Daniel Gray-Kontar

Daniel Gray-Kontar is the founder and publisher of Urban Dialect, a pioneering example of Cleveland’s nascent independent presses. It began in 2003 as a print magazine with a literary bent connecting politics, gender issues, trans-culturalism, race issues and art, taking a positive lead over Cleveland's faltering media. Daniel is also a freelance writer whose work has appeared nationally in The Source, The Village Voice, and locally in Free Times. Meet Daniel and hear his spoken word at Poetry Not in the Woods, next Tue 9/28 beginning 7PM at Shaker Heights Public Library. He spoke with Cool Cleveland senior editor Tisha Nemeth about Urban Dialect's growth and imminent changes as he re-structures to take the magazine to a national level.

Urban Dialect is a smart, irreverent literary effort that seamlessly overlaps exigent topics which affect our community. How did the idea to start up Urban Dialect occur?
I started Urban Dialect with my severance check from Free Times. I worked there for four and a half years as an associate editor and columnist, and it was the third magazine I’d been involved with that went out of business. I looked at the process and just decided to try it on my own. Urban Dialect began as six of us who had ideas on how to make an alternative press work editorially. I called up a few people, and they instantly came on board. We grew Urban Dialect to be a local magazine that was free, with a unique editorial philosophy, but right now we’re in the middle of changing our focus.

Do you see a pattern of alternative presses failing in Cleveland?
I see a pattern with independent alternative presses failing because they are not backed by the major conglomerates. Free Times previously was backed by Village Voice, and Scene is owned by out-of-state conglomerates as well, so that’s what has kept them going financially. It’s tough to be a small media outlet without that type of financial and professional backing.

How have you managed developing the business side of Urban Dialect as an editor?
My situation at Urban Dialect involves a couple things: I am not a business man, I am a writer and editor by trade, and it’s a long, hard jump to make, starting and running a business. So it’s incumbent upon me to find business partners so we can diversify, and not just with publications. We want to do other things; we want people to invest in it as we grow. In Cleveland, I have not been successful in doing this, and so I’m thinking of how to get around it, where I can be successful doing UD, even if it's out of another city.

Do you feel Cleveland is stepping up to support culture on the level that it should?
Our city wants culture without the financial commitment; people here want to be introduced to cultural institutions and endeavors that make a city vibrant, but they don’t want to financially back our efforts. There’s also a negative perspective here, that if it’s a Cleveland-based endeavor, if it’s originally from here, people think it is not worth paying money for. When I visit other cities and show them Urban Dialect, everyone says “How much is this?” The response from other cities is overwhelmingly positive, and the level of financial support for alternative media is stronger in other cities, compared to Cleveland. Our city does want culture, but without the commitment.

It’s the truth, and most people don’t want to hear this is case. It’s just not popular to point out that other cities value Cleveland’s arts/business projects more than we do in our own city. Cleveland has a "throw away" mentality with the arts: if it’s free, then value is not assigned to it. People look at it as disposable and not worth supporting.
Our city is making bad choices, and we’ve got to do a better job at recognizing our creative businesses and endeavors by finding new and vibrant things happening in the community, and then nurturing and supporting them. We’re rectifying that at Urban Dialect, locating people who have the expertise to help us increase our business savvy. And we’d love to keep UD here, God, I love this city, I truly do. Cleveland is our home and we’d like to stay here. But the economy is struggling and there are fewer economic generators here, so there's not a lot of additional cash for creative enterprises. Now I’m put in a position where I’m looking throughout the nation to find opportunities to support Urban Dialect. This means looking for national trends and identifying a new focus for our writing. We’ll be changing our editorial philosophy, getting our focus off of Cleveland. We won’t focus on Cleveland topics that much anymore, we’ll leave that to The Plain Dealer and Cleveland Free Times.

It’s a wake up call for our city. We’ve not acted responsibly when it comes to supporting our alternative journalism; we're in a compromised situation that has grown from Cleveland’s "throw away" mentality of the arts and creative entreprenuerial ventures.
I just love this city, and I don’t want to beat it up, but we’ve got to change our thinking, and I know that’s a broad statement to make. We need change on so many levels; a new way of thinking about leadership and what it means in terms of the leadership failing both its citizens and artists alike. This is backed up by much evidence in the corporate and political community; there has been an abysmal failure in the leadership here. The leaders have demonstrated they cannot meet the multiple challenges our city faces.

