alternative papers

[toastykitten]

I used to read alternative newsweeklies, mostly because they were free. Eventually I followed them more because the stories were better and more in-depth than a daily newspaper. PopCultureJunkMail also used to run another blog that tracked interesting stories from alt-newspapers, but I think she stopped doing that to focus on other things.

I kind of miss it, and I'm thinking of maybe doing something like that. It's going to be pretty California-centric, though. Papers that I know of:

SF Bay Guardian
SF Weekly
EastBayExpress
LAWeekly (my favorite of the bunch)
VillageVoice (although truthfully I only read Dan Savage and occasionally Tristan Taormino from there)

SFWeekly and EastBayExpress are owned by the same company, and SFBG just ran a story about how they're planning to merge with VillageVoice, which brings up all sorts of questions about monopolies, fair competition, the definition of "alternative", etc. The company that owns SFWeekly and EastBayExpress also shut down New Times in LA, and that created a shitstorm over there, if I remember correctly.

I started wondering whether New Orleans had an alternative paper. I think it's the Gambit - they haven't really updated their page like The Times-Picayune, although SFBG printed an op-ed from a New Orleans native.

Maybe if I do things once a month? I don't know how it would work.