4 ms·

Last Rites for the Village Voice, a Bohemian Who Stayed on Too Long

33 points by artur_makly 8y ago

walrus01 8y ago
I am somewhat surprised that The Stranger (Seattle) and The Georgia Straight (Vancouver), the same type of papers, remain financially viable and not in receivership.
jackfoxy 8y ago
> The internet flattened “alternative culture” — first Napster, and now Spotify, allowed obscure music to bypass the critics; Netflix and Amazon made experimental film accessible without your needing to read about it in a Hoberman review. The Voice was once a lodestar to freaks and geeks everywhere. Now the lodestar is both nowhere and everywhere. The internet eats everything.
ilamont 8y ago
The Boston Phoenix and Time Out London along with a bunch of scruffy local 'zines were my windows into music, movies, and culture when I was in my late teens and early 20s. I picked up the Village Voice when I was in NYC or saw it for sale elsewhere - in addition to the arts and culture coverage and listings, they went deep on investigations and exposes that was really refreshing. Later I was the editor for a daily newspaper's weekend supplement, which mimicked the alt-weekly style and voice. Like the author of TFA, I regarded it as one of the best jobs I ever had although the pay was basically poverty level wages. While I lament the loss of the Phoenix, the Voice, and many others, others seem to be doing well (I was happy to see Time Out Tokyo when I visited over the summer). It's also encouraging to see that windows to music, arts, culture, are thriving online, many of them controlled not by third-party gatekeepers, but by the creative people themselves.
- xamuel 8y ago
  Which online "windows to music, arts, culture" would you recommend?
  - ilamont 8y ago
    Creative Independent: https://thecreativeindependent.com/ https://thecreativeindependent.com/ Sterogum: https://www.stereogum.com https://www.stereogum.com Lots of little sites that come and go (not unlike the zines of yesteryear) such as GigGuide Taiwan: http://dead.gigguide.tw/articles.php http://dead.gigguide.tw/articles.php And I enjoy following some of the creative people who have good social media accounts that they run themselves. Gives fans an unmoderated window into what they are seeing/thinking/doing, something that was very difficult to experience 30 years ago.
8bitsrule 8y ago
Interesting that some many people see the VV as 'so radical'. A lot of people didn't see it that way at all. E.g. this article on the East Village Other https://hubpages.com/politics/The-East-Village-Other-Overview-of-an-60s-Underground-Newspaper https://hubpages.com/politics/The-East-Village-Other-Overvie... says "reaching a peak circulation of 65,000 in 1969. It became popular because it was a true alternative to the establishment Village Voice, Herald Tribune, and New York Times." The author's assertion that "To read The Voice was to read ... of America’s underground cultural and political landscape in the second half of the last century and into this one" is pretty funny. It even leaves John Wilcock out of the list of those who 'started' The Voice, and who left it in 1965 to edit the EVO. EVO and Krassner's Realist were a helluva lot more 'underground'.
- notyourday 8y ago
  Reddit was radical. Delicious was radical. Metafilter was radical. Village Voice was radical only in the view of those who were shocked that the "Prettiest Woman In New York is a Porn Star" ( by the time VV wrote about her Stoya was moving to the mainstream acting and directing - VV was six years late) Village Voice niche got decimated not by the internet but by a smartphone. Picking up VV ( or City Paper or Philadelphia Weekly or SF Weekly ) was a ritual to find out what to do around town that week or to have something to read while sitting in a diner or waiting for someone in a park. None of the publications ever had enough good content ( which is why they were weeklies ) as a percentage of the total content but they had a captive audience. That captive audience disappeared with the arrival of iPhone and Android phones. The weekly needed to compete with Hacker News, Craigslist, Porntube, New York Times, Reddit, etc and none of them could.
jonahb 8y ago
> before the commercialization of New York That's funny. Before the commercialization of New York, it was a Lenape settlement.
- sewercake 8y ago
  probably referring to the large amounts of capital put into real-estate etcetera starting in the 80's
artur_makly 8y ago
i will sincerely miss Dan Savage's column.. sniff.