Urban Dialect represents an intellectual and artistic literary assault. I think Cleveland is ripe to hear this new alternative journalistic effort, but is our city ready for its messages?
I see it this way. Activism in the public and local media is not happening. The media is turning its head away from the real issues and not recognizing creative enterprises. I don’t know how this will rectify itself, and I don’t know how Cleveland will address this issue [not supporting alternative journalism]. I think Cleveland is struggling from the loss of large for-profit economic generators, like BP [British Petroleum]. We still have a few: Key Bank, Eaton, National City Bank and First Energy. But there are relatively few Fortune 500 companies that are left here, and everyone in Cleveland is asking them for money to finance all types of projects, and they just can’t do it all. And the result is all this fallout in the creative sector, they’re suffering the most. I’d really love to see large corporations support financially the Cleveland Municipal School District, to see them rally around that. It contextualizes it; you can see the numerous needs of the community and then the few existing economic generators, having a hand in our city’s infrastructure – all this stuff needs to be handled and it’s tough.

The media, local politics, and what’s going on with our education system here - even up to the university level - is affecting everyone, myself included. I’ve had my own negative experiences with these institutions and I can say that there is little or no collaboration, especially in the media. It's like CC is trying to build this bridge to connect all of us: media, artists, tech, business; we’re building like mad to link the diversity of this city while being an example to the media. But the media still ignores diversity, is self-serving and harshly competitive to the smaller media outlets.
Somebody please explain to me this: when I go to Boston, you’ve got The Boston Globe, which costs thirty-five cents, and for that cost you get content from Pulitzer Prize writers – as well as the other dailies in Boston that have Pulitzer Prize writers as well. But in Cleveland, we have only one major paper that has no Pulitzer Prize writers to speak of. And the one paper we have, that has no competition, raises its cost to fifty cents? I want to know this: why the increase for mediocre content & no Pulitzer Prize writers? They operate like they’re the only game in town – what’s that all about?

Publications in our city have reached a level of complacency – that's what it’s all about. And the biggest one in town that we’re talking about feels a sense of entitlement to raise its price, has loads of money, but suffers from a poor image. Whereas, we have a strong image, and less operating capital. Which is worse? You can have all the money possible, but money can’t buy a strong image, it is a quality that is built from within. It also keeps us competitive and thinking on our feet.
Competitiveness pervades in all my endeavors, whether it’s arts and cultural grass roots efforts or political activism. The threatening thing I’ve noticed here is an intangible: the leadership from the top down in large institutions. They are threatened by the youth and our entrepreneurial endeavors; in Cleveland, we are eating our young. It’s frustrating. It challenges your commitment to this city, you know? The competition is threatening to them, it’s a rigid thinking pattern and it doesn’t breed community, it breeds something else that’s unhealthy.

You serve up an ambitious mix of creative writing fused with social and cultural criticism. How do you plan on keeping up the momentum with such demanding content?
We try to make sure articles talk to each other as a fluid, unmentioned threadline in each issue. We ask: Does this story communicate with the story before it and after it? We look at it from a political, arts and music standpoint. We are covering it all, and we also want to look at how this connects to cultural dynamics within a city and its suburbs. For independent presses, tackling art, independent topics and music should be part of their role, that should be their editorial philosophy. We want to focus on the alternative to unify urban audiences when speaking to different communities, and marrying themes and the people to show commonality within the themes. It’s hard to do, but that’s what we try to do.

It is hard, and the process is grueling and exhausting, but it's better than being complacent, which leads to spitting out predictable content that, in my opinion, isn't really journalism.
Yes, for example, I did an article on Imam Fawaz Damra. I’d seen him on TV indicted by the federal government because of involvement with Hamas, and I wanted to interview him, so we received a call and we did the interview. All I did was take his thoughts and run it exactly as it was, and it made people uncomfortable, because it’s not what people want to hear, but we let him say what he wanted. After the interview came out, we heard back lots of things - that we were anti-Semitic - just because we allowed him free speech; I thought that’s what alternative press is for, introducing free speech. You know, I love the USA and the freedoms we have, even when a person says something to you that tears you at the soul, but it’s America, and you have the freedom to say it. It does test Americanism. And we [Urban Dialect] took a hit for it, and we’re not going to stop.

