ALT: Weekly Readership Battle -

San Francisco Bay Guardian INDY vs
Michael Lacey & New Times VVM -

Eli Sanders of The Seattle Stranger delivers a very articulate report on the newspaper war that's been grinding along on the West Coast USA.

Many younger people have expressed the view that this is a battle between geezers who are peddling anachronistic paper products which are doomed anyway, but I view it as a Quality of Life issue.

Anchoring the issue here in Broward County FL, we don't have an Indy. Instead, we have two sleazy corporate products which seem locked in a race to the bottom of the barrel.

They are so thin on contents that they are only one step away from being outright junk mail. They appear to be competing only to gleefully establish which one can give the public the least amount of content and still meretriciously pretend to be an airquote newspaper. Many residents of our area view them as simply another form of pollution.

I am appalled that they seem to be getting away with it - it's like they have a license to print money in their basements while flipping us their middle fingers, which can leave one with the distinct impression that they are indeed a bunch of nasty people who are only up to no good.

There have been many other such publications that have come and gone over the past several decades, like the Oracle and the East Village Other. Several current weekly publications are struggling to just survive. Some survive, but have changed character and mission so drastically that only their banner is the same. They are, to some degree, creatures of their zeitgeist.

For his part, Sanders was very forthcoming about The Stranger's rather complicated relationship with VVM, and I appreciated that.

Many people here in the U.S. are going to be impacted in some way by the ripples that emerge from this epic battle in San Francisco.

:: Eli Sanders :: at The Stranger ::

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