sales. So I’d go out in the morning and sell them like hell and then eat the samples for lunch. I had no money, so I lived on sample boxes for about a year until I started doing well and getting a little bit of money ahead.

Q: Was it during that time that you started getting involved with the local ski culture?

A: I was looking for some social contacts and I had heard about the Onondaga Ski Club. I wasn’t a skier, but I joined that first winter and found that it was a really wonderful organization and I got really involved and went on to become president of it in 1969. I ran the whole club for about 20 years and when I joined they had about 800 members and after I became president and head of marketing and such, I brought the club up to about 1,600 members. I purchased a lodge in Vermont which the club still has to this day and really distinguishes the Onondaga Ski Club from every other club in the area because they own and operate their own lodge.

Gracing the cover of the publication he owns and loves.

 

Q: Do you still take trips to the lodge?

A: We do visit the lodge occasionally and actually, last weekend, Shirley and I went to the lodge for a few days and met up with three or four other people who had been involved with the club 30 to 40 years ago. In fact, one of them, Dick Flaherty, was treasurer of the club when I bought the lodge and we kind of had a reunion of sorts.

Q: What was your first experience in the newspaper business? It’s been said that you had several different columns in your early days.

A: The Mid-York is the hometown weekly newspaper in Hamilton and I was a member of the Boy Scout troop and I got elected to a position called “scribe,” which nobody knew what it was. I was 11 or 12 years old and they said they needed somebody to tell people about the scout troop and what they’re doing. So I went over to The Mid-York office and they said, ‘just write about what the scout troop is doing and give it to us.’ So I did that for about four years and they were publishing my articles every two or three weeks and I still have a scrapbook full of those articles. That was my career with the Mid-York Weekly. 

With Brown Newspapers, the forerunner to the Eagle Newspapers, I was actually a sales rep selling advertising. So I convinced the publisher to let me write a column about the businesses that were advertising as free publicity for them.

Q: I understand that you also wrote a ski column. Did that come about because of your involvement with the Onondaga Ski Club?

A: I was the ski editor of The Post-Standard from 1978 to 1983. Because I was president of the ski club, I had been the founder of the big ski show that was out at the fairgrounds that ran there for 20 years, which I was the director of for 16 years. I grew it from zero to the largest ski show in the United States and as a pure ski show, it was bigger than the ones in New York City and Chicago; we filled the entire Center of Progress building and it was quite the extravaganza for years and years. It has since kind of died out but anyway…

We were always trying to get The Post-Standard to write ski articles and they were never interested. To them, skiing was not a sport; to them a sport was not a sport unless it was played with a ball and preferably an orange ball. They did throw us a little bone and in January and February for eight weeks they would run a weekly ski column about what was going on in the ski world. So one day I picked up the paper to read the ski column and it wasn’t there. So I called up the paper and talked to the sports editor at the time, Bob Atkinson, who I remember well. And Bob said, “The person that was writing the ski column has left town and we don’t have anyone else on staff interested in skiing so we probably won’t bother having a ski column anymore.” And I said, “Look, if you want someone to write a ski column, I know everything about skiing and I’m president of the Ski Club and was an instructor at a ski school and was on a race team and have worked at ski shops and did the ski show and basically knew everything that was going on with skiing in Central New York.” And he said, “Oh, that sounds good. Do you know how to write?”

A Sunday, Aug. 30, clipping from the Post-Standard remembers Zimmer’s saving of this publication (the bear is familiar to any past and present full-time employees at the paper because if it’s next to your name on the attendance board, it means you get to clean up the kitchen area for a week).

 

 

Q: How would you rate your writing skills at that time?

A: Well, I was faced with a decision: Do I tell a little white lie, the first one of my entire life? Or tell him the truth and have the conversation be over. So I said, “Well, sure I can write,” and he said, “OK you can write the ski column.” So home I go and write the first ski column and drop it off and tell all my friends, “Hey, whoop-dee-doo, I’m now the ski editor at The Post-Standard.” So Thursday morning I pick up the paper and there’s no ski column. So I picked up the phone and called Bob Atkinson and said, “Where’s my column?” He said, “That piece of garbage? You can’t write, we couldn’t print that!” He said they didn’t have time to edit the article and that they’ve got to look at it for 30 seconds and it goes in the paper, and that I was done, finished.

