ABSTRACT
Alternative media have been dismissed as inhabiting an ‘alternative ghetto’ and as exemplifying ‘radical failure’ – failure to attract advertisers, failure to operate in a business-like manner and failure to reach significant audiences (Comedia, 1984: 100; Landry et al., 1985; see also Hamilton and Atton, 2001). However, the very ‘amateurishness’ of many alternative projects, such as the alternative newspapers that sprang up across the UK in the 1970s, could also be seen as a strength rather than a weakness; a success story ‘in terms of their sociocultural import, their opportunities for reflexivity and their prefigurative politics of organizing’ (Hamilton and Atton, 2001: 127). But what of their journalism? This chapter addresses the following questions: How does
the journalism of alternative media differ from mainstream journalism? Do alternative and mainstream media have different sources? And is there a different relationship between producers and sources in alternative media as opposed to mainstream media? The issues identified here are explored by examining two forms of alternative local media in the UK: a newspaper and a website. But such alternative media projects are first placed in context.
