{"id":671,"date":"2013-12-29T16:39:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T00:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2013\/12\/the-life-and-death-of-the-alternative-press.html"},"modified":"2014-01-07T16:07:48","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T00:07:48","slug":"the-life-and-death-of-the-alternative-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2013\/12\/the-life-and-death-of-the-alternative-press.html","title":{"rendered":"The Life and Death of the Alternative Press"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>IF it weren&#8217;t for the &#8217;80s Village Voice, I probably would not be a journalist. (The world, I expect, would be a better place.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-XRDaH_PSPr0\/UsDAzXEgq3I\/AAAAAAAACkQ\/kLMeaR-3CYU\/s1600\/1955_October_cover_The_Village_Voice.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: 0px;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-XRDaH_PSPr0\/UsDAzXEgq3I\/AAAAAAAACkQ\/kLMeaR-3CYU\/s320\/1955_October_cover_The_Village_Voice.jpg\" width=\"231\" height=\"320\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>This weekend I have a <a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2013\/12\/28\/how-the-village-voiceandotheraltweeklieslosttheirvoicein2013.html\">story<\/a> in Al Jazeera America about good times and bad for alternative weeklies. I talk about the crystalline sense of mission these publications had during conservative times, and the troubles they&#8217;ve had more recently. And I try to shine a light on the good and important work they still do.<\/p>\n<p>In the piece I get into my youthful infatuation with the alt-press &#8212; I interned at the Voice, freelanced for the now-defunct Boston Phoenix soon after leaving college, later worked for New Times Los Angeles. As nasty as that company could be, we had a blast there, some of the time, and I&#8217;m still proud of the work my colleagues and I did there. (Even if New Times responded by killing the paper and destroying its online archive.) Where is the alt press now?<\/p>\n<p>And I try to sketch out what various weeklies have meant to the city of Los Angeles, which remains the Misread City.<\/p>\n<p>Happy holidays to all my readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IF it weren&#8217;t for the &#8217;80s Village Voice, I probably would not be a journalist. (The world, I expect, would be a better place.) This weekend I have a story in Al Jazeera America about good times and bad for alternative weeklies. I talk about the crystalline sense of mission these publications had during conservative [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31,32,27,30,28,33,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-downturn","8":"category-internet","9":"category-journalism","10":"category-los-angeles","11":"category-newspapers","12":"category-village-voice","13":"category-west-coast","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}