Q: But that wasn’t the end of the story with the ski column, I’m assuming?

A: No. I got in my car and drove down and walked right into Bob’s office and literally dropped down on my knees in front of his desk and said, “Please, you’ve got to help me.” So we talked a bit and he said, “OK, Art, I’ll make an exception. If you turn in your ski column three or four days early, I’ll spend a little time and clean it up and make it printable,” and off we went and that’s what we did.

So now I’m ski editor, ski writer, and then I found out about a marvelous organization called the United States Ski Writers Organization. This was a group of top-quality professional ski writers from all over the United States that wrote for the big national ski magazines and big daily newspapers. I also found out, surprisingly, they only had two requirements for membership: You had to be a paid ski writer. The Post-Standard was paying me big bucks to do this and I was really in it for the money—they were paying me $10 a column and I was doing eight columns in January and February, so I was getting $80 a year. The second requirement was that you had to write at least eight columns per year, which I was.

Award winner: Art Zimmer prepares to accept his Volunteer of the Year award from the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce in March 2004. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

 

Q: So I take it you joined the ranks of the ski-writing elite in the United States?

A: I applied for membership, joined and now belonged to the most prestigious ski writers association in the United States. Every ski area in the world wants you to come there in hopes you will write about them and they want you to come so bad, that it’s carte blanc with everything. I had six, all-expense paid trips to Europe by the Austrian National Tourists Office and the Swiss National Tourists Office. Traveled all over the United States to every ski area and I wrote about these places, it wasn’t that I was ripping them off. And so I was living the Life of Riley for an average skier.

Q: So were you able to maintain writing about skiing as a year-long gig? Or did you have any other ventures at the time?

A: Actually, my day job and business at that point was real estate—I’d buy old junky buildings and fix them up and rent them out, doing all the work myself. And since I was working for myself, I had lots of time and a flexible schedule that I could go on these trips and it was great.

So everything is rolling along fine for five or six years and then Bob Atkinson had the audacity to get himself promoted and upstairs he goes and becomes an executive editor at The Post-Standard. So in comes this little guy named Mike Holdridge as the new sports editor. Nobody liked him and he didn’t last long, but he called me up and said, “Art, I know what Atkinson’s been doing with you and I’m not going to do it. You’re done, finished, fired.” So I thought, “What am I going to do now? I’m going to get kicked out of the ski writers association.”

There was The Herald-Journal, but they had a very talented ski writer who was already writing a weekly column and was a friend of mine that went on a lot of these trips with me, so there was no opening there and the other problem was, I can’t write. But there was this publication that was kind of a disgusting rag sheet that I never read or didn’t know anyone that read it, called The New Times or something like that. And when you’re desperate, you’ll do desperate things.

Q: So I’m guessing since we’re having this conversation today, this was your introduction to the Syracuse New Times?

A: Yes. I went down there and there was this bunch of long-haired, half-baked leftover hippies from the 1960s writing this real left-wing liberal rag sheet about overthrowing the government and all that kind of stuff. But I said, “How would you guys like the former Post-Standard ski editor on your staff?” And they thought it’d be great. Of course I told them they only had to pay me $10 a week and they thought that was great too.

But then they told me even at $10 a week, forget it, because they were bankrupt and going out of business and that was the end of it. So I thought my life with ski writing and with the Ski Writers Association was over and for about two weeks, I wandered around town in a daze and then I’m driving down Route 81 one afternoon going home, and just before I got to LaFayette, there’s a place every time I drive by that I still look at and smile. It’s a place where it says, “No U-Turn” and hit me clear as a bell and I thought, “I know what I’ve got to do.” So I made the U-turn, drove down and walked into The New Times office and they said they’ll be closing and that either the next week or two will be the last issue and that’ll be it.

So I said, “Fine. I’ll buy the place, name myself ski editor and I’ll live happily ever after.” And that’s the true story of how I bought The New Times.

