From USC Annenberg's Online Journalism Review, by Mark Glaser:
"In years past, if you wanted to know what bands or disc jockeys were playing your local clubs, you picked up a copy of the alternative weekly newspaper. Now, you still have that option, but if you're chained to your computer all day, you might consider the daily newspaper's entertainment site, a local online-only site such as CitySearch, or even a niche local site or e-mail list.While the Palo Alto Weekly was the first newspaper to publish content regularly on the Web in 1994, and The Village Voice had one of the more eclectic online radio stations, alt-weeklies have largely let the Internet revolution pass them by. Classified sites such as Craigslist.org and Match.com, and content sites such as Alternet.org and Salon.com have taken their mantle online, while alt-weeklies have looked on with growing horror.
Why horror? These very weeklies were the ones that spoke directly to urban youth with edgy editorial, uncensored personals, and the best live entertainment listings in town. But the youth of today aren't staining their fingers with ink, choosing to get much of their information online. For example, BIGresearch found that men aged 18 to 34 were reading newspapers and magazines less, and watching less TV in 2003, while 72 percent of them were online. And if there's any audience that's wired, it's the audience that traditionally has had its nose in alt-weeklies at the corner cafe.
Now the weeklies are starting to awaken from their long slumber online, with the New Times chain trying to outdo Craigslist with its Back Page initiative, and the Village Voice Media chain appointing a vice president for online. And innovation is coming from the edges, with the Buffalo ArtVoice wading into online multimedia, the Jackson (Miss.) Free Press putting Weblogs front and center on its site, and The Stranger (in Seattle) and Chicago Reader pushing new "aggressively local" online personals."
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