The Jersey City Independent

I've ridiculed the The Hudson Reporter and The Current's many faults, including the two-week old stories, typos and calendar mistakes, fluff stories about no-bodies and hacks, that they're basically real-estate classifieds, and the fact that they simply won't put "BabyHole" in their listings because it's too risque, which I think is stupid. What are we, Victorians?

(Meanwhile, I've been trying to get them to hire me as copy editor but they won't for some reason.)

And the Jersey Journal is a tabloid, but that's what we have left.

This city is closer to New York than Brooklyn, yet it is so much lamer. Why? Because the media (and local government and zoning laws) treats Jersey City people as barely literate babies with delicate sensibilities and no cognitive skills, reactionary and mobbish. And if you read JCList.com, a prominent internet bitching forum, that would be true.

If you treat a city like a baby, it'll act like a baby. (I'm talking to you, JC media and government.) I'm a firm believer that you can tell a city's sophistication by its free periodicals. Have you ever gone on vacation and not picked up the local paper to find things to do? Well that's what I do. And if I picked up The Current, I'd be disappointed and spend the night in my hostel playing board games with Europeans. But then again, Jersey City doesn't have hostels or European tourists.

There's finally a real new source for this town, Jersey City Independent. Jersey City Independent is a triumph over the BS and fluff of the other papers. I don't know why it took so long to get a news source covering relevant stories, but we finally have one.

The only drawback is that it's online, and you can't just pick up one on the street. And yes, print is dead, but maybe they can get some sort of subsidy to mass distribute, maybe when tourism picks up or something. Maybe one day we'll be able to have our Village Voice or New York Press. Maybe in a hundred years.