Village Voice

Information about Village Voice


The 2006-01-04 front page of
The Village Voice
TypeAlternative weekly
FormatTabloid
OwnerVillage Voice Media
PublisherMichael Cohen
Editor-in-ChiefTony Ortega
Founded1955
Headquarters36 Cooper Square
New York, NY 10003
 United States
Circulation247,417[1]
Website: villagevoice.com
This article is about a New York newspaper. For the Ottawa Hills, Ohio magazine, see The Village Voice of Ottawa Hills.


The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper in New York City featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City. It is also distributed throughout the United States on a pay basis.

It was the first and is arguably the best known of the arts-oriented tabloids that have come to be known as alternative weeklies, though its reputation has been unstable since a recent buyout by publishing conglomerate New Times Media. The turbulent times its writers have covered has often been matched by the intrigue in its own offices, most recently including the firing of several high-profile contributors and a scandal over a forged story in 2005, the year the paper turned 50. The Voice's spirit can be captured in its 1980s advertising slogan: "Some people swear by us...other people swear AT us."

History

The Voice was launched by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and Norman Mailer on October 26, 1955, from a two-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village, its initial coverage area, expanding to other parts of the city by the 1960s. The offices in the 1960s were located at Sheridan Square; they are now at Cooper Square in the East Village.

The Voice has published groundbreaking investigations of New York City politics, as well as reporting on local and national politics, with arts, culture, music, dance, film, and theater reviews. The Voice has received three Pulitzer Prizes, in 1981 (Teresa Carpenter), 1986 (Jules Feiffer) and 2000 (Mark Schoofs). Almost since its inception the paper has recognized alternative theater in New York through its Obie Awards. From the early 1970s to 2005 music critic Robert Christgau ran a highly influential music poll known as "Pazz & Jop" every February from the "top ten" lists submitted by music critics from around the country. In 1999, film critic J. Hoberman and film section editor Dennis Lim began a similar Village Voice Film Poll for the year's movies. In 2001 the paper sponsored its first Siren Festival indie rock festival, a free annual event every summer held at Coney Island.

The Voice has published many well-known writers, including Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, Barbara Garson, Katherine Anne Porter, James Baldwin, E.E. Cummings, Nat Hentoff, Ted Hoagland, Tom Stoppard, Lorraine Hansberry, Ron Rosenbaum, Paul Levinson, Jerry Tallmer, Allen Ginsberg, Lester Bangs, Murray Kempton, I.F. Stone, Pete Hamill, Roger Wilkins and Joshua Clover. Former editors have included Dan Wolf, Clay Felker, Tom Morgan, Marianne Partridge, David Schneiderman, Diane Fischer, Robert Friedman, Marty Gottlieb, Jonathan Larson, and Karen Durbin.

Village Voice columnists have included Rachel Kramer Bussel, Tristan Taormino, Alexander Cockburn, Nina Lalli, Michael Musto, Joy Press, Tricia Romano, Andrew Sarris, Dan Savage, Sydney H. Schanberg, Toni Schlesinger, Robert Sietsema, Silke Tudor and Corina Zappia.
Enlarge picture
Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff. Photo by Tom Pich
Early columnists of the 1950s and 1960s included Jonas Mekas, who explored the underground film movement in his "Film Journal" column; Linda Solomon, who reviewed the Village club scene in the "Riffs" column; and Sam Julty, who wrote a popular column on car ownership and maintenance. Another regular from that period was the cartoonist Kin Platt, who did weekly theatrical caricatures. Other prominent regulars have included Peter Schjeldahl, Ellen Willis, Leslie Savan, C. Carr, Simon Firth, Tom Carson, Mim Udovitch, Wayne Barrett and Ross Wetzsteon.

The newspaper has also been a host to promising underground cartoonists. In addition to mainstay Jules Feiffer, whose cartoon ran for decades in the paper until its cancellation in 1996, well-known cartoonists featured in the paper have included Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Stan Mack, Mark Alan Stamaty, Ted Rall, Tom Tomorrow, Ward Sutton and Ruben Bolling.

The Voice is also known for containing adult content, including sex advice columns and many pages of advertising for "adult services" (escorts, prostitutes, etc.). This content is located at the back of the newspaper. The other large newspapers in New York City do not carry adult content.

The Voice's competitors in New York City include the New York Press, New York Observer and Time Out New York. After decades of carrying a cover price, the Voice responded to competition from the free New York Press by itself becoming free of charge on newsstands in the five boroughs -- in 1996. (It still carries a charge for home/mail delivery and for newsstands outside the city limits, such as on Long Island.) Its circulation as of June 2006 was 247,417.[1]

The Voice’s web site is a past winner of both the National Press Foundation’s Online Journalism Award and the Editor and Publisher EPPY Award for Best Overall US Weekly Newspaper Online.

Seventeen alternative weeklies around the United States are owned by the Voice's parent company Village Voice Media. In 2005, the Phoenix alternative weekly chain New Times Media purchased the company and took the Village Voice Media name. Previous owners of Village Voice Media have included Felker, Rupert Murdoch, and Leonard Stern of the Hartz Mountain empire.

