Making Peace With the Decline of Alt-Weeklies

Last week, the Boston Phoenix published its final issue, and this Friday its last web edition will go online, ending the four-decade run of the storied alt-weekly where Susan Orlean, Charlie Pierce and David Denby got their start writing the sorts of stories (and frank prose) most other outlets in the city wouldn’t publish.

This has been sorrowful news in writerly circles – particularly, arriving as it has, in the same week as a depressing new accounting of the state of the alt-weekly industry from the Pew Research Center. In 2012, every one of the country’s 20 largest alt-weeklies lost circulation (on top of the circulation they’d been losing for years), with one exception. The Phoenix New Times picked up – a glimmer of hope! – a meager 0.14 percent.