Village Voice Media being acquired by New Times very soon

Why so optimistic?

That's IT?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 24, 2005; C01

The nation's two largest alternative newspaper chains plan to announce a merger today, a long-rumored combination that champions of quirky, iconoclastic, locally controlled papers have been sniping at for months.

New Times, the Phoenix-based publisher with 11 newspapers from Miami to San Francisco, is acquiring the Village Voice, the storied New York weekly co-founded by Norman Mailer, and five other papers owned by the Voice.

New Times will export its brand of "desert libertarianism on the rocks, with sprigs of neocon politics," writes Bruce Brugmann, publisher of the rival San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Hogwash, says Michael Lacey, New Times's executive editor, insisting that "individual editors in individual cities determine the content of their papers week to week. . . . I wish there were more conservative writers at the papers. There aren't. There isn't anything imposed about the editorial viewpoint from Phoenix."

Reaction is likely to be chilly among many staffers at the notoriously fractious Voice, where columnist Cynthia Cotts described a 2000 acquisition attempt by New Times as a "hostile takeover" by a company whose media purchases produced a "signature bloodbath."

But David Schneiderman, chief executive of Village Voice Media, says the merger will give his papers a "national platform," particularly on the Web, an operation that he will oversee. While his staff will go through "a period of trepidation," Schneiderman says, "the resources of the combined company will strengthen us editorially." New Times executives, he says, "invest in editorial. This is what they're about. It's quite refreshing."

As for the notion that the fabled counterculture papers of yore are becoming more corporate, Schneiderman says: "The issue is, what's in the newspaper? I would challenge anyone who's critical of this to point to anything in our papers or the New Times papers that's establishment. It's flat-out not true."

Lacey says the merger of assets requires no cash. The 2000 deal had a purchase price of about $150 million, according to a source cited by the New York Times.

The planned acquisition will require Justice Department approval on antitrust grounds, since the combined company would control about 14 percent of the circulation of the major alternative weeklies nationwide. The department has clashed with both companies before. In 2002, New Times agreed to close its Los Angeles paper, which competed with Village Voice Media's L.A. Weekly, in exchange for the Voice shutting down its Cleveland paper, which did battle with New Times's Cleveland Scene.

Justice accused the companies of trying "to corrupt the competitive process by swapping markets, thereby guaranteeing each other a monopoly." The firms agreed in a consent decree to notify the department before any merger or shutdown. "We got bad legal advice," Lacey says.

That was not the only allegation of corporate excess; Brugmann's Bay Guardian has sued New Times on charges of predatory practices.

Alternative papers provide an outlet for colorful writing and muckraking local reporting -- as when Portland's Willamette Week revealed last year that former Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt had sex with a 14-year-old girl three decades ago and paid $250,000 to hush it up. The 50-year-old Village Voice, which has had such prominent contributors as Jules Feiffer, Jack Newfield and Nat Hentoff, has won three Pulitzers, most recently in 2000 for coverage of AIDS in Africa.

Despite their liberal, anti-establishment pedigree, alternative weeklies such as New Times and Village Voice long ago became big business. They are free and stuffed with music and arts coverage, they rake in piles of cash from entertainment ads and personal classifieds. Village Voice Media is owned by a consortium of investment banks that beat out New Times five years ago.

"Perfectly good journalism is commercially viable," Lacey says. "You have to give them well-written, well-reported stories. We don't need focus groups. We knew damn well that good stories sell, not people doing raving opinion pieces about how outraged they are. Blogs have made it completely unnecessary to have alternative newspapers fulfilling that role."

No cash will change hands because the deal is structured as a merger, with New Times getting 62 percent of the equity (plus a 5-4 edge on the company's board) and Village Voice 38 percent. Jim Larkin, the chief executive of New Times, says the negotiations took 15 months and that the only job cuts he envisions are on the corporate staff. "Village Voice makes money," he says. "These are both plump companies."

Lacey founded Phoenix New Times with Larkin in 1970, when he was a college dropout who had to give blood to make ends meet. He says the chain -- which also owns papers in Houston, Dallas, Denver, St. Louis and Kansas City -- boosts the budgets of the weeklies it acquires, though he would not rule out job cuts at the Voice papers in an effort to boost profit margins.

New Times has won a slew of journalism awards. Mark Jurkowitz, media critic for the Boston Phoenix, wrote recently that the company is "known for being non-ideological." But Lacey concedes that the planned takeover will produce a "culture clash" at the Voice, "because people will resent someone coming in from the outside. It's always very disturbing." What's more, New Times is a non-union shop, while the Voice and L.A. Weekly have noisy unions.

In terms of sheer feistiness, the papers may not be that far apart. A Voice writer recently slammed President Bush's "cluster of neocons and religious nuts and military industrialists," adding: "We need to investigate Wampumgate, Kazakhgate, the oil-for-slush scandal, Plamegate, and all the rest -- we need to do it for the sake of our own democracy."

Phoenix New Times, meanwhile, was calling the Maricopa County sheriff "a modern-day J. Edgar Hoover . . . without the penchant for women's underwear" and accusing local media outlets of the journalistic equivalent of sexually servicing him.

To skeptics, a large company that serves both the 1.1 million readers of New Times and the 800,000 of Village Voice Media -- which also has papers in Seattle, Minneapolis, Orange County and Nashville -- is a giant step toward the corporatization of the alternative news world. But Lacey argues that "media concentration at our end of the business is a good thing because it allows us to compete effectively," and says he hopes to restore the Voice "to its glory days."

That may or may not happen. But the bastion of Greenwich Village liberalism was once owned by Rupert Murdoch for six years. "The joke was we were Poland and Murdoch was Russia," says Schneiderman, a 27-year Voice veteran. "The only question was when he would invade."

http://blogs.citypages.com/pscholtes/2005/10/new_times_takes.asp

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0543,memo,69258,2.html

Village Voice writers' pay cut while music editor is on vacation

http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/stories.php?story=05/10/24/3056201

That said: ding dong, the Voice (as we know it) is dead. Or, "How the Central Scrutinizer toppled the Empire from an office in Denver."

