While competition among local English-language newspapers has almost disappeared from American cities, small-scale weekly tabloids often provide different viewpoints and extensive investigative coverage of local events. New York’s Village Voice, originally a community newspaper responding to Greenwich Village’s artistic and liberal residents, is probably the dean of this press; others emerged in response to the Vietnam War and other divisive social issues. Some proved shortlived, based on outrage more than systematic coverage, but others became important political and economic interlocutors. In the 1990s, many were consolidated in national corporations scarcely distinguishable from the mainstream press.