Wednesday, December 23, 2020

The Village Voice is returning, and is this a good thing?

As you may have heard yesterday, The Village Voice, the city's iconic weekly paper that folded in 2018 after a 50-plus-year run, will return in early 2021 with a new owner. 

The Times had the story:
Brian Calle, the chief executive of Street Media, the owner of LA Weekly, said on Tuesday that he had acquired the publication from its publisher, Peter D. Barbey. "I think a lot of people will be hungry for this and I'm superoptimistic," Mr. Calle said in an interview. 
He added that he planned to restart The Voice's website in January and would publish a "comeback" print edition early next year, with quarterly print issues to follow. On Tuesday he hired Bob Baker, a former Voice editor, as a senior editor and content coordinator. Mr. Calle said he wanted to bring back more former staff members who know the paper's tone. He has not yet named an editor in chief.
The Voice website, which is still active repurposing its archived articles, ceased publishing new content in August 2018 ... this after the final print edition in September 2017 — a 176-page commemorative issue with Bob Dylan on the cover.
The paper occupied several floors at 36 Cooper Square from 1991 to 2013 ... with a return toward the end of its run

Early reaction around here yesterday was of cautious optimisim ... and then media watchers who had experience with Calle's takeover of LA Weekly shared some thoughts (H/T Mediagazer) ... Previously on EVG

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

bro-step still exists?

Edmund Dunn said...

Sigh.

Gojira said...

Reminds me of what happened to AM New York - always a quirky little read with columns by, about and for actual New Yorkers which other actual New Yorkers could write in and comment about, and Metro NY, bought by Schneps Media, which combined into one, and which is now about as exciting, New York-centric and worth reading as a roll of toilet paper. They also bought The Villager, axed Lincoln Anderson, its longtime editor and writer, ditched most of the rest of the long-time staff, and brought in bunch of poorly - if at all - paid generic, personality-free robots who know nothing about what they are covering.

Anonymous said...

Wow. Well this is disheartening.

Anyway, cool picture up top!

Ronnie said...

lost interest in the V Voice after watching the documentary I am Jane Do

Anonymous said...

So basically, the Village Voice is still dead.

Giovanni said...

I believe the Latin term for this type of media manipulation is "shitshow." Bring back Town & Village!

Anonymous said...

exactly

Anonymous said...

The Villager is now kind of a right wing rag. Ugh.

Ruki444 said...

This is the first time I've heard of Bro-Step. Is that a derivation of Crotch-Gaze?

Next we can expect some Proud Boi member to revive the EV Other.

The Hack said...

Without the Voice, civil society (defined as what people do together, independent of business and politics) in New York would have been buried forty years ago instead of thirty. We were able to lay to rest the bipartisan attempt to bury this city under incinerator ash with a single cover story in November 1991.
Notably 'civil society' is a term largely unknown to most Americans. It means: if one doesn't do anything to protect his culture, he joins a terminal chorus of victims. Standing on one's hind legs is actually quite good for the immune system. Try it some time.