What's a weekly alternative newspaper? Most large cities have 'em ... weekly alternative newspapers aimed at the college-educated Generation X and Y crowd, with a liberal editorial slant, decent investigative journalism; extensive schedules of local happenings; comics like This Modern World and Tom Tomorrow; restaurant, theater and movie reviews; and some very interesting advertising in the back.

(The definition of a weekly freesheet does NOT include regular weekly suburban newspapers like the Amherst Bee or dat der Chickatawarsaw Times, Pennysavers, Thrifty Nickel-type ad rags, activism/socialist worker-type publications, college newspapers, top-of-the-cigarette-machine-at-the-gin-mill entertainment listing publications, ethnic/race/religion based publications like the Challenger and Pol-Am Journal, and the like.)

Here's a few links from a few freesheet Web sites.

Pitch (Kansas City) - http://www.pitch.com
Westword (Denver) - http://www.westword.com
Willamette Week (Portland) - http://www.wweek.com
Orlando Weekly (Orlando) - http://www.orlandoweekly.com
Now (Toronto) - http://www.nowtoronto.com
City Paper (Washington) - http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com
Reader (Chicago) - http://www.chireader.com
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) - http://www.creativeloafing.com
Seattle Weekly (Seattle) - http://www.seattleweekly.com

I think Buffalo, New York is the largest metro area in the US without a true weekly alternative newspaper. A few might say "what about Artvoice?", but that publicaton contains no investigative journalism, very little news, and the content is usually limited to what's new in the local arts and gay/lesbian scenes.

The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies says "Artvoice has cornered the Buffalo market by sticking to its forte of arts and entertainment coverage." Artvoice is really just a hipper version of the top-of-the-cigarette-machine-at-the-ginmill publications that just contain ads for Canadian strip joints, and mullet bands playing in suburban sports bars ... IMHO, it's not a real alternative weekly.

Please, no editorializing about the typically liberal bias of the alternative newsweeklies. I'd just like to know why Buffalo doesn't have a REAL weekly alternative newspaper, while cities that are much smaller have 'em. Is it that Buffalo is considered so excruiatingly unhip and blue-collar that it can't support a real alternative newsweekly?