Why the Burning Man newspaper folded

Adriana Roberts hasn’t spent a Labor Day weekend in San Francisco for 30 years, but now that she’s published the final issue of the newspaper she printed exclusively for Burning Man, she’s ready to see for herself just how mellow the city becomes during the event.

“Everybody always talks about it, and I want to see if all the rumors are true,” Roberts told SFGATE by phone. “I don’t own a car, but I will borrow one just to see how easy it is to find street parking during Burning Man.”

“One of the reasons I stopped is because it felt like nobody cares about newspapers anymore — not just in any city but also in Black Rock City, which is just like every other city in America,” Roberts said. “Newspapers are dying, especially alt newsweeklies. Look at the SF Weekly: It went from 64 pages every week to now it’s done.”

Roberts started venturing to the desert in northern Nevada in the early 1990s and helped populate a city of 70,000 in the dust. She initially ran a zine called Piss Clear — an homage to the motto that urine should remain translucid, indicating hydration — before applying her design skill set to a larger endeavor. 

Any city worth its salt flat deserves a newspaper, so Roberts established and published the BRC Weekly. The independent paper billed itself as the “premiere lifestyle & culture rag” for Burning Man to “provide the citizens of BRC an entertaining read for their trips to the porta-potty.”

Its mission statement was accomplished. The printed pages carried annual articles to cover the playa with a jester’s wit alongside sardonic editorials such as “The six types of people who will ruin Burning Man just by being here,” which appeared in 2017. 

The BRC Weekly’s most popular column was the infamous “Out/In Lists,” which clarified cultural relevance each summer. In the final issue, the BRC Weekly noted that “hipsters” were out but “hip replacements” were in. 

“To be fair, I stole that from Wired Magazine,” Roberts said. “They did a Tired and Wired column, and these things were a hallmark of snark journalism.”

For 13 years, Roberts worked as the art director for the Bay Area Reporter, where she also wrote about music. She first read about Burning Man in the bygone San Franciscan magazine the Nose in 1992 and attended the event the following year. She was enchanted, returning every year since and launching a zine using the authentically 1990s style of DIY photocopying and stapling.

She ditched Piss Clear for the BRC Weekly in 1997 and began publishing a multipage newspaper. In 2010, she started using the same printer as the Bay Area Reporter, investing about $1,000 a year in production costs for 20,000 issues — plus hours of writing, editing and layout. 

The BRC Weekly would begin accepting submissions from contributors in July, and the story requirements were simple: Each article had to focus purely on Burning Man.

The paper didn’t shy away from critiquing the event’s management; the 2019 cover story was an expose on the Burning Man hospital that asked, “Should an out-of-touch & out-of-state corporation really be running Rampart, Burning Man’s hospital?” 

A story that Roberts could never lock down was an investigation into what she called “the rape problem” at Burning Man.

“Nobody wants to talk about it,” she said. “You want to tell it as authentically as you can, but it’s a touchy subject. As Burning Man got bigger, it took on the type of problems that a bigger festival has.” 

Roberts publicly announced she was ending the BRC Weekly ahead of this year’s Burn, and to her surprise, support began pouring in. 

“I thought no one cared about the paper — I came home last year with 5,000 extra copies — but as it turns out, all you have to do to get people interested in your paper is to announce it will be the last one ever,” she said. “Suddenly, they were all taking it for granted.” 

The BRC Weekly ran out of copies by Sunday this year, just before the event ended. During the week, Roberts said a first-year Burner approached her about inheriting the BRC Weekly logo to continue the tradition, and she’s entertaining the idea. 

Roberts also hasn’t ruled out a return to the playa, but as she noted in the infamous column for the final issue, “Adriana retiring on a beach” is absolutely in.

“Don’t get me wrong. I love Burning Man, and it’s been a huge part of my life. I just need a break,” she said, adding how she DJs full time and is planning to write more for the Bold Italic. 

Moreover, the abundance of appreciation expressed at this year’s finale allowed the BRC Weekly to finish on top — thanks in part to the everlasting appeal of print media.

“Most people would grab the paper and read it at home, but this year, they were stuck in their camp for two days due to the weather,” Roberts said. “What are you going to do? Read the paper.”