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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:

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.

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.