Changes after 2005 New Times Media buyout

Since the buyout, the paper has made a number of broad-sweeping changes, becoming an increasingly mainstream publication. The Village Voice is now managed by two libertarians from Phoenix, Arizona, and some New York media critics perceive a loss of the paper's original iconoclastic, bohemian spirit.[1][2]

In April 2006, the Voice dismissed music editor Chuck Eddy.[3] Four months later the newspaper fired longtime music critic Robert Christgau. In January 2007, the newspaper fired sex columnist and erotica author Rachel Kramer Bussel.

The paper has experienced high turnover among its editorial leadership since 2005. Editor-in-chief Don Forst resigned in December 2005. Doug Simmons, his replacement, was fired in March 2006 after it was discovered a reporter had fabricated portions of an article. Simmons' successor, Erik Wemple, resigned after two weeks. His replacement, David Blum, was fired in March 2007. As of April 2007, Tony Ortega, former editor of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, is editor.

References

External links

News reports on the New Times buyout

On Pazz and Jop Poll after dismissal of Christgau

  • Sisario, Ben.
[4]. Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bloggy: An Online Poll Covets the Territory Once Owned by Pazz & Jop. November 30, 2006 edition of The New York Times.
alternative newspaper is a type of newspaper that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting local people and culture.
..... Click the link for more information.
Newspaper sizes in August 2005. Le Monde is in the Berliner format. The Guardian was (until September 2005) in the British broadsheet format, whereas the Daily Mail is a tabloid, and The Times a "compact".
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Village Voice Media is a privately held corporation that owns the Village Voice, the nation's oldest (founded in 1955) and largest alternative weekly newspaper, as well as LA Weekly, OC Weekly in Orange County, California, Seattle Weekly,
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1920s  1930s  1940s  - 1950s -  1960s  1970s  1980s
1952 1953 1954 - 1955 - 1956 1957 1958

Year 1955 (MCMLV
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Manhattan is a borough of New York City, New York, USA, with New York County. With a 2000 population of 1,537,195[2] living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.
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State of New York

Flag of New York Seal
Nickname(s): The Empire State
Motto(s): Excelsior!

Official language(s) None

Capital Albany
Largest city New York City

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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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The Village Voice of Ottawa Hills (or The Village Voice) is a monthly community newsmagazine that serves the village of Ottawa Hills, Ohio a suburb of Toledo.[2] With over 1,200 subscribers, the paper reports a readership of nearly 3,000 people.
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City of New York
New York City at sunset

Flag
Seal
Nickname: The Big Apple, Gotham, The City that Never Sleeps
Location in the state of New York
Coordinates:
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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
..... Click the link for more information.
Newspaper sizes in August 2005. Le Monde is in the Berliner format. The Guardian was (until September 2005) in the British broadsheet format, whereas the Daily Mail is a tabloid, and The Times a "compact".
..... Click the link for more information.
alternative newspaper is a type of newspaper that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting local people and culture.
..... Click the link for more information.
The New Times Media corporation was a national publisher of alternative weekly newspapers.

Its papers were Cleveland Scene, Dallas Observer, Westword, East Bay Express, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Houston Press, The Pitch, Miami New Times, Phoenix New Times, SF
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Norman Mailer

Born: January 31 1923 (1923--) (age 84)
Long Branch, New Jersey,
 United States
Occupation: Novelist
Nationality: American
Genres: Fiction
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October 26th is the feast day of the following Roman Catholic Saints:
  • St. Albinus
  • St. Alfred the Great
  • St. Cedd
  • St.
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    • 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
    1920s  1930s  1940s  - 1950s -  1960s  1970s  1980s
    1952 1953 1954 - 1955 - 1956 1957 1958

    Year 1955 (MCMLV
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Greenwich Village (IPA pronunciation: [ˌgrɛnɪtʃ 'vɪlɪdʒ]), also called simply the Village
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Cooper Square is a junction of streets in Manhattan, New York City. It is at the confluence of the neighborhoods of The Bowery, the East Village and the Lower East Side. It is fed directly from the south by Bowery at East Fourth Street which becomes Third Avenue after Saint Mark's
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    East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It lies east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side.
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    Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, politics is observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    ARTS may refer to one of the following
    • Adaptive Ray Tracing System
    • Adaptive Restraint Technology System.
    • Alpha Repertory Television Service, one of the predecessors that formed A&E Network television
    • aRts, a component of the KDE desktop environment

    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significant importance.
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    Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism.
    If you are prevented from editing this page, and you wish to make a change, please discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or .
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    worldwide view of the subject.
    Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page.


    Dance (from French danser, perhaps from Frankish) generally refers to movement used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.
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    Theatre (or theater, see spelling differences) (from French "théâtre", from Greek "theatron", θέατρον, meaning "place of seeing") is the branch of the performing arts defined as simply as what "occurs when one or more
    ..... Click the link for more information.
    Pulitzer Prize

    Awarded for Excellence in print journalism, literary achievements, and musical composition
    Presented by Columbia University
    Country  United States
    First awarded 1917
    Official website
    The
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    Teresa Carpenter is a Pulitzer prize winning, bestselling American author. She was born in Independence, Missouri, and lives with her husband Steven Levy (Newsweek columnist and author of ) in New York's Greenwich Village.
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    Jules Feiffer (born January 26, 1929) is an American syndicated comic-strip cartoonist and author. In 1986 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning in The Village Voice, and in 2004 was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame.
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    The OBIE Awards, or "Off-Broadway Theater Awards," are annual awards bestowed by the newspaper The Village Voice on Off-Broadway theater artists performing in New York City.
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