Interesting! Over how long a period were you reading San Diego Reader? Certainly when you read about the alt weeklies a lot of people admit that much of the writing was hit-or-miss. But this interview with San Diego Reader's now-editor Matthew Lickona is a very rich description of the genre: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-finest/id1802690409?i=1000708581992
I have fond memories of San Jose's Metro. They made a heroic effort to critique the tech bros' lack of taste.
I was less enamored of San Diego's Reader. They had mostly amateur writers who didn't know anything about the arts, and whose prose was pedestrian.
I lived there from '04-'22, but in that time I read fewer than a dozen issues before I gave up on them.
Interesting! Over how long a period were you reading San Diego Reader? Certainly when you read about the alt weeklies a lot of people admit that much of the writing was hit-or-miss. But this interview with San Diego Reader's now-editor Matthew Lickona is a very rich description of the genre: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-finest/id1802690409?i=1000708581992
Memories…. made me think of our Boston Phoenix… whose editorial was more miss than hit, I guess…