Sale Raises Hopes for Reviving The Village Voice

No one needs or wants yet ANOTHER "liberal voice" in the mass media. We already have The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, MSNBC, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Politico, Vox, Buzzfeed, etc. There's already a whole galaxy of black holes like The Village Voice, where reason and intelligent discourse goes to die. Barbey clearly wants to throw his money away, but he wasn't rich enough to buy an airline, so he bought a newspaper instead. If he wants to waste his money that way, he can, but no one needs to waste their money or their time buying it and reading it.

The political trajectory of Trump is based on the fact that he is authentic. His meteoric rise comes from the idea that he's not just another politician. Your statement of conservatives wishing for pugnacious rhetoric over substance is verifiably untrue.

Barbey is another spoiled trust fund liberal.

I used to read the Voice when I was high in the 70s. Now that I am sober I can't believe I actually read that rag

I remember reading the Village Voice, paying $1.50 locally (upstate NY) thrilled by its iconoclasm. The articles, etc., were often in depth stories on things no one else paid attention to—hard hitting articles on AIDS when others were moralizing, regurgitating what the CDC etc., told them or moralized that queers deserved what they got.
There were, indeed, people like Nate Hentoff, the very Conscience of The Voice. Writers would criticize each other & each other’s positions in the Letters to the Editor section. Even the ads were entertaining to a then young man who had had a somewhat sheltered existence.
Of late, I’d grab a VV from a dispenser along 7th Ave, Christopher Street or Hudson St., desiring something to read at dinner or on the way home via Greyhound. It would take 5 minutes to read through it & discard somewhere. VV was a ghost of what it had been.
The new owners must recommit to the kind of iconoclastic journalism VV was renown for. Otherwise, pull the plug & call it a well-deserved mercy killing.

Consider carefully the actual merit of an opinion organ that cannot sustain itself with subscription and advertising revenues. The need for private subsidies is basic proof of the failure of the message carried by said organ.

Conservatives who describe the Village Voice as "liberal" or "left-wing" vividly demonstrate the spooky disconnect now at the heart of American politics. For decades, Nat Hentoff scandalized the paper's pro-choice readership by staunchly and frequently questioning the moral neutrality of abortion. No less notoriously, many of the Voice's old-guard male writers never disguised their hostility to what they perceived as the "overly strident" and "anti-sex" feminism of the Voice's female journalists. In its approach to NYC's poor and otherwise disenfranchised, the VV reflected impulses and values no further to the left than those that made Richard Nixon a supporter of Head Start and other Great Society-inspired government programs. And when no other publication aimed at the educated middle-class would give Camille Paglia the time of day, the Voice thoughtfully reviewed her work and published long interviews with her. But this all happened at a time when right-of-center Americans weren't trapped in the internet's echo chamber and regarded their politics as more than a matter of endlessly repeating pet cliches. I hope the Village Voice and the diversity that once animated American politics will both make a quick and vigorous comeback.

I love it when Liberals waste their money on such things instead of spending on the things that destroy America.

You know, its pretty surprising the hypocrisy of pieces like this. Its everyday fodder for the NYT to rail against the inequality of the 0.0001% until some liberal magazine or newspaper goes bankrupt and then suddenly the paper puts out pieces like this extolling the virtue of the 0.00001% that end up buying the bankrupt husks.

The laugh is that the 0.00001% now consider the purchase of these money losing sinks as the new philanthropy of their time.

"dependent on the generosity of the legacy class, heirs and heiresses "

Given that no one would think of paying to read the thing

A group in Phoenix bought it in 2005 to add to a stable of other "alternative weeklies". They insisted editorial must be locally-driven - no more national political rants. This led to the resignation or firing of Nat Hentoff, Christgau, Michael Musto and many others.

The VOICE was started as a reaction to the staid complacency of THE VILLAGER, and championed causes ranging from the fight for the right to sing in Washington Square, to the fight against Robert Moses's plan to extend Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park, making LaGuardia Place a Fifth Avenue South, with the real estate development such a prestigious address could bring. Then there was the fight against Carmine DeSapio, one of the old-line Democratic bosses, and the rise of Ed Koch as a member of the West Village Independent Democrats.

And how can we forget the VILLAGE VOICE-supported auto rallies, with Jean Shepard and Dan Fancher in attendance? The VOICE back then was a fun read, attracting the voices that made Greenwich Village such a locus of intellectual ferment. Bring back the old contributors, kicked out by later owners who saw only the potential for profits and a power source. Then, maybe, the VOICE will come alive again!

I, too, hope the VOICE makes it back. Reading the story brought back a memory from many years ago. I was stationed at Osan Air Base, Korea from 1982 to 1983. Surprisingly, the Base Exchange (military store) carried the VOICE. I'd buy my copy of the VOICE every week, especially enjoying Walter Gurbo's "Drawing Room" on the back page. The VOICE provided a needed balance to the Stars and Stripes, semi-official newspaper for the military, and the fare on American Forces Radio and TV. When I returned to the USA I subscribed to the VOICE for a while, then life happened and the VOICE faded out of my life. But if the VOICE restarts I just might subscribe again.

And my favorite VV title was a review of a Karen Finley performance art piece prominently featuring a tuber: "Yam jam? No thank you, ma'am".
But seriously, this article is very exciting and encouraging. I do miss the Voice, and I hope it will once again find an important niche in NYC --- which may be possible if they restore the quality of their journalism to its former level.
And kudos to Gina Bellafante. This beautifully-written article is tremendously insightful about the VV's role in our city.

Two other multi-millionaires, Murdock and Stern had their turn at the Voice while it was still a profitable entity and newspaper publishing still made sense. Now I wonder could the Voice, as it was 20 or 30 years ago, 200+ pages and rich with advertising survive as a print and paper product with a price-tag of $1.25 per issue? Those were the days of provocative writers, great critics and 10,000 word feature stories and the internet and smart-phones were not an issue.

I worked at the Voice for 20 years until 2001 and I would love to see a resurrection.

Growing up in NYC, I loved the Voice and it's muckraking, comfort-the-afflicted, afflict the comfortable persona. It somehow managed to be classy, hip while often finding stories in plan view that everyone else missed.

One example leaps to mind: In 1998, When Sen. Al D'Amato was seeking a fourth term and trailing in the polls, he began to endlessly repeat the number of votes his opponent, Chuck Schumer, missed while in Congress. It seemed like in every interview and in every speech, D'Amato would honk like a goose about all the missed votes, calling Schumer a "no-show congressman."

But the V.V. did a little checking of public records dating back to the time D'Amato served as a supervisor in Nassau County and found the number of votes he misses far exceeded the number missed by Schume. Suddenly the Senator's charges looked desperate and highly hypocritical, and ultimately he lost by 10 points.

Yes, I remember well their their provocative ad slogan: "Some people swear by us. Some people swear at us."

Now? I swear had no idea they where still around.

After years of devoted readership of an ever-deteriorating Voice, I gave up on them in a fury when they dropped Jules Feiffer. That was a cultural crime so unforgivable-- and unforgivably stupid-- that I've never bought another issue. I haven't even bothered with the Web site. From what I hear I haven't missed much. I wish the new owners luck in their attempts at a resurrection, but I'm afraid I've long since learned to live without the Village Voice. As have a lot of other people, I fear.

My favorite Voice headline was for a story about a David Duke political picnic in Louisiana and played off a Mickey D's slogan: Food, Folks, and Fear.

Get Paul Krasner as the editor. Sit back. Enjoy.

If The Voice can bring back articles and commentary that are longer than one or two paragraphs of three sentences, that itself will be a major accomplishment. Delete all sex advertising as well.