It's lovely to be wanted, but City Pages might not want to be wanted quite like this:

So, I see that City Pages, Mpls/St. Paul’s award-winning alt-weekly newspaper, is out with its annual Best of the Twin Cities issue, and perusing the parade of winners (Garrison Keillor as best columnist? really?), I find myself left with the same question I have every year. In fact, it’s the same question I have every week when I pick up City Pages.

Where’s the classical music?

Seriously, people. This is a newspaper that calls itself “the arts and entertainment weekly.” I understand that it’s basically a hipster rag written by aging hipsters for other aging hipsters, and I get that Orchestra Hall isn’t exactly crawling with that particular demographic (thank God.) But that doesn’t stop CP from covering literally every other art form in town! They cover dance, they cover movies, they cover live theater, they cover art, and they cover every genre of music imaginable – except classical.

I really can’t overstate what a bizarre editorial decision this is. The Twin Cities has, literally, one of the largest and most diverse classical music scenes in America. We’re the only metro area in the country that sustains not one but two major orchestras, the Schubert Club is one of the most respected presenting organizations in the US, Minnesota Opera seems to be on a mission to make itself a nationally known company, the new music seasons that the Walker and the Southern put together are as good and diverse as any series I’ve ever seen, and the Cities are packed to the brim with good freelance musicians and ensembles doing any number of interesting things on a weekly basis…

…and yet, to City Pages, it’s as if this scene doesn’t exist.

So writes Minnesota Orchestra violist Sam Bergman on the highly readable blog he shares with Sarah Hicks. Even though he's aging like the rest of us, Bergman is in his early '30s, so he's in the alt-weekly's prime demo on a birthday-candle basis, if not a hipster one.

Now, as an ex-arts editor, I can tell you classical music fans are always complaining about classical music coverage, which regularly ranks near the bottom of page views, at least on sites whose stats I've seen. That's one reason, for example, the Strib ditched its classical beat writer early in the Purge Era, though it does offer freelance and blog coverage. City Pages also cut back longer-form fine arts output as finances sunk in recent years, though it recently added a Dressing Room blog that includes theater, fashion, books and, er, sex toys.

Bergman is not unaware of the challenges, but in addition to mentioning CP's coverage of other non-pop forms, he notes how much classical coverage is done at other alt-weeklies, including CP's Village Voice mother ship. He also, ahem, notes that CP is willing to take the Orchestra's ad money.

Bergman didn't give CP editor Kevin Hoffman a shout, so I did it for him. What's the beef against the tuxedoed set, Kevin?

Hoffman — who is so jazzed about "Best of" he recently tweeted pictures of the papers on their pallets — responded with pianissimo rather than fortissimo. "We can never cover all of the things various constituencies want, but we try our best," he replied, vowing, "you'll be seeing more fine arts coverage this year in the Dressing Room blog, and we'll try to include classical as a category in next year's 'Best Of.'"