I've been working on a story about Braddock's upcoming mayoral election for a while now. A few weeks maybe. Not that the story needs that much time; I just pitched it early. Anyway, my editor at Pittsburgh City Paper asked for a rough draft on April 24. I assumed this meant the story would be published on April 29 (a new edition is released on the streets of Pittsburgh every Wednesday). but it wasn't. The story was held -- I think because this week's edition is All Politics -- in favor of this one. I was concerned when I learned the story had been bumped because I knew there was another reporter essentially covering the same beat on this particular topic. My editor said my story would run this week.

Sure enough, this morning I gingerly drop by Post-Gazette.com and find the exact story I'm working on, more or less, up and featured in the "Most E-mailed" list. Two days before mine will hit streets. Three days before it'll run online.

Now. I'm not pissed at my editor (though I did tell him repeatedly that we were going to get scooped if we held the story) but I am curious about what this means for the state of alternative newsweeklies. Or at least less financially gifted alternative newsweeklies. The explanation for holding my story was based on money and space, basically -- "that happens sometimes when you’re competing with a publication that runs 7 times a week." In other words, because CP pays for print journalism only, not Web, and since they have an increasingly limited amount of space to work with each week ("increasingly limited" because print prices are rising, advertising revenue is dropping, and thus fewer pages are devoted to non- advertising-based words and pictures) they have to pretty much decide on two or three news stories per week. And that's it.

Unfortunate, I suppose. Particularly for sad and pathetically scooped journalists like me. But the question is: How can alt-weeklies move beyond this? An answer might be: "Stop competing with daily newspapers," but then what do alt-weeklies become? The answer most would probably like to give is "The New Yorker" -- i.e. potent scene coverage, longform investigative journalism, and in-depth criticism -- but who has the staff and resources to sustain that?

There's way more to say about all this but it'll have to wait. 

My Braddock story -- in all its now-redundant glory -- soon TK.

And in the meantime, check out Rolling Stone's headline for their version of the story I wrote nearly three years ago. I'll give you a hint: it's "The Mayor Of Hell." Tactful, eh?

More on The Alt-Weekly:

"Will the Chicago Reader finally grow up? Should it?"

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UPDATE: Here it is.