'New' Models for Journalism Look a Lot Like Alt-Weeklies

february 11, 2009  12:20 pm
Business Week's Michael Arndt and Hypercrit's Michael Becker let a little air out of two lofty plans for the future of journalism by noting that both bear some resemblance to an already existing business model. Business Week looks at The Printed Blog, the recently launched weekly print product that repackages blog posts and is currently operating in three cities. The paper's founder, Joshua Karp, says eventually he would like to publish more local content and do so more frequently. "In other words, it would evolve into an alternative newspaper," Business Week notes. At Hypercrit, Michael Becker deconstructs Jane Stevens' idea of "mini-metros," which would be built around a limited number of subjects, perhaps even one beat, but would be exhaustive in those areas. "Stevens' mini-metro model is not exactly a new idea," Becker writes. "The general idea of niche mini-metros has always been with us in the form of alt weeklies."