And yeah, hearsay about NT varies from "alright" to "nightmare", as Chris O. cogently pointed out... It will really depend on where on that scale an alt-weekly falls currently, as far as readership/competition/etc.

again, i don't expect to be terribly popular or persuasive -- here or anywhere, really -- for awhile. i merely wish to hack away at the New Times Seal-Clubbing Neocon Automaton rap we're inevitably gonna get. o'connor's right: it's a case-by-case, paper-by-paper situation, and some are better than others. (he's not the first guy to use the Drunk Dad metaphor, actually.) but that alone blows holes in the theory that we're gonna sire 17 papers with identical copy and only change the street names and sports teams. certain details (layout/movie reviews) aside, our papers now are each distinct, regional entities, and trust me -- i join you all in hoping to christ the VV papers stay exactly as they are in that regard. i want matos/sylvester/eddy exactly where they are, only more so.

that'd be an improvement since the voice killed their sports coverage ages ago.

New Times Media Buys Village Voice

By SETH SUTEL, AP Business Writer

New Times Media, the nation's largest publisher of alternative
weekly newspapers, is buying the owner of the Village Voice and
its five sister newspapers, creating a company with 17 weekly
publications and a combined circulation of 1.8 million.

The new company will keep the Village Voice name but will be
run by the two top executives of New Times Media, a
Phoenix-based company with 11 newspapers, the companies
announced Monday.

The deal creates a dominant player in the alternative
newsweekly business with nearly a quarter of the industry's total
circulation of 7.6 million, according to Richard Karpel, executive
director of the Association of Alternative Weeklies, a trade group.

New Times shareholders will own 62 percent of the new
company and Village Voice shareholders the remaining 38
percent. The board of the new company will also be made up of
a majority of New Times directors.

New Times CEO Jim Larkin will run the new company, to be
called Village Voice Media, and New Times executive editor
Michael Lacey will be executive editor. Village Voice CEO David
Schneiderman will oversee online operations.

Schneiderman said the combination would allow the
newspapers to more effectively compete for national advertising
and build up a bigger presence online, where newspapers face
competition to their lucrative classified advertising business
from free listings services like Craigslist.

The newspapers from the Voice group will be added to
backpage.com, a free online classified advertising venture that is
owned by New Times and was launched as an alternative to
Craigslist.

The combined company would have overall revenues of about
$180 million, Schneiderman said. He declined to disclose other
financial details, noting that both companies are privately held,
but he did say both were "comfortably profitable."

The Village Voice, with a free circulation of about 250,000, is one
of the best known alternative weekly newspapers in the country.
It was co-founded in 1955 by the novelist Norman Mailer, and
has been owned at various times by magazine industry veteran
Clay Felker; Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and the
businessman Leonard Stern.

Under the new structure, the Voice's editor Donald Forst will
continue in his current role but will report to Lacey, as will the
editors of the Voice's five other weeklies in Los Angeles and
Orange County, Calif.; Seattle, Minneapolis / St. Paul and
Nashville.

New Times publishes in 11 cities including Phoenix, Cleveland,
Houston, San Francisco, Miami and Dallas.

The absorption of the Voice and its sister newspapers into a
larger company would do nothing to dampen their
antiestablishment tone, Schneiderman said.

"We kept our finger firmly planted in the eye of the establishment
when Murdoch owned us," Schneiderman said. "It's part of our
genetic makeup."

The deal will be subject to federal regulatory approval. The two
companies have run afoul of regulators before, and in 2003
settled charges of collusive behavior from the Justice
Department after selling competing papers to each other in Los
Angeles and Cleveland.

The deal had been expected, and has been the subject of much
discussion in the alternative weekly industry. For smaller
publications, the creation of a big company with newspapers in
several large cities including New York, Miami and San
Francisco could mean tougher competition for national
advertising.

"I think there's a sense of resignation," said Brian Hieggelke, the
publisher of the alternative weekly Newcity in Chicago. Hieggelke
is also director of the board of a cooperative that sells national
advertising for weeklies which competes with Ruxton Media
Group, a similar business owned by New Times. As part of the
deal, the Voice papers will become part of Ruxton's ad sales
network.

"For people who aren't part of New Times or (Village Voice
Media), the best case scenario is that it will be neutral for their
business, but in many cases it will be a negative," Hieggelke
said.

The Voice is currently owned by a group of investors including
three private investment funds: one managed by Goldman
Sachs; Weiss, Peck & Greer and the Trimaran Fund. None of
those investors is exiting as part of the current transaction.

As for what's in store... Well, Westword, the New Times paper in Denver, has no book review section. And yes, Rob, I know that not all New Times papers are the same. Still, what does that tell you about these guys' priorities? Or, if you're interested, got to www.westword.com and type "TABOR" into the search engine, or "C and D" (what next week's ballot is going to be all about in Colorado), and follow the links, and see if you learn anything about it. Pitiful.

Xpost Xpost Xpost

This is inelegant code for unfastening everyone who had an opinion in hard copy versus someone who will give you their opinion for free or pennies on the Internet. What's the difference, actually? Well, one's a rationalization and an excuse, the other's the justification for the rationalization and the excuse. It's just like every other newspaper manically seized by obsession and fear of/with content from the Internet. Most newspapers are going through or will go through this in 2005 or next year. Even though profitable, cuts are expected at the biggest because it's the way corporate does things.

And before the regrets and bad news there is always the parade of rationalizations about the Internet and nature of editorial content and its origin and how the changing world has dictated something bad but we're still dedicated to and will do great journalism because great journalism is great.

Of course, you follow this to its logical conclusion, you don't even need local editors over the next few years. You can ship raw copy instantaneously to Indonesia or any old ex-Brit empire country now a slave labor nation with high bandwidth telecomm connections to the net and get the product back to you before you get up in the morning.
Hey, "The Internet had made it completely unnecessary to have workers at alternate newspapers fulfilling this role."

We all have different opinions on who are the better or worse editors of these papers. (This isn't even relating to music editors, necessarily. This can be arts editors, food editors, film editors, political editors, CHIEF editors, etc.) Every paper has a combination of good and bad editors... some are overall better than others.

What this New Times buyout will do is essentially equalize the good and bad qualities of these papers. The shitty editors will have to shape up, and the good editors will be likely (and this depends on which delegate at the Denver/Phoenix Borg Central is assigned to whom) be told how to do things, when they don't need to be told how to do things.

