Towers Repeating

Apropos of Pete’s comments yesterday, I have to admit I haven’t looked at many New Times papers in recent years. I think their impulse to be politically contrarian is a good one (which is a much different thing than being anti-liberal, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation–of course, anti-liberalism usually IS more or less disguised conservatism, but not always) for a lot of different reasons, but the nationalizing of a sensibility and actual content is obviously troubling.

The Onion is, of course, in a class all its own and not really an alt-weekly in any meaningful way, although one could make an interesting argument that it is to alt-weekly print what Jon Stewart is to network news. I think their only opportunities for profitability are national ads (they get a few of those, but may be too edgy to get a lot more) and local listings ads (hence the expanded arts coverage). Editorially, they could never replace the City Pages of the world. As a business, they surely could, if the world of paper has any survivors in the next 20 years.

Alt-weekly news is some of the most vital journalism happening today (although not always the most entertaining or interesting, in my humble opinion–again, another separate question), but eventually I fear these big chains will follow the lead of even the most respected dailies (i..e. McClatchy) in quietly requiring mid-level editors to sit in on business meetings that are not about news but about news readers, not about what’s in the paper, but about who reads it. And, maybe more to the point, how much that paper costs (that is, the newsprint itself).