City Paper: how sucky?

[bellenseb]

This post on DCist got me wondering - how does the City Paper rank compared to other city's alt weeklies?
 
 Just to start, the music section couldn't be skimpier. More previews and reviews of local shows and bands would be great...

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

The personals used to be a lot better, before they made it an online thing.

[Relaxer]

They might not cover the music scene very well, but they have always done a good job covering local politics and news. I think the guy doing Loose Lips now is fantastic. Though of course he's a good friend of mine, but he's still doing a hell of a job.

[kcjones119]

I agree, Dirtfarm is particularly great.  For me I scan the reviews and feature in the front then skip the whole middle which is mostly ads (including 930) and go to the comics in back.

[tigersscareme]

I have big issues with the DC city paper.
 
 Baltimore's city paper is outstanding. Philadelphia has *two*. Albeit, the welcomat is is little weak.
 
 i think the city paper seems like it's on the mend. over the last year, local music coverage seems a little less biased. and they're incorporating more cartoons like emily flake and dirtfarm. (the latter being a local kid which i love)(not the kid...the localness. although the kid is swell too...and is now published in the balto. city paper after their latest comics contest)
 i still think the DC CP could stand to learn a thing or 30 from baltimore's paper.
 
 just my 2 cents.

[vansmack]

Fish wrap.

[redsock]

local music coverage seems a little less biased

What local coverage is this? I certainly don't see any when i read it.

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

They cover a local band in every issue.

[Herr Professor Doktor Doom]

Loose Lips is good for local politics.  Mark Jenkins is a good writer.  Some of their feature articles, which seem to be striving too hard for ever-elusive "edginess," are terrible.  The low point was there was a hideously misogynistic article they ran back in November by a writer who openly admitted to hating 99% of all women which was just inexcusable.
 
 Actually, that DCist link you posted references another blog that takes the author of the piece I'm talking about to task.  It's pretty hilarious:
 
 http://whyihatedc.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-do-you-boycott-free-newspaper.html

[Random Citizen]

Portland has two alt-papers, Willamette Week and Portland Mercury. I read the WW web site on a daily basis. They also have a great local music web site, Local Cut, which on occasion becomes a story in DC because of a band being scared of the U Street area.  

[redsock]

 They cover a local band in every issue.

Seriously, you're joking right? The one little column -- and it only takes up a fifth of a page in the print issue -- spotlights a single song from a local band. Hardly good local coverage. The only other piece they had this week was a good one, but less than two pages of music coverage is insane. Absolutely pathetic music coverage. Every alt-weekly in the country has better coverage. Hell local or not, talk about something...

[igotmoxie]

the city paper is known to try to kick shins of people who don't deserve it. like that completely retarded Fugazi article about 3 or 4 years ago? it was completely pointless aside to get people all up in arms.
 
 it's like their unofficial slogan is 52 scandals a week, no matter what.
 
 i'm sure this is going to spark the "ooooh, you're just mad they poked the sacred cow" and it's not that at all.
 
 to write an article about how un-fun and un rock and roll they are simply because they don't drink or do drugs like a band like slade (which, also, slade? really?) it was just stupid. and they've done it time and time again with other musicians.
 
 it seems to be getting better.
 
 if someone is truly bad, then that's fine. but trying to desperately mine some aspect of someone/something that is for no other reason than to get people's knickers in a twist so you can say that more papers moved off of the little wire racks, well, that's just dumb,
 
 also? i know for a fact that the CP has told people to go for the scandal angle in their stories. so says an ex-writer pal o'mine.

[Herr Professor Doktor Doom]

Having lived through the orthodoxy of the harDCore scene since early on, remembering how people at these shows would pretend they didn't see you if you were talking to someone who wasn't deemed cool, and how you'd catch all kinds of shit if you didn't like just the right bands, I thought that Fugazi article was spot-on, and also very funny.   I've got nothing against Ian and the boys, in fact I go see them whenever they play, but sacred cows by definition ought to be kicked once in a while, more to piss off their slavish worshippers than to get at the cow itself.
 
 as for the City Paper, or any local news outlet for that matter, looking for scandals, um... duh?  You don't need "ex writer pals" to be able to figure that out.