All in all, this is sad, because while a lot of really bad sections might improve, a lot of great sections are likely going to be compromised, and I don't think anything will arise from this that will equal the greatness of the latter. These singular visions that were enjoyable sections are going to be less singular, and this is the sad part. But hey, cut-to-the-chase corporate visions aren't really interested in preserving uniquely great quality in certain spots.. they're interested in across-the-board profitability, even if it means the referendums are going to blemish the good spots, as well as improve the bad spots.

Yup. Though the smart editors will listen to what they are being told ... a lesson from wise-old deposed Uncle Chris.

haha thanks for making my blood run cold!

a little "I've moved on" humor there ...

One possible welcome effect: better movie reviews from more reviewers.

I see how it's welcome, but I don't see how it's possible.

I see your point. Definitely not intended to make it sound end-all be-all. My situation is my situation. I found it tough to work for them.

... not gonna say anything else.

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2005/11/doj_approves_vi.asp
http://blogs.citypages.com/pscholtes/2005/10/new_times_takes.asp

http://villagevoice.com/news/0549,murphy,70679,2.html

oh, yeah, like the guy resigned, wow.

(I'm not gonna post here again; just thought people might be curious.)

like it's gonna get you any work.

You're fired.

You're hired.

33 1/3rd St.

Indeed, and I won't complain.

"Thanks, ILX!"

http://staff.imsa.edu/science/geophysics/atmosphere/structure/ilx.gif

http://www.ably.co.jp/ilx/img/ilx.jpg

Sam Chennault left Miami NT before as well. Today is my last day at the office. Just moved my office stuff into storage. Apartment gets packed this upcoming week, then off to NYC.

He travels on to wherever he must:
A chess knight of silver is his badge of trust.
There are campfire legends that the plainsmen spin
Of the man with the gun, of the man called Mi-ch-ael-ang-elo.
Matos, Matos, where do you roam?
Matos, Matos, Far, far, from home.

"-ch-"?

Also, Da Na Not!, is your screen name the guitar line from Helmet's "Unsung"

no, Raymond, I'm leaving, Dylan left, Friskics-Warren is leaving.

Sadly here in SF the SFBGuardian has a hard time competing (tho they DEF. have the better music writing staff - Kimberly Chun is great). The SFWeekly is totally trying to kill em, steal their ad dollars, etc. Oddly the SFWeekly just lost its music editor as well...

before or after Jennifer Maerz took over? I'm guessing you mean before--Jennifer just started there a couple months ago.

It was initially meant to be just a bad Sha Na Na pun, but now that my now former appellation reminds me of Helmet thanks to you, I've changed it immediately!

Everything about the current LA Weekly -- design, font choices, articles, and all -- scream "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ".

Garrett still works for SF Weekly. He moved to the front of the book.

Does anyone know if this is true?

http://villagevoice.com/music/

Really? I don't know anyone who reads the SF Weekly.

How much will you have to be paid off to go away for at least a year?

(Nick S., hope you're doing well; drop by the country and teenpop threads.)

http://www.gawker.com/news/village-voice/voice-to-can-classic-rockers-168088.php

Voice’ to Can Classic Rockers?
READ MORE: Village Voice, critics, jobs, music

20051014vv.jpgWith the caveat that we have absolutely no idea that this is really true, a source claiming to be familiar with the goings-on at Village Voice Media HQ in Phoenix passes along this prognostication:

"Thought you’d like a little crystal ball into the impending shitstorm at the Voice: Christgau and Eddy are getting the boot (apparently today) and it looks like they’ll be replaced by one of the guys from the Phoenix establishment. But, look on the bright side, at least Sylvester shot himself in the foot before he could get the job."

Is the tipster right or wrong? Are big-deal rock writers Robert Christgau and Chuck Eddy about to be kicked out onto Cooper Square? If you’ve got any info, let us know. And we’ll update when we know more.

That said, I'll save my rage for when they can Hoberman.

http://cache.gawker.com/topic/andy.jpg

http://www.gawker.com/news/village-voice/village-voice-chuck-eddy-has-left-the-building-168111.php

If they let Hoberman go, too, they might as well burn it the fuck down

(Maybe there should be a Norman Mailer support thread, too)

uh, I just assumed someone has created a trollish thread. Did Jimmy create a sincere one? I think a "best wishes, we'll miss you" thread would be kind of appropriate, considering Chuck will likely see it, and Xgau was a (one time?) poster.

they better not touch Hoberman.

I just remembered Jerry Saltz once hit on my girlfriend. UNEMPLOYMENT IS A BITCH JERRY.

you're absolutely right, but the economies of scale of running 17 papers under one editorial staff make these nyc firings kind of a fait accompli. you can't syndicate a review of a film that won't screen in the smaller markets, so one assumes the editors will publish the lowest common denominator.

True, but the film market is more important than the music one, so I'd assume you'll see fewer film syndicated reviews in the Voice for that very reason. They'll need and want to cover things in the Voice that will never screen in, say, Phoenix.

NT blows the chucks of Satan, and you can quote me.

also, i never liked "shelter", couldn't believe it lasted as long as it did, and to my mind "press clips" was what it was because of cynthia cotts, who hasn't written it in years. the voice DOES need a shakeup, DESPERATELY. but firing people who wanted it shaken up in the first place, and who would have worked to make things better, just seems bizarre to me.

-- Tracey Hand (tracerhan...), April 19th, 2006 5:16 PM.

I was just thinking that this morning - Voice is far from perfect and could use some well-placed kicks, but the Stalin routine is overkill.

xxxpost Ha, I remember that awful Devil's Rejects rev, urgrghh!!!

plus, he was a supporter of legendary chicago power-popsters GREEN. can't go wrong there.

x-post

"To better clarify, I was fired. I was not fired by anyone in this office in Dallas, but by a corporate office outside of Dallas. The reason on my goodbye letter says “you are being terminated today as a result of the performance issues we have discussed with you on multiple occasions.” I will better dispute both the “performance issues” and the “multiple occasions” in the near future..." -former Dallas Observer music editor Sam Machkovech from his myspace blog

Maybe we started ILM as one of many performance benchmark tools/guttersnipe filters we ultimately plan on licensing on a B2B basis for a host of workplace functions. Coming soon: I love TacosTM,I love editing videoTM, I love scalping ticketsTM.

cc:Everyone who's fired and gonna be fired

don't search for the momus medical advice column then, either.