Q: So was there a gap in issues after you purchased it because of the bankruptcy debacle or did the paper never miss a beat?

A: Actually there wasn’t, but we came awfully close. My first issue as the publisher was the first issue of September 1984. Now, I’m sitting there, and I was doing all right with the real estate, but was not wealthy by a long shot and couldn’t afford to have a money-losing business just for the sake of publishing my ski column. My fondest dream was to bring it up and break even. Circulation was about 3,000 and staff was three unpaid people and rent in the office hadn’t been paid in six months and the landlord had eviction papers already drawn and was getting ready to put us out on the street.

And since I couldn’t afford to have a money-losing business, I rolled up my sleeves and went to work and put some time and effort into it and it just took off and the rest is history. We went from 3,000 to 40,000 circulation and an unpaid staff of three to 25 full-time employees. And we went from grossing under $200,000 per year to over $2 million a few years later.

Q: What were the changes you made that you think turned it into such a prosperous enterprise?

A: I swung the paper from being very far-left leaning liberal to being a little more centered and more of a community paper than it ever had been.

Q: Were any of those three unpaid employees Mike Davis, Bill DeLapp or Walt Shepperd?

A: {New Times photographer} Mike Davis is the only {full-time} person still working here from when I first bought the paper. {DeLapp was a freelancer who still recalls bank employees laughing at the rubber checks he received prior to Zimmer’s arrival} Walt had left because he hadn’t got paid, or because he was fired. Kathy Kane was one of the leftovers and was the glue that kind of kept everything together during the transition and a little while afterwards I named her associate publisher. She acted kind of like a general manager would and brought back some of the other people that had been here before with the understanding that they’d be a little more community-oriented.

Q: You mentioned that you were in real estate prior to purchasing The New Times and currently you lease out space to multiple businesses in the New Times’ office building. Does multi-tasking just come naturally?

A: When I bought The New Times, it was in a rented office down in Armory Square. After settling up with the landlord, after a year or two, I decided that The New Times should have its own building. To really be a part of the community you should really own your own place. I spent about six to eight months looking for a place to buy and I wanted to buy a place down in Armory Square. See, one thing most people don’t realize is that The New Times was the original business in Armory Square and set the trend. Being a funky, crazy, far-out business, you could say we were the founders of Armory Square.

I thought it would be important to stay in Armory Square, but there was one major problem: there was no parking. There was, in the middle of Armory Square, a parking lot, and then I found out that the city was going to do the most stupid thing in the entire world. As Armory was developing into an entertainment area, parking was a serious problem, and where the only parking was, they decided to build a building there, which is now where the Blue Tusk is. So, I decided, unless I could get a building with parking, I wasn’t going to buy it. I couldn’t find anything downtown, so this ended up being the best choice where we had parking and it was as close to downtown as possible and on a bus line.

Walking behind his Zimmer classic car so boxing champion George Foreman (waving) can ride during a Boxing Hall of Fame weekend parade in 2003. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

 

Q: Another side project of yours is the Zimmer Motor Car Co. When did the idea for that come about and have you always been an automobile enthusiast?

A: I’ve had less interest and knowledge in cars my entire life than I did in newspapers. Of course, I had no knowledge or interest in newspapers my entire life until I bought one. To me, a car was transportation to get from point A to point B and that’s it. Then one day, I happen to see a fancy car parked in front of Sam Dell Dodge, so I stopped and looked at it and said, “Wow, it’s called a Zimmer.” And that was the end of that.

Then about a year later, in 1996, Shirley and I were on a trip to a newspaper convention and saw a Zimmer in a showroom in Palm Springs, Fla., and I had no interest in buying it, because my philosophy has always been to never buy myself toys. I always invested any and all money I had back into my businesses. At that point I was investing all my money into The New Times, which took a lot to bring it up, which almost bankrupted me, and I came very close to going bankrupt before it turned around. Since {the Zimmer} was in a used car showroom, I thought here’s the chance to take it for a test drive just to have fun. So we stopped and looked at it and took it for a drive and Shirley insisted that we buy it and I said, “No, I don’t buy toys. If I had a few spare dollars I’d invest it into The New Times.”

