Friday, October 4, 2024

Boston Phoenix Said to Be Closing, Alternative Weeklies Now a Thing of the Past

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The Real Paper in Boston died a long time ago. Now Stephen Mindich, scourge of Boston publishing is finally shuttering the once beloved Boston Phoenix. Imagine that Boston, once the hippest college area in the U.S., now sustains no alternative weekly paper to the feeble Globe and the even sadder Herald. In New York, the Village Voice is a ghost wandering around the neighborhood making sounds that can only be heard in crazy people’s heads. Recently my cousin asked me if I could help find her daughter an internship in “journalism.” What’s that, I wondered aloud?

Back in my day (IBM Selectrics, pay phones, long nights in the library research room), papers like the Phoenix, Real Paper, VV, and Soho Weekly News were where you started out, learned the ropes, eventually got a piece published, networked. The “journalism” was real, it was reporting, is wasn’t “blogging,” snarking, opinionating, bloviating–and for free, no less. I don’t know how Mindich finally killed the Phoenix. But I do imagine that everyone’s on their mobile device, and that stopping to buy a paper at the– ahem– newsstand is out of fashion.

And good grief– there doesn’t seem to be even a www.bostonphoenix.com to say goodbye to. Is WBCN still up there? Charles Laquidara, a nation weeps.

 

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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