ARTS EDITOR. THE
posted 06/23/2006
Arts Editor. The Washington City Paper needs an arts editor to help us rethink our award-winning arts section from the ground up. We’re looking for someone who’s addled by pop culture, who’s equally comfortable with brows high and low, who can effortlessly absorb our editorial sensibility (hint: Start working on your puns now). You’ll develop and nurture a stable of freelancers and channel the efforts of our own staffers. Your ability to direct and edit coverage across boundaries must be unsurpassed­-we need someone who’s conversant about Francis Picabia and Park Chan-wook and can glimpse the eternal in freak folk and Mamet. The ideal candidate will astonish us every week. Send a cover letter and resume to: Arts Editor, Washington City Paper, 2390 Champlain St. NW, Washington, DC 20009; artseditor@washingtoncitypaper.

"interminable," i think they meant

Your name ain't Tom Ewing.

http://www.mikedoughty.com/blog/

"I've snarked at him plenty, but ultimately much respect.

Funny that my old alma mater, the NYPress, has been able to maintain
its pose--that of the drunken self-destructor--longer than the Voice's progressive-avenger pose. Not that the Press is vital in the least anymore. Both papers lost the people that justified/created those personas years ago.

New York is the city of Time Out. I never would've thought so when it debuted. It seemed so laughably gee-whiz, I thought they'd fold in a month. But New York is like that now. (I really, really don't want to be the "I miss the rats on Rivington Street" guy, OK?) The children move here for fantasies of Sex and the City, expensive shoes and bottle-service clubs, not squats and art and rock and roll.

And I, and I think everybody else, goes looking for their drunken self-destructors and progressive avengers out in the blogosphere. I pass the street corner boxes that distribute the Voice and the Press, and man, they look sad. Moribund."

How nice that his fantasies are more valid, apparently.

Is there anything genuinely good on the rise in Brooklyn? The Rail?

They're more egalitarian, at least.

Not that I like the Soul Coughing guy much, but I don't see much ugliness in that bit. Mostly just resignation to the fact that the city's changed.

Hee hee hee.

I feel like the point of Goldmine was less about the particular genre of music and more about aging. Maybe that's too optimistic though.

i need to see VG again, i liked it at the time but felt it was only 75% successful (that citizen kane rip thing was not so good). SAFE pwns pretty much everything else he ever did, except maybe the Karen Carpenter-as-doll opus.

2006-09-05: Reports of My Dismissal Have Been Reasonably Accurate

On August 31, I was terminated by the new owners of The Village Voice along with four other senior editors, two gifted designers, and half of the two-person photo department. The mass layoff was characterized as a "restructuring," but I was fired "for taste." Because our union long ago anticipated the possibility of this kind of drastic overhaul, a contractually mandated severance arrangement will give me some time to get my economic future in order. But the specifics of that future probably won't be clear for a while.

The Voice changed a lot over the 37 years I wrote there and 32 years I was employed there. I haven't approved of all those changes, especially over the past decade. But for most of that time, with our unionization when Rupert Murdoch purchased the paper in 1977 a turning point, the Voice paid me to write well. My old bosses always understood that constructing a well-informed essay takes time, and that sorting, grading, and saying something honest and original about an incomprehensible plethora of records takes forever. I am grateful for the support my editors gave me, although I certainly believe I gave them surplus value back. But how my worklife is to proceed remains to be seen. I'll be letting you know in this space when I know myself.

Let me take this opportunity to say how very grateful I am, first simply for the interest all the visitors to this site have taken in my work, but especially for the labor volunteered by a few. Tom Hull's contribution is of course inestimable. The condolence notes Tom has forwarded to me have been much appreciated. I'll be OK. Like they say, it's too late to stop now. Or was that can't stop won't stop? Either way, both ways, I'll be in touch, and I'll be listening.

Oh, so THAT's why it sucks. (the 2d half anyway)

I mourn, but also wonder; been killed vs. been dying a slow death for years?

safe is such a great movie to watch stoned.

Oh, so THAT's why it sucks. (the 2d half anyway)

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...)

That's a bit like saying the second half of A Clockwork Orange sucks. Sure, there are tone shifts, but they're necessary and integral. Safe in my top 10, too, though I'd hazard against watching it stoned (at least the first time). I would like to hear Scott expound on its uplifting qualities, however...

harvilla on Tue Sep 12, 15:28, 2006, says:
aloha. voice mgmt. here with a message from the honorable nate cavalieri, author of the piece in question. have at you.

--

Ouch! And from a Village Voice Media colleague as well! The indignity!

I was a sometimes member of the Sights between 2002 and 2003, and played a whole bunch of gigs with them. The band exists and is touring still. They've likely played with the Black Keys somewhere along the way, but I don’t recall sharing a bill with the Black Keys during my tenure.

Also, I graduated from Oberlin College in 2000, where I studied music and creative writing, but my folks didn't have to shell out the entire 80k, thanks to a generous financial aid package. According to "the Goog," Denise graduated in 2003, but I don't recall meeting her there.

Finally, I've written about the Black Keys one other time professionally, in an article published in Detroit's Metro Times three years ago called "White Destriples," which reflected negatively on various two-piece garage/blues acts. I’ve written about them in my tear-soaked diary numerous times.

...

..."THE GOOG"?!?!

http://thisisblythe.com/albums/albuo33/gooch.sized.jpeg

yeah i don't get this. the movie is a coherent whole, separating out the second half doesn't make sense.

Wrinklepaws, you sweet darling innocent. Let me send you some Nigerian spam.

Van De Voorde called Hoffman "a writer and editor with experience in hard news" who would help City Pages do more investigative reporting and narrative writing -- two New Times hallmarks.

Since CP does plenty of investigative reporting and narrative writing, who knows wtf this is supposed to mean. Unless they want CP to start writing, you know, dumber.

trust me -- i join you all in hoping to christ the VV papers stay exactly as they are in that regard. i want matos/sylvester/eddy exactly where they are, only more so.

