The always-awesome David Carr at the New York Times writes:
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 a.m. on Thursday and said that Christine Brennan, executive editor of Voice Media Group, had instructed them to lay off or drastically reduce the role of five employees on the 20-person staff. Rather than carrying out the cuts, they resigned and left immediately.
Good for Bourne and Lustig. Cutting (or drastically reducing) the staff of the Voice by a quarter would have been a truly awful experience. And working in that post-cut newsroom would probably have been worse than being unemployed. If these cuts go through, I can only imagine that the Voice’s scope is going to have to be drastically reduced.
It’s sometimes a little uncomfortable when you guys publish posts like this… in this case, about the VV, which, you know, isn’t totally dissimilar from the Mercury/Stranger in the broad spectrum of media universe. This one sounds a bit like PC has heard rumors about his employer, so is throwing his editors under the bus in order to try and protect his job.