Media mogul: Art Zimmer appears as the special guest of Ron Curtis Jr. on Freaky Flix and Food, a locally produced show that aired Saturday nights on WTVH-Channel 5. During the program, a local celebrity cooked up something to eat, and in Zimmer’s case, his Everything But the Kitchen Sink Salad got an extra ingredient when he sliced his finger and blood sprinkled the greens. Curtis refused to eat it. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

 

Q: But I take it she found a way to convince you otherwise?

A: Long story short, she prevailed, and we bought it, but then I decided, “I’m not going to have this toy.” Then I found out the {Zimmer} company was bankrupt and closed, similar to what The New Times was going to be, and I said somebody should manufacture this car because it had my name on it, so I bought it and started the Zimmer Car Co. because it had my name on it, and that’s it, not because I had any interest in cars.

Q: Quite a few celebrities have purchased Zimmers throughout the years. Who are some of those people?

A: Shaquille O’Neal has one, Hulk Hogan, Willie Nelson and Lou Rawls, who passed away a couple of years ago, bought two of them.

Man about town: (top) Art Zimmer throws out the first pitch at a Syracuse Chiefs game to kick off New Times Night in August 1999 (MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO); a few months earlier, he attends a press conference for Festa Italiana and schmoozes with perennial mayoral candidate Joe Nicoletti (LYDIA VIVIAN PHOTO). Or is Nicoletti schmoozing with Zimmer?

 

Q: When did you first meet Shirley and what was the first date like?

A: We were fixed up by mutual friends on a blind date and went out to dinner with them, which was 22 years ago. It was a raging blizzard that night and {Shirley} thought I’d call her up and cancel the date. So she called her friend who was fixing her up and said, “It’s a blizzard out there, are we still going out to dinner tonight?” And my friend, who was also an avid skier in the ski club, said, “Those guys are skiers, they’ll drive through anything.”

Q: So when was that first date and how soon after did you two get married?

A: It was January, 23, 1987. And after dinner that night, my friend said to his wife, “Don’t you ever fix one of my friends up with your friends again; they didn’t like one another.” Then about three weeks later, Shirley and I went to visit them and told them we were engaged to get married. And six months later, we were married.

Q: Traditional newspapers across the country are facing hardship because of the digital age. After 25 years owning The New Times, looking forward, what do you see in the paper’s future?

A: I see a bright future for weekly newspapers like The New Times. We are not hurt as bad by this economic downturn as other media. The Post-Standard, the radio and TV stations are all hurting much worse than we are. We have been able to reduce costs much more effectively than other media and by reducing costs we’ve been able to keep from going into deep debt as most other media has and as the economy turns around, we’re just plugging along and have even seen an uptick more so than other media.

Q: Is there one particular issue or one specific memory that stands out above the rest these past 25 years?

A: Every week is a new adventure and new major accomplishment getting the paper out. As for highlights over the years, I look at every week as a highlight. But, when I bought the paper, it had been losing money for years. And after I bought it, I had projected it would break even and be making money after two years, and it wasn’t, and because of that it almost bankrupted me. I was selling houses from my real estate and taking that money and throwing it into The New Times, and people were telling me I was crazy because the paper was never going to make it. I told them, “No, it’s going to make it,” and I’d sell another house and keep the paper going for another two or three months. I even put a second mortgage on my house and sold my car and threw that money into it. Then after four years, it finally turned around and broke even then started to become profitable in the fifth year.

Q: What has been the key to maintaining the success of The New Times after that time?

A: I have relied heavily on the staff, more heavily than most publishers do and have given more control to each and every department head over the years than is normal in most every business, and I think that has been very helpful to the success of the paper. And I think that has enabled the paper to reflect more of the community than me because I kept my personal feelings out of it. Not even Shirley knows how I vote because I don’t talk politics with anyone. 

Z is for Zimmer: The staff presented him with a “mini-Art” for his 20th year of owning the paper.