-- awful bliss (harvill...), October 25th, 2005.

riiiiiight.

But hey at least there's still music ... I caught up and heard the Christina Aguilera for the first time this week. Surprisingly great.

i just started seeing it a few weeks ago, but this week i saw issues of it EVERYWHERE. i guess they think the city pages is vulnerable or something..

Yeah, it's supposed to sound that way. "Some Loud Thunder," the title track off CYHSY's sophomore release, is a fun, crisp pop song—all hand claps and cowbells and jangly guitar—fed through a haze of radio static, like it's crackling between AM channels on a long drive through the desert. A nostalgic gesture, I guess. But it's also hard not to be skeptical. This is a band that emerged in 2005 as though genetically engineered in some East Village basement to generate blogger appeal. Their first, self-titled disc was packed with all the hippest rock references—Talking Heads, Neutral Milk Hotel, etc.-—but instead of being angular and crisp, those influences sounded as if they'd been left out in to the sun too long and melted into something warped and druggy.

-"Crisp" twice in one short paragraph
-"All the hippest musical references--Talking Heads, Neutral Milk Hotel"
-"Whoa, this sounds weird!" beginning

Frontman Alec Ounsworth sang like David Byrne and looked like a waiter at a vegan restaurant; like true hipsters, his band was accelerated and responsive, a psychedelic amoeba consuming rock idioms and excreting catchy little bits of digested zeitgeist. Take Thunder's dance-punk confection "Satan Said Dance," which wraps its pumping beat and twitchy chants in a swarm of electronic squiggles, belches, and bleeps, a rapturous sound that nonetheless sounds absolutely redolent of the Rapture. On top of all this, they had a silly name, and enough "DIY integrity" to flatten a polar bear. If they didn't happen to be so good, CYHSY would've been a pretty ingenious bit of meta-parody. As it stood, they were that rare rock item: a postmodern band that seemed to be genuinely, excitingly weird.

Sadly, knob-twiddling wooze-hound Dave Fridmann makes them sound very aware of all this on Thunder—the producer's atmospheric flourishes have always been heavy handed, but here they muddle tightly conceived pop tunes that would've sounded better scrappy. Too often, there's simply not enough of the band in the mix. What the record does have, though, is a collection of truly great melodies, and when the music focuses directly on them—meditating on simple chords—that new sense of sound and space offers moments of pure euphoria. "Emily Jean Stock" finds Ounsworth's strangled yelp riding the crest of a gorgeous Technicolor harmony, and the sub-aquatic "Five Easy Pieces," ripe for a Cameron Crowe love scene, is an equally beautiful bit of cycling mist. Time for a new producer. Two words: Danger Mouse.
send a letter to the editor

Wow

so, "a psychedelic amoeba consuming rock idioms and excreting catchy little bits of digested zeitgeist" is characteristic of any "true hipster"?

It's a great song ... maybe doesn;t apply here, but hey, it's a nice plug for Linda Thompson anyway. :-)

indeed.

Besides, methinks Mr. Lomax's entry into this discussion is fairly credible. :-)

BTW, I'm of the opinion the essay is real. It's totally consistent with a longtime NT tradition of responding in print to opponents amd detractors -- most of which are breathtaking and wonderful (Mike Lacey's volleys against Bruce Brugman are awesome). This one, however, is neither.

And other stuff which i'm not going to look up now. I know they let you go and you always talk very interestingly about how shitty they are in some ways, but you also seem to still kind of love them and defend them. That said, I don't want to cast aspersions on you, you seem okay to me! Forget I said anything.

-- O'Connor (oconnorscrib...), July 26th, 2006.

OH CRAP NOW I'M DOING IT

first question: will they let liz spikol keep vlogging????

Another music editor down:

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/07/la_weekly_assigned_new_mu.php

Kate Sullivan was also a great and longtime City Pages writer.

Gah they still owe me $$$

Randy was my editor way back when at pre-New Times Riverfront Times. He was ace. And he's always worth reading, even when he's wrong. Expect hip-hip, electronica and world music to get a smart bump.

Village Voice Media is still highlighting Kate Sullivan's Second Place Southern California Journalism award for Entertainment Reviews/Criticism/Column...

Randall Roberts did a statistical analysis of Dave Marsh's entries in the Rolling Stone Record Guide at the 2006 EMP and something on Creem in 2007

New Times owns the RFT?!

Only for the last 5 years or whatever.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/24/AR2007072402024.html

City Paper Sold to Tampa Alt-Weekly Group
Editor, Publisher to Remain; No Big Changes Planned, New Owner Says

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 25, 2007; Page D04

The Washington City Paper has been sold to group of alternative weeklies based in Tampa.

Creative Loafing Inc., which owns newspapers in Atlanta, Charlotte and Sarasota, Fla., in addition to Tampa, and bills itself as "shelter from the mainstream," bought the City Paper and its sister publication, the Chicago Reader, for an undisclosed amount.

The seller, Chicago Reader Inc., will continue to own stakes in the Amsterdam Weekly in the Netherlands, the Portland (Ore.) Mercury as well as the Stranger, the Seattle weekly that is home to syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage. The company also owns the building in Adams Morgan that houses the City Paper.

The new owners of the City Paper said they do not intend to change the paper's name or make radical alterations to the product. Ben Eason, Creative Loafing's chief executive, said yesterday that he asked City Paper editor Erik Wemple and publisher Amy Austin to remain, and both agreed.

Bob Roth, who co-founded the Chicago Reader in 1971 as an "extracurricular project" when he was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, said Eason contacted him five months ago and eventually made an offer for the two papers. Eason said it is an eight-figure sale and that he tried to buy the stakes in the other papers, too, but Roth would not sell.

City Paper budget cuts already begun will continue, Wemple said, though he said he was not sure where they will come from. "There's no fat in our newsroom that I can identify, and so this is difficult process," Wemple said. "I refuse to pay freelancers less money, and so we'll have to get terribly, terribly creative."

Eason said cuts could come from City Paper's production staff; all Creative Loafing papers are produced and printed in Atlanta to save money.

