Jun 9
2025
Another alt-weekly is not in Buffalo’s future
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Alternative weekly newspapers are “alive and well,” according to the Columbia Journalism Review.
I asked Geoff Kelly, my deputy editor, to read over the story and tell me what he thinks, as he edited Buffalo’s last two alt-weeklies before joining Investigative Post.
Here’s what he had to say:
We should be so fortunate as those cities where alt-weeklies persist. I’ve been editor of three alt-weeklies, one in Pittsburgh and two in Buffalo. Two are long dead, and the one where I started in this business, Artvoice — which used to be a force in this town — is an online shell of its former self.
Alt-weeklies were/are the go-to source for finding out where to go and what to do in whatever town you live in or are visiting. The folks at The Buffalo Hive, launched last year, are trying to pick up the slack on cultural coverage. I hope they keep gaining readers, not just for the sake of the people doing it but for the region’s artists and musicians, as well as the clubs, galleries and theaters that need and deserve a spotlight.
Since the paper I co-founded, The Public, closed in 2019, I’ve talked from time to time with folks looking for advice on starting a new weekly print publication to fill the void. None have come to fruition — and money is always the obstacle.
Still, I half-expect someday in a coffeehouse or bar I’ll spy some new publication that has truly useful event listings mixed with some smart, opinionated news and cultural coverage. Maybe it’ll be a nonprofit, like Investigative Post. Or maybe it’ll be run by people who know how to wring money out of diverse revenue sources, rather than relying primarily on print advertising — which will never again be as rich as it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I was lucky enough to stumble into the world of alt-weeklies.
But whatever it is, it won’t be Artvoice or The Public — or Altpress, or Blue Dog, or Buffalo Beat, or The Beast, or any of the myriad titles that preceded those now-defunct local newspapers. I think that kind of alt-weekly is dead in Buffalo. I hope I’m wrong.
There you have it.
Federal prosecutors appear to be at odds as to whether to retry the Buffalo Billion corruption case after the convictions of Louis Ciminelli and Alain Kaloyeros were overturned by the Supreme Court.
A sad sign of the times: The Buffalo Niagara Partnership canceled its DEI symposium for lack of interest from companies.
Reinvent Albaby has documented the track record of key state agencies to respond in a timely manner to Freedom of Information requests. Empire State Development is the worst, taking on average 86 days to provide the requested information. As a general rule, agencies can take no longer than 25 business days to provide records.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomWhat’s wrong with college sports: Star basketball player at Duke made $28 million his freshman year. He’s turning pro and may have to take a pay cut. Seriously.
The feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk is, well, delicious. Talk about two guys who deserve each other. Musk Watch provides a blow-by-blow.
The Nation profiles Stephen Miller, perhaps the most vile member of the Trump administration.
The world according to Stephen Miller is a cruel and callous one, in which America is strictly for unhyphenated Americans and those here “illegally” must be forcibly returned to the “failed states” where they were born.
Trump has reversed a Biden directive that required hospitals to provide emergency abortions when the mother’s life is in danger. Women will die because of this.
The Atlantic reports that Trump’s insistence on using his personal cell phone poses a “massive risk,” is “terribly dangerous,” and could be enabling the Russians and Chinese to listen in on his conversations.
J.D. Vance’s hostility towards higher education is at the root of the Trump administration’s attack on Harvard and other universities.
This, from an op-ed in the New York Times (gift link):
Vice President JD Vance is the most florid member of the administration voicing this hatred of academia. Take, for example, the extraordinarily broad brush he used to describe institutions of higher learning in an address at the 2021 National Conservatism Convention: “Universities in our country are fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies, not to the truth,” he said, adding for good measure: “Universities do not pursue knowledge and truth. They pursue deceit and lies.”
Insofar as fellow conservatives “want to do things for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country,” Vance declared.
He concluded his speech by quoting President Richard Nixon: “The professors are the enemy.”
In a 2021 interview with the conservative podcaster Jack Murphy, Vance described the wide scope of what he believes conservative leaders ought to do once elected and empowered:
We should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left. We need a de-Baathification program, a dewokeification program. Basically my strategy is to deinstitutionalize the left, reinstitutionalize the right. It’s very hard. It will require men and women of incredible courage. But I don’t see another way out.
Sick stuff.
George Carlin has something to say about the subject. The state of education, that is. Substitute “Trump/Vance” for “wealthy business interests” and Carlin’s analysis is brought up to the present.
