Interesting question posed by one-time SF Weekly editor John Mecklin (who is now an associate editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) about the future of alt-weeklies:
What, exactly, are they an alternative to? It used to be the monopolistic daily newspapers in their towns, but both the city dailies and the city weeklies have literally been taken apart by the digital revolution, with whole classes of advertising migrating online where, by and large, dailies and weeklies have been late to the revenue and technology party.
Add: Mecklin doesn’t question the importance of alt-weeklies. He’s rooting for them. But, as with plenty of other folks, he wonders how long there will be a market for journalism, irrespective of how good it is, in 5,000-word chunks.