More than mainstream daily newspapers, alternative weeklies depend on revenue from classifieds, which have been raided by Craigslist. Further, Washington's recent raft of free newspapers -- Express, owned by The Washington Post Co., the Examiner and now the Onion -- all compete for ad dollars that once were nearly exclusive property of the City Paper. It remains profitable, but its margins have shrunk.

"Clearly, alternatives took the first hit on Craigslist," Eason said. "The Chicago Reader was the strongest classifieds publication in the country, and it has taken more of its fair share of hits on that."

With six papers, Creative Loafing will trail Village Voice Media, the nation's largest chain of alt-weeklies, which has 17, including the storied Voice.

In May 2006, Wemple was named editor of the Voice. But he clashed with management, quit the job before he started and stayed at the City Paper. Yesterday, Wemple said he had no regrets for not sticking with the Village Voice job.

tape store RFT is fucking terrible to be honest.
ESPECIALLY when compared to vv/city pages and even miami new times.

x-post

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/index.php/2007/07/24/washington-city-paper-sold-to-atlanta-chain/

Wemple later indicated to editorial staff that the editorial budget is likely to be cut in the coming months to bring City Paper’s editorial expenses in line with other alternative weeklies, but he indicated that similar cuts would likely have come under the old ownership

Wonderful Schmonderful Says:
Jul. 25, 2007, at 11:38 am
If the Loaf is a wonderful paper, it’s not even half as wonderful as the City Paper, if AltWeekly Awards are any measure: According to aan.org, the flagship Atlanta Creative Loafing (founded 1972) has won 18 awards over the years; CP (founded 1981) has won 47.

Adding the other the three Loaf papers into the total produces a whole eight more awards. Adding the Chicago Reader (founded 1971) results in another 27 awards. Final score of combined wonderfulness: home team 74, visitors 26.

But even without the Reader’s help–and handicapped by having to play nine years of catch-up–CP is quantifiably better than CL by more than 100 percent. (Start tallying prestigious food- and drama-criticism wins and the buyout looks even more ominous.) Of course, that’s just what a bunch of seasoned journalism folks and awards-committee cranks think. Haters should now jump on the fact that AAN has also given Cherkis five awards and Wemple two.

Chicago Reader's editor's memo regarding their new owners:

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12750

As for the future, this changeover shouldn't be regarded, as one blog commenter put it, as a sad day for the city of Chicago. The paper and Web site that so many Chicagoans depend on isn't going anywhere, and you -- house staff, freelance writers, illustrators, photographers -- are going to continue to be its lifeblood.

NY Press sold

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/business/media/01press.html?_r=2&ref=media&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

There are officially no decent alt weeklies in NYC now. Does this place have any definable culture anymore?

Manhattan Media owns four community weekly papers: Our Town, The West Side Spirit, The Westsider and The Chelsea Clinton News, the oldest community paper in Manhattan.

Waht?

I heard the city reinvents itself and all but if that's the oldest...

Clinton is another name for Hell's Kitchen, the neighborhood right next to Chelsea.

According to their website, The Chelsea Clinton News has been around for 65 years.

Makes you wonder if Bill & Hill chose the name with that knowledge in mind...

Eason said cuts could come from City Paper's production staff; all Creative Loafing papers are produced and printed in Atlanta to save money.

Rumor has it that more such cuts just happened at the Washington City Paper.

Art and production moves to Atlanta 10-26. Creative Loafing budget cuts and production changes mean music coverage will be reduced further, and deadlines will be earlier.

New Times / Village Voice Media head Lacey arrested.. for a very interesting reason.

http://www.kpho.com/news/14376424/detail.html

sorry, no titillation here, but a pretty fascinating story.

Yep

Titillation provided in the form of inmates with pink underwear,

joe arpaio is nuts.

wow that is so fucked.

The subpoenas also seek online profiles of anyone who read four specific articles about Arpaio and profiles of anyone who visited the paper's Web site since Jan. 1, 2004. Also sought was information on what Web users did while on the site, the story said.

http://www.apbweb.com/images/articles-5-16-07.gif

this isn't wdylll dude

phwoarr

hahah xpost

here's yer titillation:

watch me shoot down my future career prospects while drunk: new times media can suck my cock until i cum blood

-- PARTYMAN (dubplatestyle), Monday, September 4, 2006 9:45 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

classic post

Ooh la la, Jess' bloodcum.

Subpoenas being dropped.

wow, a small victory for the SFBG, esp the "for immediate collection" part which may not be so small!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/07/MNG21BF2MH.DTL&tsp=1

So, Wayne Barrett and Tom Robbins are gone.

RIP zombie voice.

Ny Times re this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/nyregion/05voice.html?nl=todaysheadlines&adxnnl=1&emc=tha29&adxnnlx=1294236058-/ZtTDoIbfQ7VpktJUdTIUw

Maybe they have inspired some younger less-well paid Voice staffers and freelancers (who may or may not have the time to do investigative reporting because of whatever else they do to pay their bills)

So the Voice site is basically all about girls gone wild titty slideshows now?

Just one of the choices, isn't it? A few folks read their online music crit offerings, I guess.

I look through Musto and the increasingly scant film/theatre coverage, that's about it.

City Pages ran a Phoenix New Times story about DMX on the cover this week.

Not that I'm not interested in DMX, just that I don't recall syndicated cover stories.

DC City Paper has been running less newsprint pages. Between the recession, the diminished number of folks reading newsprint, the financial limitations of the owners of these publications and online competition, alt-weeklies need feisty ad salespeople I guess who can somehow get more ads and bring in revenue.

TBF I think a lot of the functions of an alt-weekly actually can be properly taken over, if not done better, by a plethora of websites (music and film coverage, bizarro classifieds, rancorous firespitting about whatever). The main thing to be missed is the local investigative stuff. Still not sure there's a good web model for that yet, although I guess someone will figure it out and maybe they already have.

Whee

http://gawker.com/5945821/village-voice-medias-last-ditch-effort-to-save-itself-will-probably-fail

Maybe NY ilxors can buy it.

So I wonder how SouthComm, which publishes eight alt-weeklies, including the Atlanta one and the Washington City Paper is doing?

http://storify.com/connorsimpson/tricia-romano-on-the-village-voice

Damn. Im getting misty eyed, seriously.

