Recently, New York’s famed Village Voice printed its last paper edition, while across the country a slew of publications just like it are either shutting down or scaling back their operations.

Seattle’s The Stranger switched to a bi-weekly format. The Baltimore City paper is now closed and Atlanta’s Creative Loafing has gone from weekly to monthly.

Alternative newspapers, known as alt-weeklies, had become staples in cities across the country. Now, they are close to vanishing in today’s consolidated and homogenized media environment.

Gustavo Arellano edited Southern California’s OC Weekly for six years before resigning over cost cuts at that publication. He recently wrote about the struggles alt-weeklies are having to stay alive in an article for reason.com.

What impact is the loss or thinning out of these regional newspapers, having on journalism?