Mike Shea, the executive editor of Alternative Press from 1985 to 2020, at Visible Voice Books in early July. After a few years out of the media world, Shea started Ruffian Books as a kind of natural corollary to his decades in the world of music journalism.
It didn't. In December of 2020, with pandemic-onomics braying alongside ever-present financial concerns in the media world, Shea did decide to effectively call it quits. He signed Alternative Press—"my baby and my identity"—over to a Californian media startup owned by the lead members of Good Charlotte. His stint at AP was one of the longest tenures in Cleveland media history.
Though Ruffian only has two titles to its name so far—one, a primer on seventies punk; the other, a nice coffee table book called—its spirit dovetails with Shea's current spot in life and career. A spirit that loves the retrospective: publishing generalist dives into subgenres of punk that, it's obvious to say, Shea had a front row seat to in documenting the past four decades.
By 1993, Alternative Press had a global circulation of 50,000. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins had all made the cover—before, Shea likes to point out, Rolling Stone—and had simultaneously catapulted the magazine into a national standing. Even if Cleveland didn't feel that way.