Is their mangement style less damaging at some of their other papers?

Under the terms of the agreement, Voice Media Group will own and operate the following print publications and corresponding digital properties: Village Voice (New York), LA Weekly (Los Angeles), Westword (Denver), New Times (Phoenix), Houston Press, Dallas Observer, Riverfront Times (St. Louis), New Times (Miami), City Pages (Minneapolis), New Times (Broward), SF Weekly (San Francisco), Seattle Weekly, and OC Weekly (Orange County). Voice Media Group will also purchase and take over VVMH's national advertising division, which will now be called VMG National. VMG National will continue to sell national advertising for more than 56 partner sites and publications, reaching more than 3 million readers across 56 key metro markets each week.

http://www.wvva.com/story/19619001/newly-formed-denver-holding-company-voice-media-group-to-acquire-village-voice-media-publishing-properties

management

thanks for the link to the tricia romano twitter thing, good read

I had not seen the actual print Voice in a long time (would read some of it on the Internet) and then last week I saw one, holy shit it's a pamphlet

love this:

I miss Xgau, wearing trademark jeans, rock T, headphones, stopping and saying: "Tricia: The new Common record," and sighing.

Man, the stuff we made fun of upthread is SO much better than what they publish now

Fire sale is on! I guess. Seattle Weekly and SF Weekly have both been sold.

just struck me how much pathos is in the phrase "acquired by new times" (or "discarded by new times," for that matter)

Thought maybe this revive was about another wave of classic jazz albums we should hear before we die.

http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2013/01/09/sf-weekly-sold-to-bay-guardian-publisher/

, Voice Media Group will continue to own and operate the following print publications and corresponding digital properties: Village Voice (New York), LA Weekly (Los Angeles), Westword (Denver), New Times (Phoenix), Houston Press, Dallas Observer, Riverfront Times (St. Louis), New Times (Miami), City Pages (Minneapolis), New Times (Broward) and OC Weekly (Orange County).

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-Weekly-sold-to-Sound-Publishing-4179877.php

For now.

boy it would be nice if somebody bought them and rethought the game.

i got $47 in my checking account, lemme see how many papers i can buy with that

man, i looked at the voice website this morning wondering if p+j was up yet, it's total garbage now

i never read any of those sites anymore, laweekly especially is sickeningly terrible.

"The sale of SF Weekly will allow Voice Media Group to focus on growth opportunities for mobile and online platforms and to develop core digital offerings in its other key markets."

so another blogging platform full stop is the gameplan then.

just looked at the voice website just now. holy *shit* is that ugly, like throwback to 1996 webdesign, netscape navigator 1.0 compatible ugly. and then there are just huge amounts of links to articles in basically three blogs/"verticals" and that seems like the entire goddamn site.

I was always glad that the Metro Times was never bought by these clowns.

God I love digital properties.

thank got Seattle Weekly wasn't sold to the Seattle Times, as was rumored. hopefully it will become semi-decent again.

michael musto must feel like the queen fuckin bee these days

so this guy writes about rap for the voice now are you guys big fans?

http://grindtimenow.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/featurechaz.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJu451qyZL0

i'm feeling it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmmpTKHOXRE

Wow this is really bad.

looks like heath ledger as shat out by corey haim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKPvdcEfETA
damn, you're serious: he IS writing about hip hop for the voice

i googled up a few articles of his and they don't seem particularly offensive.

http://www.lowtimespodcast.com/the-la-weekly-posted-some-garbage-now-i-want-to-talk-to-them/

even when held up against the rest of the paper/site, west coast sound is particularly terrible.

Was just going to post that. The Voice has been posting piles and piles of perv pic features from various events around the city, but there's something even more creepy about it being gifs. Plus at least most of the Voice pics are from like "sexy" events where people are all publicly displaying sexuality on purpose, iirc.

Welp:

Will Bourne, who became editor-in-chief of The Village Voice in November, and Jessica Lustig, the deputy editor since January, are leaving the weekly publication.

They met with the staff at 11 p.m. on Thursday and said that Christine Brennan, executive editor of Voice Media Group, had instructed them to cut five positions from the 20-person staff. Rather than implementing the cuts, they resigned and left immediately.

the Voice is soon going to be a single guy in his underwear posting clickporn photo sets of sex events

"From your mouth to God's ears," says a lurking Ben Westhoff.

lol staff of 15, i really had no idea.

Is that editorial staff or total? I mean either way damn.

how small can the staff get before 'editor-in-chief' is a bigger title than the organization can bear

editorial staff, apparently.

As someone who put out a monthly mag with a total staff of 3, plus freelancers, I'm kinda surprised it takes 20 people to put out something as shitty as the 2013 Voice.

1) its weekly. 2) it has lots of bloggyblogs. 3) actually i don't know beyond that i don't pay attention anymore.

oh right 4) it occasionally still has real legwork in actually reporting feature stories and it theoretically pays staff to do that and not just freelancers.

there is admittedly a lot of legwork even in digging up salacious details on stories like that one about the real estate magnate's wife who did cocaine and had an affair with a cartel hitman who owned a monster truck racetrack which was a cover for snuff film production.

http://www.villagevoice.com/about/staff/

Editor in Chief Will Bourne
Deputy Editor Jessica Lustig
Arts and Culture Editor
Film Editor Alan Scherstuhl
Music Editor Brian McManus
Copy Chief
Web Editor Nick Greene
Senior Associate Editors Angela Ashman, Araceli Cruz, Nick Murray
Staff Writers Michael Feingold, James King, Michael Musto, Nick Pinto, Graham Rayman, Tejal Rao
Contributors Melissa Anderson, Allen Barra, Roy Edroso, Deborah Jowitt, Chantal Martineau, Nick Pinkerton, John Surico, Robert Sietsema, Alexis Soloski
Contributing Copy Editor Benjamin Mercer
Editorial Fellows Emily Gogolak, Jason Lewis
Editorial Interns Alexandra Bell, Brittany Spanos, Christopher Weller, Diana Clarke, Leah Butterfield
Associate Editor Heather Baysa
Arts Assistant Eric Sundermann

xpost -- why are you not linking that story right now.

I wonder if McAnus will get a promotion. Failing upwards, etc.

