Press: Notes from the Underground

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Alternative papers grow up

The "Food & Drink" supplement ran to 48 glossy pages, bubbling with four-color national liquor ads and articles on such pressing concerns as "Fighting the Gourmet Blues" and "A Consumer Guide to Cognac." An insert in the Sunday New York Times? A section in Gourmet magazine? No, just a little light reading from that old, radical, worker-owned collective in Boston, the Real Paper.

The Real Paper is no longer radical and no longer collective, and neither are most of the nation's other so-called alternative, or underground, newspapers. Ten years after Woodstock-and nearly a quarter-century after the Village Voice was launched as an alternative to New York City's conventional dailies-the alternative press has become so established that it is very nearly Establishment itself. Gone for the most part are the radical polemics, scatological prose and serendipitously amateur design that were staples of underground journalism. In their place are entertainment listings, movie and record reviews, consumer buying guides, elegant graphics, ads, ads, ads and more ads-for stereo equipment, records, furniture, sporting goods, liquor and other trophies of the good life.

Alternative newspapers have grown old with their original audience, the postwar baby-boom generation now moving into its 30s. At Denver's Straight Creek Journal and Seattle's Weekly, the average reader's age is 35. "Politics doesn't sell on the front page since Viet Nam," says Bruce Brugmann, 43, editor and publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian (circ. 35,000). "We put politics on the front page, but we have to highlight it with where to find the best sandwich."

Even before the quest for the best replaced muckraking as front-page material, it was difficult to define alternative newspapers. In size, they range from the Village Voice (circ. 170,000), to the Straight Creek Journal (circ. 5,500). Most of the 40 papers (combined circulation 1.5 million) in the year-old National Association of Alternative Newsweeklies are tabloids serving urban areas. But at least one is a full-size broadsheet (Willamette Week in Portland, Ore.), and others are statewide (Maine Times), suburban (Pacific Sun in Marin County, Calif.), rural (California's Mendocino Grapevine) and even insular (Maui Sun).

The alternatives have always tried to cover the news in a more analytical way than the conventional press. Their editors see themselves as subjective, irreverent and at odds with the local power structure. The Bay Guardian, for instance, rails regularly at Pacific Gas and Electric, the two San Francisco dailies, the " Mannattanization" of the city's architecture, the Chamber of Commerce and anything else it considers high or mighty. The alternatives also like to feature unknown writers and publish long, idiosyncratic articles. The Chicago Reader once printed a 19,000-word piece on beekeeping.