So, how important is your alterna-weekly these days?

What the man said. A true genius.

aw, bless

In Portsmouth, NH we have a weekly paper (The Wire) that regularly sponsors or kickstarts local events. They profile visiting artists, but the locals get at least as much coverage. Granted, it's a small paper for a small town, so just getting a club night together can seem like a big deal. But they also organized a "write and record an album in 28 days" event this past February that drew over 220 artists (with an amazing 75% completion rate). And they release 1-2 compilation CDs a year. It would be pretty fantastic if more small, mid-sized and even large cities had support like that.

i am all for supporting local acts when they're, you know, worth covering. journalism isn't the fucking special olympics, people.

IF YOU'RE TRYING TO TELL MY SPECIAL LITTLE GUY THAT HE CAN'T BE A JOURNALIST I'M GONNA FIND YOU AND MAKE YOU INTO A DELICIOUS FLESH SMOOTHIE.

the wire is fantastic. best alt weekly in new england by far. i wish the portland phoenix was more like it.

Plenty of cities have great local scenes. And think of it this way: if your alt-weekly ran some screed about George Bush or Iraq every week, and never paid attention to local gentrification, or problems with the mayor, or the lack of arts housing, or any other local story, would that constitute a good news section?

you gotta search the other stuff out, obviously. though it helps to live in a town with so many goddamn weirdos and a really strong urban music scene. (not to say that weirdos or rappers necessarily have more interesting stories [shit, the rapper's usually have more BORING stories] but still.)

it's true, the writing is generally really bad. (our own tim f being the one exception, and he's stuck in the dance section where it appears to be more about showing ten pages of people getting monged at clubs the week before.)

Believe it or not, a lot of people still don't have regular internet access. Those are the people who take our local weekly home and actually read it.

Still, our weekly is less important than it was, oh, ten years ago.

The NYPress is not fit for cage fodder, nor do I own a bird.

Jersey City doesn't really have an "alt-weekly," or rather, every month two new half-assed ones appear and two old half-assed ones cease to appear.

"Hey, did you know [insert flavor-of-the-month "world beat" artist] is coming to town? Their unique blend of [insert three or four musical styles that appeal to baby boomers here] will really [move you/make you dance/make you laugh] or all at once! [Insert excerpt of interview with band members talking about how they each came from different backgrounds, how they all had to overcome obstacles, and how they're really into world peace here] Go to their CD release party at Cosmic Pizza Thursday at 8pm."

Now, the Mercury's music reviews might've sucked, but they were never as bad as the Eugene Weekly's.

we've had two feistier weeklies spring up in the last while, terminal city and only magazine(started by disgruntled ex-terminal city folk after a takeover), but the former finally collapsed in the spring and the latter is intermittent, though often quite brilliant.

i write for the new alternamonthly (well, weekly in august) in scotland. lots of opportunity. don't think they've quite figured out how to stand out and be important/special/particularly full of insight. it's an interesting question: how to make an altweekly awesome. i'm not particularly convinced by save the robot's suggestions.

I weep one tear.

Unfortunately, when it comes to music, the Voice can't compete with Oh My Rockness or the Todd P mailing list, etc. They review records I don't care about and endorse shows I'd never even consider attending.

You realize this is one of the dumbest names in the history of creation.

Howlingly bad name aside, the site is worthwhile. Lists just about every goddam rock-related thing going on in the NYC area, no matter how small or impermanent the venue, and posts it all months in advance.

Can't for the life of me explain how they came up with the name, though. And I agree, in principle, that anyone who creates or supports such a thing deserves to be shot.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000A2XA5U.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

i read an interview with the lead critic on the local news website (not alternative, not a weekly, but is fulfilling most of the same functions around here) who basically said, "i don't see the point of saying negative things about bands." so, on the plus side, all bands are gushed over; no matter how you sound, you'll still get a positive writeup. on the downside, the gushes read like filler in a high school newspaper. so the bands can't even use the quotes in their press kits without looking like idiots ("hey look, a semi-literate retard liked this band! let's book 'em!")

Or no writeup at all, I would hope?

you'd think, but no. everyone gets their clumsily-written day in the sun.

I really feel for those music editors who've been over-worked and mandated into a corner of utter mediocrity.

No matter what's being written about, vituperative tirades are often MUCH more entertaining than fond pats on the head. I mean, sure: music reviews are a public service -- but they're also entertainment. Printed in the hopes that readers will want to, you know, read them. There's a reason the newspapers don't only print the good news...

Anyway, you can't establish the critical perspective necessary to make reviews meaningful without talking about the stuff you don't like, too. All positive = totally meaningless, unless you rigorously screen for only the very best stuff.

I thoroughly enjoy cutting down crappy local musicians but I think it's only fair to do so when they've got some recognition outside of the city. Some bands are too terrible and insignificant to write about, in which case we should all just ignore them. But if I think they suck and other critics start paying attention to them anyway, I'll go ahead and shoot my mouth off. It makes covering local music a lot more fun and it's won me some fantastically irate letters to the editor.

