Posted on 08/31/2018 2:43:05 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
The Village Voice, a New York journalism staple and the country's first alternative newspaper, announced Friday it will no longer continue to publish stories after more than 60 years.
"This is a sad day for The Village Voice and for millions of readers. The Voice has been a key element of New York City journalism and is read around the world," said the Voice's owner, Peter Barbey, in a statement. "As the first modern alternative newspaper, it literally defined a new genre of publishing."
"Although the Voice will not continue publishing, we are dedicated to ensuring that its legacy will endure to inspire more generations of readers and writers to give even more speed to those same goals," Barbey added. "We have begun working to ensure that the enormous print archive of The Village Voice is made digitally accessible.
The Village Voice, co-founded by legendary novelist Norman Mailer, was launched in 1955.
The paper captured journalism's top honors, including three Pulitzer Prizes, a National Press Association Award and Polk Award.
The Voice's demise underscores the challenges for the local newspaper industry as more convenient and inexpensive or free digital options are readily available for consumers on their phones and computers.
In July, a Pew Research Center analysis found that a majority of the country's largest newspapers in the United States have laid off employees since January 2017. Pew also found that 36 of the 110 daily newspapers in its analysis experienced layoffs between January 2017 and April.
"Of the 110 daily newspapers in the analysis, 40 — or 36 percent — were found to have gone through publicly reported layoffs during the 16-month study period, with at least 12 experiencing more than one round of layoffs," reads the Pew study.
"It is possible that even more occurred but remained under the radar of the search methods employed in this analysis," it adds.
Happens when your product is worthless.
The VV did some excellent work over the years, especially the stuff on ESCOs.
Surely they can’t be serious.
All they had to do was match their subscription prices, according to supply and demand, and they could retain their business.
If it is viable with 1,000,000 subscribers at $1 a copy, surely it is just as viable at 1 subscriber(s) at $1,000,000 a copy. (they just can’t make it “up” in volume, lol).
New York City metro area has more than 13 million people. And even that is not enough to support two homosexual newspapers, The Village Voice and the New York Times.
This really IS news.
The VV was as much a part of NYC as the NYTimes, maybe more.
Wow. I’ve read that for 35 years maybe. Haven’t in the last few years but how I loved it in its hay day. Nat Hentoff, a conservative James Wolcott before he became a quisling, Andrew Sarris, Eric Asimov, even the awful Michael Musto...I even remember Stanley Crouch’s jazz reviews and Jill Johnston - one of the first out lezbos. An enraging publication really but so engrossing and well-written.
I used to frequently buy Rolling Stone back when P. J. O’Rourke wrote for them. Ah well, times change. Now The Village Voice, I’ve never held a copy. Good riddance to fag rubbish.
Not really much of a point in having a hipster ultraleftwing rag when all the mainstream newspapers and magazines have become as hipster and leftwing as you.
The Village Voice was a weekly paper. Why all the ink about daily papers in the article?
It would be more appropriate to compare it to TIME, or Newsweak.
at one time the paper was known as the “Gay Gazette”...
They had a far left niche market, but CNN, NYTimes and Washington Post moved into the space in a big way leaving them little reason to continue on their own.
To their credit the VV wrote a huge article back in 2008 pointing out how Andrew Cuomo was responsible for the housing crisis:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2008/08/05/andrew-cuomo-and-fannie-and-freddie/
'Personal' sex ads were banned.
They may have been a big part of their revenue.
Good riddance.
here’s a FR thread from 2008 on the VV’s article fingering cuomo for responsibility of the housing crisis...check out the comments and the mentions of mccain- to funny:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2087407/posts
Why just a voice when now you can now have video with sound and online hookups?
They had a good run.
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