ALT WEEKLIES THRIVE EVEN WITHOUT ME

posted by James Reel

Hi! Remember me? Don’t tell me you didn’t notice I was gone. I took a long weekend to spirit my wife away to California to visit friends and guzzle Napa Valley wine. Now I’m back and settled in, but because I was away I didn’t contribute anything to the latest Tucson Weekly, so I won’t even post a link to that publication because why would you want to read it if I’m not in it?

More seriously, I ran across an interview with Dan Savage, the editorial of an alt weekly in Seattle and the author of the notorious sex-advice column “Savage Love,” which is carried by many alt weeklies, including Tucson’s. Most of the interview concerns his work as a sex columnist, and you should not click on that link if you are proudly prudish. But toward the end, Savage offers some provocative commentary on the advantages of alt weeklies over mainstream dailies. Here’s the essential stuff, but be forewarned that he uses the f-word:

I think alt-weeklies have more and more of a role to play—particularly as dailies continue to try and swim around with an anvil under each arm. One anvil is objectivity and the other is "family newspaper." Alt-weeklies have the luxury of publishing writing by adults, to adults, and for adults. And that's a real advantage. It's a style advantage, it's an attitudinal advantage, and it's also an urban advantage. … Alt-weeklies are really just about advocacy journalism and truth-telling, and they engage in arguments and throw bombs in the way that daily papers can't allow themselves to. I mean, daily newspapers all need to put "fuck" in a headline above the fold one day—it'll solve all their problems. That's my prescription. And then in one fell swoop they'll get rid of all those 80-year-old subscribers who won't let them drop "Blondie." Catering to the 80-year-olds? Where's that getting newspapers? Making sure there's nothing in your paper that's inappropriate for an eighty-year-old to read?