Another one bites the dust. We are chagrined to report the Village Voice is officially dead.
According to Gothamist (wait, aren’t they dead too?), publisher Peter Barbey announced to the staff Friday that the paper will no longer be publishing any new work. Excuse me, content.
From Gothamist:
“Today is kind of a sucky day,” Barbey told the staff, according to audio obtained by Gothamist. “Due to, basically, business realities, we’re going to stop publishing Village Voice new material [sic].”
Barbey said that half of the staff, which is around 15 to 20 people, will remain on to “wind things down,” and work on a project to archive the Voice’s material online.
The rest of the staff will be let go today.
“I bought the Village Voice to save it, this isn’t exactly how I though it was going to end up. I’m still trying to save the Village Voice,” Barbey told the staff.
He also praised them for doing important work: “You had amazing grit, to remain professional in doing what you’re doing and hanging in there to the end.”
The Voice, which was founded in 1955 and acquired by New Times Media in 2005, won three Pulitzer Prizes and published such notables as Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, Barbara Garson, Katherine Anne Porter, e.e. cummings, James Baldwin, M.S. Cone, Colson Whitehead, Nelson George, Greg Tate, Barry Cooper, Peter Noel, Tom Stoppard, Lorraine Hansberry, Lester Bangs, and Ted Hoagland, as well as cartoonists R. Crumb, Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Stan Mack, Mark Alan Stamaty, Ted Rall, Tom Tomorrow, Ward Sutton, Ruben Bolling and M. Wartella. It will join former alt weeklies the Baltimore City Paper, Boston Phoenix, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Knoxville Mercury, and countless others in the grave.
This is egregiously unprofessional reporting. The turds at the VV ran “Backpage”- a disgusting site which led to a bunch of elderly turds getting indicted for felony sex trafficking. Here’s some real reporting from the Washington Post: “In addition to hosting thinly veiled ads for prostitution since 2004, was accused of hosting child sex trafficking ads on its site and even assisting advertisers in wording their copy so they didn’t overtly declare that sex was for sale, federal investigators allege. In a remarkable three-paragraph admission in his federal plea agreement, Ferrer wrote that “I conspired with other Backpage principals … to find ways to knowingly facilitate the state-law prostitution crimes being committed by Backpage’s customers.”
The Village Voice deserved to die, and the Village Voice/Backpage principals deserve their punishment.
Rather than mourn the passage of the Village Voice, we should spit on it’s grave.