These Alt-Weeklies Faced ‘Total Annihilation.’ Here’s How They Survived.

Are alt-weeklies ever going to catch a break? An already precarious media industry has only become more precarious for alternative weeklies, which are mainly funded by ads from restaurants, bars, and concert venues—businesses that depend on people gathering in large groups, and whose cultural coverage centers around telling readers to go out and do things.

It’s a story we’ve all heard before. Many alternative weeklies have been gutted, or closed in the last five years. The Village Voice closed in 2018; LA Weekly was sold in 2017 and gutted; the same year Baltimore City Paper closed. Others were casualties of the pandemic: City Pages, Minnesota’s beloved alt-weekly, particularly known for music writing, closed last fall.

The pandemic was supposed to be the “total annihilation” of alt-weeklies. But after we moved on from the doom-and-gloom headlines, many papers continued to do backbreaking work, holding power structures accountable as they continued to cover the pandemic with shrunken newsrooms, supporting creative communities, and holding power structures accountable in the voicey, fearless way that only alt-weeklies can.

Read more at The Daily Beast.