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One issue the past few years has been the huge blurring between properly independent media and 'alternative' media, and a further blurring between 'alternative' media and some mainstream/state outlets. https://twitter.com/funnierhandle/status/1247934766957170690
What you tend to have these days is left wing (of various descriptions) outlets competing on a national terrain, and operating with most of the same news cycles, against weakened but still dominant mainstream sources.
If we think back to the 90s and 00s, still historic low points of class struggle even compared to now, there was much more in the way of local freesheets or sites like city-level Indymedias.
This was not some golden age of radical media, one of the reasons libcom started in the first place was frustration at the direction Indymedia was taking in the UK (conspiracy theorists started using them, and editorial guidelines weren't good for shutting them out).
But... a local freesheet or a site where if you are doing something locally you can probably get something published on gives a real alternative source of information and one that people can stumble upon.
In quite a short time, groups in France have built a network of local radical news sites called Mutu. Literally trying to rebuild radical media from the ground up, and having a lot of success. https://libcom.org/blog/mutu-network-revival-french-radical-media-18062018
This is not to say that people shouldn't put effort into national/international projects, but that there is a whole layer missing, definitely in the UK and it seems in the US too.
While it's from the '60s Hal Draper's analysis of the sect system and his alternative: building political centres in workplaces, neighborhoods and also wider publications is a good read in thinking through where time and effort might be spent differently. https://libcom.org/library/anatomy-micro-sect-hal-draper
