# The Surprising Afterlife of Alt-Weeklies Feat. Journalists Tricia Romano & Emma Silvers Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/racketcast-7015734/the-surprising-afterlife-of-alt-weeklies-feat-journalists-tricia-romano-emma-silvers Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/racketcast-7015734/the-surprising-afterlife-of-alt-weeklies-feat-journalists-tricia-romano-emma-silvers.md Podcast: [RacketCast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/racketcast-7015734) Published: 2025-09-19T20:01:00+00:00 Episode link: https://racketmn.com Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/66e37617547e9546dfc561ed/e/68cdb67b146cfd1a65449c68/media.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/racketcast-7015734/episodes/the-surprising-afterlife-of-alt-weeklies-feat-journalists-tricia-romano-emma-silvers Duration seconds: 4226 ## Resource Alt-weeklies: The four Racket founders/editors used to work at one, City Pages, before Star Tribune Media Co. flushed it and its 40-plus-year legacy down the tubes five years ago. And that fate more or less mirrors what's happening nationally with those spirited, smart, and sharp-elbowed publications that once covered news, arts, and culture all across this increasingly stupid land. So last year when Tricia Romero, former editor-in-chief of The Stranger, released The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture , we were intrigued. And this week when Emma Silvers, an ex editor at SF Weekly, released this deep dive into alt-weeklies for her exciting new worker-owned publication, Coyote, we were doubly intrigued. Here's hoping all that intrigues you, because we—Racket's Jay, Jessica, and Keith—got Romero and Silvers on the line to talk for over an hour about the history, death, and possible new life of the scrappy little style of journalism we all love. But first! Here are the stories we gabbed about during What I Learned In Racket... Fall Arts Guide 2025 At the Palace, Rilo Kiley Reminds Adults What They’ve Lived Through This episode of  RacketCast  is brought to you by Minneapolis Cultural Districts . Subscribe to  RacketCast  wherever you get your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc.  •  Wanna  advertise  on  RacketCast ? Email us at  advertise@racketmn.com .  •  Have a food/drink, event, or show recommendation? How about a civic hot take? General or specific question? Call 619-RACKTIP (619-722-5847) with your first name + city + 3-min.-maximum voicemail, and we might play it on a future episode.  •&n… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/racketcast-7015734/episodes/the-surprising-afterlife-of-alt-weeklies-feat-journalists-tricia-romano-emma-silvers/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/racketcast-7015734/the-surprising-afterlife-of-alt-weeklies-feat-journalists-tricia-romano-emma-silvers.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.