How do you reconcile delivering these truths, knocking down people’s comfortable realities who don’t want to hear the truth? It’s about being alternative and speaking out, even when it’s guaranteed to get you criticized, if only to educate, to get others thinking critically.
I don’t know how you reconcile these dynamics; when you find out, let me know! The bottom line is, you’ll get criticized anyway, because audiences won’t criticize for nothing when you’re writing an article. You even get criticized for showing up or not showing up at certain events in Cleveland; when you get criticized that much, you might as well just do what you want. We've been called Urban Derelict, and we did a parody of it in one of our issues.

How will you manage keeping UD from hitting the mainstream, how can you keep content fresh, while challening yourselves and putting out a product that challenges the public?
I think by continuing to stay uncomfortable, by looking at our editorial model and focusing on being better, because the momentum comes from within. I’m blessed to be surrounded by people who are never satisfied; they are more critical of Urban Dialect than I am. It’s good and healthy to challenge ourselves this way.

That’s an unexpected response; being uncomfortable as a resourceful way to stay on the edge.
We stay in a place where we challenge ourselves daily. If we get to a place where we stop challenging ourselves, that’s when it is time to stop.

How do you think Urban Dialect has influenced the community as a monthly cultural magazine?
Oh, I hope so, but I really don’t know if we’ve been around long enough to impact. If nothing else, we prove that young, diverse people can boldly provide high quality for our city, building it on our own terms with a high quality product. This is what surprises people. I hope people see it and build upon it as a modicum. Urban Dialect is a product of a lot of people with a vision, and they are not paid for doing it. It’s a movement - you’re looking at 25 – 40 people’s sweat equity in it, 'cos they see a vision, a unifying culture. People believe in it so much, it is a movement, it’s not like work. I’ve seen our people involved with UD cry over it, so it is definitely impactful to the people involved. People have put their lives on the line for this magazine, I’ve done it too. Our people put their own money into it, their own personal sacrifice for it. People who read our magazine don’t see this part of it, the behind the scenes situations, that someone’s rent went into just one issue of UD that you received for free.

When you work that hard to create a product, even if it's a literary one, it becomes personal; you're attached to the outcome of it and it becomes very emotional. And the audiences don't see that.
That is why Cleveland cannot continue having this culture without commitment; if so, we’ll end up with capitalism and nothing but pop art and pop culture. You can’t have culture without making a financial commitment. It is very much needed, but are we impacting people? I hope that 20-30 years from now people look at it as impacting, but I don’t know how it can be quantified. There are so many personal sacrifices. It's also tough to remain alternative, it is difficult from a journalistic standpoint to "stand out" from the norm. Our nation and our city’s mentality is in a constant stage of "code orange" so it is hard to be different in this kind of environment. Our world is on alert, looking for what’s not normal or what's different, attacking it. We are not safe yet. Did you read The Plain Dealer's headlines the other day, it read, "Anyone who dares to be different sends out an orange flag." So it is a hard time to be different in journalism. Right now, it is a very real problem, the economy is bad, and it doesn’t support anything that’s alternative. We knew that at Urban Dialect when we started; we were clear on that.

What are your creative projects outside of UD?
I’m doing more performance poetry outside of Cleveland: Boston, D.C., and Rhode Island. I’m into the habit of performing.

Why not in Cleveland?
I’m preaching to the choir here; people know where I’m coming from. The other reason is that there are very few venues conducive for performance poetry in Cleveland. A lot of people support it at Cleveland Public Theatre and a few other venues, but they can’t specifically focus on it; not slam or reading, but performance poetry. We need the right environment for it. Right now I’m going to other cities - new environments - where the specialty is the specific craft of performance poetry.

Who are the people in Cleveland who support you, and who are your mentors?
There are many: Tom Vasich, an editor at Free Times, whose tenure was way too short, who is now in California. He was the person who hired me at Free Times and gave me a start in alternative journalism; he understood my vision of journalism and told me to run with it. Also, the editor of Catalyst Cleveland, Charlise Lyles. She is the most fearless leader I’ve seen, and I’ve learned fearlessness by watching her work; she’s a tireless writer and unconventional thinker. Austin Allen, a CSU professor of Communications who ran a program in media for prisons, he taught literacy. He’s the most giving man I know who is committed to mentorship in Cleveland. He taught me how to be literate about violence in media and how it impacts decisions we make. That being said, you have to work hard to seek these people out, and some may fall in your lap. But if I hadn’t been at CSU I wouldn’t have met them; CSU is a great place for mentorship.

Interview and image by Cool Cleveland Senior Editor Tisha Nemeth (:divend:)