Online Journalism Review looks at the success of some alt-weeklies’ online sites and asks why they are succeeding when others are folding. Dan Richardson, an OJR contributing writer, says the alt-weekly sites “are selling value-added classified services like e-mail notices. Their editorial content – the long, investigative articles and snappy reviews – are almost beside the point.” That may be bad news to writers and editors, but it is good news for the bottom line.
Alt-weeklies get some pretty weird-looking mail–highly creative promotional items, letters scrawled on brown paper and the like. These days many editors and publishers say their staff are opening all the mail with latex gloves and locking doors they used to leave open. One editor bucks the trend by organizing a charter trip to New York, and a publisher quips, “We've notified the local TV stations that we're ironing all our mail while wearing Tyvek suits, and invited them to come and film the process.”
