Pulp Friction

Last summer, information trickled out in private conversations between the IPA and members. "The IPA kept saying: 'Don't worry, don't worry,' or telling each magazine individually, 'We have it all under control; it's just you,'" says Kaiser.

The IPA's debt to Bitch reached nearly six figures while then-publisher Jervis was a member of the IPA board. She considered resigning, but stayed on, hoping to advocate for smaller publications in even worse shape. Jervis, Leibsohn, and Schulman say they had asked for financial details about items including the BigTop budget, but were usually outvoted by other directors or denied access to data by Landry. The current board leadership calls this a difference of opinion — a small cadre of board members wanted greater financial detail, they say, but the majority wanted only analysis by IPA staff. "We're board members. We have access to whatever we want," says chair Lucia Hwang. "I don't know what people are so upset about."

When Jervis sent an e-mail critical of Landry and the board to another publisher in January, she accidentally cc'ed the entire list. In it, she said she felt restricted from raw, public honesty by her "stupid board involvement" and called Landry "so defensive." After reading the e-mail, Hwang called Jervis, asking her to change her attitude or, Jervis says, resign. (Hwang says she did phone Jervis, but didn't specifically ask her to step down.) Jervis quit.

"One way to deal with squeaky board members is to ask them to leave," says Leibsohn, who has sat on dozens of nonprofit boards. "Another way is to deal with questions they raise."

Leibsohn says he was "kicked off the board because I asked questions." Shortly before an August executive board meeting, Woodard e-mailed Leibsohn to say she was introducing a motion asking him to relinquish his seat. "[Landry] needs support from us," one line read. "He does not feel that you are supportive."

"I was very supportive," Leibsohn says, "but I also need information. You can't make decisions like that when you don't have information." He considered taking the battle to members, but resigned instead. "I was humiliated, frankly. I ate it because I didn't want to fracture the organization anymore."

Woodard describes the situation as a "personnel issue" — Leibsohn was disruptive in meetings, wasting precious board time on trivial issues. "He's a tough guy to work with, and we tolerated him as long as we could," she says. "It was not Richard [Landry] getting someone off the board who asked important questions. The whole board was frustrated."

Last October, just before an emergency board phone call, Landry sent an e-mail to clients outlining IPNS' difficulties, then pledged to keep IPA members updated every two weeks. The updates were imprecise and often delayed. In a typical e-mail, sent just before Christmas 2005, Landry promised further information to members, some of whom were near bankruptcy, by mid-January. "By that point," he wrote, "we believe that things will be a lot clearer. However, until then, we won't know much more than we know now." At the time, the IPA hadn't yet disclosed important facts such as the total amount owed to publishers.

This vagueness only added fuel to the conspiratorial fire. "The [IPA offices] had moved from the Mission to the Financial District, and people started making guesses: 'Why'd they move downtown?' 'While we haven't gotten paid, how much is Richard Landry making?'" says Garage magazine's Stoner. "While we were dunking our torches in lighter fluid and making a run on Frankenstein's castle, the IPA kept saying, 'We're going to figure things out.'... We said, 'Folks, look, if you just tell us what's going on, we can replace conjectures with facts.'"

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At the IPA convention in January 2006, at the Marines' Memorial Club & Hotel near Union Square, Landry, Hwang, and Selby stood before dozens of IPNS clients, for the first time answering questions publicly about the financial problems. According to the convention program, the panel's title was "Indy Press Newsstand Update" — because two weeks before, Kaiser, who created the event's curriculum, had convinced Landry and membership director Mike Tekulsky to change it from "Understanding Newsstand Reports," the original title. "Until the end, they thought they'd be able to get people to not talk about the problem," says Kaiser.

"I felt like a deer caught in headlights when the whole crisis emerged so quickly," Landry told them. "I hope we're going to be able over the next few months not only to begin the process of rebuilding our trust with you, but use this entire experience as a lesson about what we need to do going forward."