Fin:

Last week, top editors at the Village Voice resigned in protest when they learned that management wanted them to lay off several members of their already-decimated staff. This morning, those layoffs came down. They're not pretty.

We hear that executives from the Voice's parent company flew in for today's massacre. Michael Musto, the Voice's nightlife columnist and most high profile remaining staffer, has been let go, as was rumored last week. (There had apparently been some talk of Musto's column hanging on in some form, but that does not seem to have worked out.) Also let go, sources tell us, was Robert Sietsema, the Voice's longtime food critic, and Michael Feingold, the paper's theater critic. Feingold was scheduled to host the Obie Awards for the Voice next week.

Should be polled: http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-22/columns/why-i-hate-being-gay/

those are the last 3 columnists I read, btw, and obv the last 3 longtimers.

tho Zacharek on film I will still look at

man, gutted. they're done huh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/business/media/michael-musto-and-robert-sietsema-leave-village-voice.html?_r=0

more reaction to firing of Musto, Sietsema, & Feingold

http://nypost.com/2013/10/23/spinmedia-to-slash-staff-again/

lol @ owning "absolutepunk.net"

Break For Killer Kennedy Cuz!

Forks, there is discussion of that on the Pitchfork thread:

pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

gotcha. I've stuck my nose in that thread lately; the discussion seems pretty good.

Is there gonna be a Pazz & Jop poll?

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/28/how-the-village-voiceandotheraltweeklieslosttheirvoicein2013.html

Long think piece on the decline of American alt-weeklies and New Times

how many interviews does a reporter have to do before his piece can be called something other than a "thinkpiece"

call it a feature if you like... whatev

Yes, he interviewed many people for this piece

is there gonna be a Pazz & Jop poll? Yep:

All ballots are due by Tuesday, December 24th; results will be published in print and online the week of January 8th.

Also: the return of longform journalism? (Pitchfork's even gonna do a print edition, I heard; prob fairly expensive, but hey return of vinyl)http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/why-long-form-journalism-everywhere-these-days

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/ct-ae-1229-jones-20131228,0,1284205.column

The future of arts journalism? by Chris Jones

the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are creating their own online media magazine to preview music events because they think there are not enough previews of their events and those of others

is

TAKE THE POWER BACK

Seriously, Chicago may have the right idea.

Despite possible conflict of interest issues, I guess it has to be better than this:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2013/07/most_bangable_members_ny_philharmonic.php

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/we-broke-the-internet
this feels right on

This opens here next week--hadn't heard anything about it until yesterday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp-D_ga6UHg

heh, my friend regina is in that trailer.
yeah, i wanna see that for sure.

what was the video? gone now

It was a trailer for this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2312616/

Not sure why that would come down just as the film's opening.

Oh, Nat Hentoff. I see his recent writing can be found at this rightwing site:

http://www.wnd.com/author/nhentoff/

well he did engage in clinton conspiracies w/ the best of them

Today on Twitter:

@villagevoice: Nigerian Independence Day Parade 2014: Cloudy With a Chance of Ebola?

dear lord

SHUT IT DOWN

Ok, looks like it's not what it sounds like:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/10/nigerian_independence_day_parade_2014_cloudy_with_a_chance_of_ebola.php?utm_content=buffer346a8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

there oughta be a law that all writers have the right to title their own pieces; that's clickbait of the worst kind there

HEYYYyyyyyy it's our SHITTIEST COVER EVER!

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ4rJBB-pozEYTIIS6jaNr9ZLQGXzpf8rLNDD_OvK7LGdiKJQlp

ha, that really is egregious

it kind of looks like this magazine I used to see in central jersey that was mostly reviews of bars and strip clubs

is that cover intentionally hideous?

My money is on either angry art director or incompetent intern

It does have a slightly "break every design rule" quality to it, but not quite enough so to be "anti-aesthetic." It's weird to think someone actually went to the trouble to make that Statue of Liberty illustration -- wonder if it's modified clip art or something.

http://media.villagevoice.com/10081112.128.jpg

http://media.villagevoice.com/10081114.75.jpg

the sandwich one...

is it a drag SOL doing the Heisman?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/nyregion/village-voice-sold-to-peter-barbey-owner-of-a-pennsylvania-newspaper.html

Peter D. Barbey, through his investment company Black Walnut Holdings L.L.C., bought the paper from Voice Media Group, which owns a string of weeklies around the country.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and Mr. Barbey declined to discuss the details.

However, in an interview, he vowed to invest in the paper and once again make it relevant in the cultural life of New York City.

“I realize that The Voice has had a unique journalistic role in New York and the country as a whole,” Mr. Barbey, 58, said. “That deserves to survive and prosper.”

The paper, he said, was once an essential “voice of the arts and cultural community in New York.” While he will not take over full control of the paper until February, Mr. Barbey said he would focus first on bolstering its arts coverage — mainly by attracting top writers.

“Over the years it’s been known as a place that made writers’ reputations,” Mr. Barbey said. “If you were a good writer, you wanted to write for The Voice.”

“One of the biggest problems in media today is lack of attention to content,” he said. “Many publications have stripped their content.”

That will not happen under his watch, he said.

When asked about the financial resources he would devote to the paper, Mr. Barbey would not be specific but noted that his family’s wealth could be ascertained quickly through a Google search.

The Barbeys rank 48th on the Forbes list of America’s wealthiest families.

hm
anybody got some perspective on this?

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2015/10/8579442/meet-peter-barbey-latest-owner-take-village-voice

Skeptics will abound, including some of those very Voice vets.

"You mean the Voice still exists?" Hoberman sniffed when asked for his thoughts on the sale. Seriously though: "Even if the new owners are inclined to spend money, they'll have a near impossible time restoring any credibility."

"Weeklies, accustomed to big reports without much of a time peg, seem to have had a particularly difficult transition to a mixed digital/print publishing model," Poynter Institute media analyst Rick Edmonds wrote on Monday. "Best case — Barbey will also infuse some money and editorial vitality into the Village Voice. But I wouldn’t look for a turnaround ... given how much the business base for the Voice and similar publications has deteriorated."

i feel like you'd have to be very VERY rich to actually sink enough money into the VV to turn it around and not worry about the losses. is he that rich?