33 points by artur_makly 8y ago

I am somewhat surprised that The Stranger (Seattle) and The Georgia Straight (Vancouver), the same type of papers, remain financially viable and not in receivership.

jackfoxy 8y ago

> The internet flattened “alternative culture” — first Napster, and now Spotify, allowed obscure music to bypass the critics; Netflix and Amazon made experimental film accessible without your needing to read about it in a Hoberman review. The Voice was once a lodestar to freaks and geeks everywhere. Now the lodestar is both nowhere and everywhere. The internet eats everything.

ilamont 8y ago

The Boston Phoenix and Time Out London along with a bunch of scruffy local 'zines were my windows into music, movies, and culture when I was in my late teens and early 20s. I picked up the Village Voice when I was in NYC or saw it for sale elsewhere - in addition to the arts and culture coverage and listings, they went deep on investigations and exposes that was really refreshing. Later I was the editor for a daily newspaper's weekend supplement, which mimicked the alt-weekly style and voice. Like the author of TFA, I regarded it as one of the best jobs I ever had although the pay was basically poverty level wages. While I lament the loss of the Phoenix, the Voice, and many others, others seem to be doing well (I was happy to see Time Out Tokyo when I visited over the summer). It's also encouraging to see that windows to music, arts, culture, are thriving online, many of them controlled not by third-party gatekeepers, but by the creative people themselves.

xamuel 8y ago
Which online "windows to music, arts, culture" would you recommend?
- ilamont 8y ago
  Creative Independent: https://thecreativeindependent.com/ https://thecreativeindependent.com/ Sterogum: https://www.stereogum.com https://www.stereogum.com Lots of little sites that come and go (not unlike the zines of yesteryear) such as GigGuide Taiwan: http://dead.gigguide.tw/articles.php http://dead.gigguide.tw/articles.php And I enjoy following some of the creative people who have good social media accounts that they run themselves. Gives fans an unmoderated window into what they are seeing/thinking/doing, something that was very difficult to experience 30 years ago.

8bitsrule 8y ago

Interesting that some many people see the VV as 'so radical'. A lot of people didn't see it that way at all. E.g. this article on the East Village Other https://hubpages.com/politics/The-East-Village-Other-Overview-of-an-60s-Underground-Newspaper https://hubpages.com/politics/The-East-Village-Other-Overvie... says "reaching a peak circulation of 65,000 in 1969. It became popular because it was a true alternative to the establishment Village Voice, Herald Tribune, and New York Times." The author's assertion that "To read The Voice was to read ... of America’s underground cultural and political landscape in the second half of the last century and into this one" is pretty funny. It even leaves John Wilcock out of the list of those who 'started' The Voice, and who left it in 1965 to edit the EVO. EVO and Krassner's Realist were a helluva lot more 'underground'.

notyourday 8y ago
Reddit was radical. Delicious was radical. Metafilter was radical. Village Voice was radical only in the view of those who were shocked that the "Prettiest Woman In New York is a Porn Star" ( by the time VV wrote about her Stoya was moving to the mainstream acting and directing - VV was six years late) Village Voice niche got decimated not by the internet but by a smartphone. Picking up VV ( or City Paper or Philadelphia Weekly or SF Weekly ) was a ritual to find out what to do around town that week or to have something to read while sitting in a diner or waiting for someone in a park. None of the publications ever had enough good content ( which is why they were weeklies ) as a percentage of the total content but they had a captive audience. That captive audience disappeared with the arrival of iPhone and Android phones. The weekly needed to compete with Hacker News, Craigslist, Porntube, New York Times, Reddit, etc and none of them could.

jonahb 8y ago

> before the commercialization of New York That's funny. Before the commercialization of New York, it was a Lenape settlement.

sewercake 8y ago
probably referring to the large amounts of capital put into real-estate etcetera starting in the 80's

artur_makly 8y ago

i will sincerely miss Dan Savage's column.. sniff.