As for the "what's the point of writing nothing but positive features": I agree. But how many magazines write negative features? I don't remember much controversy about the last ten Beatles covers in Uncut.

As for how to make an awesome alt-weekly: obviously, hire awesome writers. And figure out how to hold onto them when they could get more traffic from webzines or more $/eyeballs from magazines. And then make up a great excuse when their cover story pitches get rejected because your boss won't pay for freelancers to do anything but blurbs. And after a few months of that, leave and take a job with Rhapsody or eMusic, where you'll get real money for your skills.

It's a crappy business right now, which is also why I don't know why anyone would stick with it unless they have some stake in what they're covering - i.e., it's your city and you love writing about it.

yeah, there's no sign whatsoever that the column would be anything less than absolutely stellar if it wasn't for all that overwork. nope. not at all.

The music section is horrible. All the usual problems previously mentioned are present and correct: every lousy touring band is covered with yawnworthy interviews, the tiny amount of staff writers won't stop banging on about the little bands that they love (it's Ween, Ween, Ween all the way usually), local stuff is marginalised (and this is in Vancouver where we have 100s of great bands).

However, the ads are fantastic. And Savage Love!

well, yeah, a lot of 'em would probably suck anyway ... but the whole mandate/assessing your job security on basis of column thing sure isn;t a good starting point.

Awesome

The Austin Chronicle, in comparison, is virtually worthless. The music editor is a middle-aged indie rock fascist. There is no real scene coverage of anything besides rock. Granted, Austin does not have multiple local scenes with international influence; But why aren't there any local hip hop features? Why virtually no dance/electronic music coverage? The arts do get some coverage, but the writing isn't very interested.

You would think the local alt-weekly would be good considering how many students there are and how much of the local population has a university education.

As far as negative press; It seems like there are so many interesting things to write about that you wouldn't waste the inches on bad music. Why write about bad stuff when you can rant about the highly extreme insane awesomeness of whatever you uncovered at the record store this week?

nice reference! :-)

OMG. That is the most racist column I have ever read. "Got any questions about Mexicans?" Are you kidding me? I'm not even Mexican and I'm offended. In the last column the writer (who is Mexican)says: " Real life Mexicans actually embrace their stereotypes. I feel like writing in and asking : How many Mexicans does it take to screw in a light bulb? I can't believe a column like that is getting printed in 2006. And every column they run a comical picture of what's supposed to be a drunk Mexican. Am I missing something here? What's so great about it? It needs to be pulled immediately.

anyway, here's the deal: if said alt-weekly is running a "cliched article about radiohead coming to town" it's the editor's fault. (i mean, christ...just look at your examples.) there is a WORLD of music to cover out there, some of which might never even come to your town let alone play the same shitty rock clubs every weekend. does that somehow invalidate it? the idea that long (or short) form rock writing is some form of gig guide on steroids is one of the main reasons alt-weekly writing sucks so fucking much now. the fucking calendar is already there, as are the calendar highlights in whatever form they take in your local.

i never said covering local music wasn't important. but 52 weeks is a drop in the bucket to cover everything that's out there. baltimore has a GREAT local scene in some ways, and i've been pleased and privledged to cover it. but there has to be something there worthwhile to write about. and yeah, sorry kids, but your lame pixies rehash takes a backseat to villalobos or sublime frequencies iraqi folk comp or whatever. if, like everyone says, people only read it for the ads and the calendar listings (and shit, i'm not even really disputing that), well, those things are already there, so i might as well make the extraneous stuff (i.e. the writing) as interesting to as broad a range of people as i possibly can, whether it's lining the bird cage next week or not.

You lose. (Gustavo is both more politically aware and funnier than YOU'LL ever be, believe me.)

I don't think I know you, Ned.Maybe, Gustavo is more politically aware than I am,,but explain to me why. Is he joking when he says "Got any questions about Mexicans?" That's like saying: Got any questions about black people? or Got any questions about Asian people? Who is he targeting here? Who is he explaining Mexican culture to and why does there seem to be some assumption that Mexicans aren't reading the paper or something. I find that cartoon image with the gold tooth offensive. I do take sterotyping seriously.

Thus, if I type in 'Gustavo Arellano' into a search engine, I am given resources and websites. Why, like this one, a story in which there are words, among them:

Arellano, who is also the OC Weekly food editor, never fancied himself a newspaper columnist. The small-framed, quick-witted and admitted self-promoter had a vision of being a Harvard history professor by the time he was 26. "And I would've done it, too."

He was a film student at Chapman University in Orange when he began reading the OC Weekly. He wrote to its editor, Will Swaim, suggesting story ideas. Swaim was impressed and asked Arellano to write the stories himself.

Arellano resisted at first, but Swaim pressed him. Arellano began writing about the Orange County he knew, including school board politics and his family history in Anaheim, his hometown. Meanwhile, he entered graduate school at UCLA, where he earned a master's in Latin American studies.

