Circulation is falling at many alts. (Click on the chart to view a larger version.)

How does a wedge of newsprint compete with an affordable messaging device that ferries games, social media apps, calendars, news, feature films, scores, coupons and a library’s worth of music and reading material? Ask a young person his opinion and he’ll tell you that nothing says “geezer” like a newspaper, be it daily or alt-weekly.

“In viewing the research of who reads the two publications, and after hearing from the local advertising community, it became more and more obvious that one publication would better serve our readers and advertisers,” said Michael Fiorile, President and Chief Operating Officer of The Dispatch Printing Co.

People will always identify with their cities, but the congregation of loosely affiliated urban tribes that alt-weeklies used to collect under one umbrella are now reaching out to each other across the globe instead.

It was L.A. Weekly’s Christine Pelisek who learned, after months of dogged reporting in low-income neighborhoods that rarely see a reporter, that a series of murders in the city were in fact the work of a serial killer. The Stranger, Seattle’s alt-weekly, won a Pulitzer Prize this year for its haunting story of a rape and almost-double murder — the reporter later said that an alt-weekly was “one of the rare and lucky places” that would accommodate such a piece. Portland, Ore.’s, Willamette Week exposed the state’s former governor as a child molester in 2004.

The alt-weekly staff cuts just keep coming and coming -- I doubt the world will again see an alt-weekly fund a 13-month investigation -- and one wonders how long those long, long alt-weekly stories will keep flowing, particularly as more of the business moves online, where revenues are low and the 5,000-word story is often viewed as not just uneconomical, but ludicrous.

It's an extreme gesture, to be sure. And for those who miss Seattle Weekly's usual mix of arts and local news coverage, rest assured you'll find up-to-date content at seattleweekly.com. But in a hyper-connected culture where various gadgets ensure that the average person's attention span will be tugged in a dozen directions at once, devoting an entire, uninterrupted issue to remembering the lives of those who've set their personal beliefs aside and fought for our freedom seems the only proper antidote

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