While Pittsburgh City Paper, the city’s alternative news publication which has existed since 1990, isn’t dead, the decision to switch from a free weekly printed issue to a quarterly issue is worrying.

Ask anyone who knows me and my story of why I pursued journalism, and two newspapers are always mentioned; City Paper and The Bulletin, which serves the Bloomfield-Lawrenceville-Friendship area. The Bulletin was sent to our house ever since we moved to Pittsburgh in 2006 and we’d always pick up City Paper every time a new issue hit the news rack at what was then Shur-Save in Bloomfield.

Reading both papers as a kid was not only fascinating because it was real information about the people and places around us but also because it felt attainable. My parents often chastised me for not having a wide enough imagination at a young age, but reading these interesting stories and knowing what surrounded me was much more interesting than any nonsensical thing my mind would cook up at 7-years-old or so.

And with this fascination also included a realization of what felt right to do. I wanted to be just like the people who wrote the stories I was reading before I even knew what a byline was.

This is deeply personal and likely an uncommon story for those in Gen-Z. Newspapers were already on the decline before anyone in this generation was even born and it’s not unfair to say my friends as a kid were likely reading Dr. Seuss while I was busy reading about Luke Ravenstahl winning the 2009 mayoral election and new video game companies in Pittsburgh instead.

Even though my inspiration for becoming a journalist might be an oddball example, it would be unwise and almost not feasible that people who are not trying to be journalists took value from City Paper’s weekly print edition. These stories were not being told anywhere else and that is what an alternative publication should stand for.

Now, it’s not as though City Paper has called it quits. Along with quarterly print issues, the news outlet still posts stories on its website and adds visuals to its social media pages.

However, City Paper needs to up its social media game if it wants to have anything close to the same reach the weekly print edition did. The outlet’s website is hard to navigate on a smartphone and just posting pictures from a story with long captions isn’t going to cut it.

And is crafting a much better social media presence without adding new staff easy? No. The Globe could not have given its Instagram page a much-needed improvement without the help of our social media manager.

Still, the people who care to read news and features while trying to find out more beyond what legacy media has to offer needs to support City Paper even in its current state. The implications of cutting back on print for an outlet which relies heavily on offline means to distribute content are worrying, but journalism must persist.

After all, the outlet which inspired my push to journalism going under before I’m in my 30s is not something I want to see happen.