As a reporter, Arellano, who calls himself a "good Catholic boy," aggressively covered the sexual abuse scandal in the Diocese of Orange and allegations of corruption against Orange County Latino activist Nativo V. Lopez. He also wrote one of the earliest profiles of Jim Gilchrist, the Aliso Viejo activist who began the border-watching Minuteman Project.

Arellano is driven by a strong sense of loyalty to Orange County. He describes it as the "Ellis Island of the 21st century," a place where a large immigrant population belies the myth of the county as a bastion of white conservatives and big-spending decadence.

"We didn't have to go outside of our little enclave to experience Mexican culture," Arellano said, recalling weekends of Mass attendance, girls' quinceañeras and relatives' baby showers.

....

The column was born when Swaim approached Arellano with an off-the-wall idea: Explain the humor behind a Spanish-language radio advertisement Swaim saw on the side of a bus. At first, Arellano saw the concept as an easy way to make readers chuckle. But in time he realized there was more to "Ask a Mexican" than that.

"The people who write in — they have this preconceived notion of what a Mexican is," Arellano said. "I answer their question, but in a way that's either going to flip the stereotype or going to explode it."

Similar to comedians who satirize their own cultures, including Dave Chappelle and Jeff Foxworthy, Arellano critiques the biases and prejudices of Mexicans and non-Mexicans equally. He freely draws attention to some of the nastier elements of Mexican culture, such as strains of sexism, homophobia and prejudices against other ethnic groups.

"I'm being exotic so that we can remember we're not exotic," Arellano said. "In any minority group, you're always going to have this stigma that you perpetuate on yourself. 'Oh, we're a minority, we're a minority.' My response is 'We're not a minority. Let's get over that and just say, All right, these are the problems we have.' "

....

"A lot of my activist friends say, why do you go on a conservative talk show? Nobody else is doing it," Arellano said at a restaurant in Santa Ana that specializes in food from the Mexican state of Puebla. Nearby, a group of day laborers wailed the day's sweat away with a few songs over a guitar.

"People who don't like Mexicans — nobody is actively engaging them unless it's a protest and they're separated by police," he added.

Arellano pondered this for a moment, then launched into another biting joke: "There's a lot of liberals who hate Mexicans too. I hate a lot of Mexicans, for that matter.

"People from Jalisco are evil. I'm from Zacatecas, and they're right next to us. There's always drama."

Thus, by doing this you have 'information' and 'knowledge,' which can answer many of your questions (and of course, you need not agree with the answers), rather than say, oh, bitching on a random web board without doing ten seconds of research. Amazing. You're welcome.

i misread this as "ambiorix burritos."

The Dallas Observer is terrible.
Arts coverage is limited (but so is art, so I guess that's not their fault), the movie reviews aren't half as good as they were a few years ago (but the VV-NT attempt to replace local critics with syndicated Hoberman/Atkinson/etc. only lasted a couple of weeks at least) and they lost the only decent sports columnist in the entire area (John Gonzalez now back in Philly I think. Or Boston.).

Musically, I give the newest editor some credit for trying - he spends a lot of time encouraging people to see live music, talking about hip-hop, and doesn't shill for every shitty band in town. But the rock he does promote leans toward the bad indie spectrum, and the rest of the features and blurbs are just filler before you get to the hooker ads.

NED WAS 'THE GAS FACE' WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO HOAGIE PITS EFFECT ON SOCIETY/LADIES? CONFIRM OR DENY

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Yeah, for real! I opened this thread totally hoping to see one of James's brutal assaults on Flagpole - our alterna-weekly which is emphatically very not important, except insofar as I think freshmen still really do read it cover to cover just like I did when I was a freshman, so I suspect it has the same lame impact as it did back then. Its political coverage has fallen off completely and the EIC has been showing his true colors as a crotchety old bastard. The music coverage was never fantastic, but there are some occasional bright spots, and the guy with the "root for every band in town!" column actually does a fairly tasteful job of it. There is some negative coverage, although never anything as snarky as the stuff found in Atlanta's red-state broadsheet Stomp & Stammer. (I will say that I love their "Most Regrettable Band Promo Photo of the Month" feature or whatever it's called.) But really, so much of the paper is sort of limp human-interest stuff, and its occasional forays into investigative reporting or "see how the other half lives" tend to be well-intentioned pieces that read like first-draft blogs. We've got one really good comics guy and a whole page of hacks, and in point of fact almost all that anyone picks the paper up for is movie and concert times. Oh, and the classifieds.

See, now James would have been able to say all that in fewer words, and a much higher bile:capital-letters ratio....

The paper itself is actually quite good -- some really great reporters and curmudgeons there.

Monty Hall reference rules, btw ... ;-)

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/alt-weekly-boston-phoenix-closing

Jess was OTM all over this thread.

The extreme localizing of music coverage (due to nobody being to afford print space anymore): awesome for local musicians, lame for those writers who want to write about oddball/interesting music from somewhere else, even IF those artists are touring locally. (And my God I hate the they music be touring here/have new shit out rule.)

All of which has contributed in the years since this thread was born to me barely writing for alt weeklies today.