City Paper Founder on the Inquirer's Convention Report
By AAN Staff
june 13, 2008 02:42 pm
Saying that the
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter tasked with turning in
a "breezy" report about last weekend's AAN Convention "must have drawn the short straw," Bruce Schimmel writes that "it must have been challenging for [Suzette] Parmley to do something chipper about industry upstarts who are eating her lunch." But she rose to that challenge, filing what Schimmel calls a "flattering portrait" of alt-weeklies. He goes on to draw distinctions between the cultures of dailies and alt-weeklies, ultimately concluding that "the daily is dying." He adds: "And while that might mean a temporary measure of good fortune for weeklies, even the most eccentric of independents dread the daily's demise. A functional democracy needs the good reporting that comes with these dinosaurs."