I read the Advocate, too. The music reviews and restaurant listings are indespensible. The sex ads in the back are always entertaining. That is not my point.
The Advocate, bastard step-child of the republican-slanted Hartford Courant, member of the Tribube Media Company which owns virtually all of the main print and television outlets in CT, regularly prints biting, well-researched exposes about crimes in the Bush adminstration, Cheney's shady energy dealings, etc, etc.
My question is simply this: why doesn't The Tribune Media Company consider these items newsworthy enough to place in it's "real" newspaper? By printing these stories only in the free paper that people pick up on their way out of the liquor store, they ensure it's easy dismissal. "Well, it was in that nutcase hippy paper! If it was
real news, it would have been in the real papers! Or on teevee news!"
But The TMC owns the media in CT. And the Advocate is the only "alternative" voice, from NY to VT...the own it all.
Fuck the restaurant reviews. There will always be a free entertainment rag in any metro area with reviews and sex ads. But for this Conglomerate-owned pseudo-alt tabloid to be publishing supposed hard news is just a sham. I'm glad to read the stuff, but the fact that I am reading it in the Advocate is a sure sign that the story -- whatever story -- will be buried by the "real" news outlets TMC owns.
Too bad the FTC didn't grant them more coverage area, huh?