The Fate of The Village Voice

With the fate of The Village Voice increasingly an open question (I refer you, dear reader, to the first two posts connected to this link), I found this story, though the tone is darkly snarky, rather interesting to think about. I do suggest everyone take a look at it.

The headline is: ‘Village Voice’ Layoffs Exemplify Decline of Mainstream Counterculture.

Is this a contradictory phrase or idea? Or is this, perhaps, a way of saying that the Village Voice has made its point in the long-term sociological sense? Is it a way of saying that all things have a lifespan and that this latest turn of events, amidst all the other tumult in media, may simply be the end of it?

I'm not at all saying I wish for that -- indeed, I don't wish for that at all. The first review I wrote were for the Voice 19 years ago; the Voice is a tradition, an idea, a symbol.

I'm simply wondering whether that may be the dynamic that's operating here. It's a moral question, an ethical question, as much as a fiscal one.

The author of the story, S.T. Karnick, of course, is a conservative, so the tone doesn't surprise me. Those who butchered this nation and botched it up need something to cavil about, especially as they wipe the blood of their countrymen off their hands.

Sphere: Related Content

Does the Village Voice Have Laryngitis?

Dear, darling 2009 has begun and already the bad news from the media world is trickling in again. Let's see:

Forbes Layoffs Finally Arrive: 19 Fired From Magazine, Web

and

McGraw-Hill Cut 375 Jobs in Fourth Quarter
BusinessWeek publisher eliminated 70 positions from media group

But really, this is the most startling thing -- well, then again, maybe it isn't, given how bad things have been getting. It wasn't regrettable enough that Village Voice Media kicked Nat Hentoff, its legendary columnist, to the curb, but now comes word that the equally legendary alt-weekly may not even survive the current economic downtown.

Here's an excerpt from an internal Voice memo that was reprinted on a great blogpost that I came across:

December 31, 2008

To all Village Voice staffers:

It's no secret that the chickens have come home to roost from the George Bush economy of the past eight years. We have all felt the downturn at Village Voice Media operations and, as you know, have been trimming expenses since December of 2007

Unfortunately, this year we have found it necessary to make staff reductions and have placed all staff openings on hold.

We are also going to take these additional measures effective January 1, 2009:

1) All VVM senior managers and officers, including Larkin and Lacey, are taking 15% pay reductions.

2) VVM Publishers and Editors are taking 10% pay reductions until our revenues begin to grow again.

3) We will suspend the Village Voice Media match into our 401-K plan. The plan will still remain open and we urge you to take advantage of the tax deferred personal savings advantages.

There is more to this memo, of course, including a fair amount of rosy prose that promises happy days are here again at some point in the future.

But clearly this is unfortunate.

PS There is also this story, with accompanying video, called Is the Village Voice a Zombie Newspaper? Watch the video to see Russ Smith, founder of New York Press, among other publications, be so down on the Voice, alt-weeklies, print, the GOP and more or less everything else in the world.

Sphere: Related Content

The Village Voice Fires Nat Hentoff

The firing of Nat Hentoff from the Village Voice -- where he filed for 50 years -- isn't so much shocking as yet one more reason to say farewell to 2008.

What a horrid year.

Shame on them.

(Even if Hentoff's anti-choice position is equally horrid.)

Sphere: Related Content

Violence and Aftermath

Has anyone read Michael Feingold's beautiful and brilliant essay in this week's Village Voice? This is precisely what Feingold, arguably our greatest living theatre critic, should be writing about -- and its better, even, than the kind of politics-as-theatre, theatre-as-politics screeds that Frank Rich has singlehandedly turned into a subgenre all his own. And it's certainly a lot more interesting, thoughtful, professional and instructive than Alexis Soloski's latest dubious and ill-conceived, violent slam against the New York International Fringe Festival.

Meanwhile, if you want to bear witness just how much blood, how much gore, how much life and American treasure George W. Bush has on his murderous hands, I heartily, wearily recommend that you read this article and especially visit this slideshow at the New York Times' website.

For now, I leave you with a quote from Mr. Feingold:

"We all have violent impulses. However much they may trouble us individually, they have a gratifying aspect that finds its way out when we mass together, either as imagery in entertainment or—when pushed to the edge by the urgings of extremism—in the commission of actual violent acts. However much I may dislike the violence in which certain playwrights have seemed to specialize lately (I tend to avoid their plays because the extreme gore gets on my frazzled nerves), I have to admit that its existence makes sense: A world full of violence will naturally spawn plays full of violent imagery, and it's better, surely, for the violence to appear onstage, via the sanguinary imagination of a Tracy Letts or Martin McDonagh, than to see it become all too real in the streets and schoolyards.

But the word 'imaginary' offers another of those mental irritants. I see plenty of violent acts in new plays. What I don't see, especially in recent work, is any imaginative effort to go beyond the violent act, to examine not only motives but causes and consequences, let alone solutions, of the kind that Newark is now exploring in the wake of the horrific killings there. Recently, not in a reviewable context, I saw a piece of theater, essentially a love story, in which a violent act committed on the hero's true love was repaid by his committing a violent act on somebody who had nothing to do with it. This was presented as a mark of virtue on his part, leading to a sort of happy ending in which absolutely no attempt was made to perceive the events in any larger moral context. It was simply 'You wrong me, I wrong somebody else.' Rather like the comedy of Jack Absolute, in The Rivals, striking his servant, who strikes the errand boy, who says, "I'll go downstairs and kick the cat." Only it's not funny when perceived as heroic."

Sphere: Related Content

Some Thoughts on Theater Coverage

I know there's a lot of stuff brewing in the OOB community around the reformation of the Showcase Code, something that I wholeheartedly support, and as soon as I get my tush in gear enough to send another email to Paul Bargetto, apologizing for my inability to come to the event at CSC last Sunday (I had to write some reviews), I hope to be able to play some sort of formal role in the process, perhaps dealing with some research issues and the hoped-for development of economic-impact information that would show just how strong, in dollars and sense, the OOB community really is. (If you refer indie theater community, that's fine by me, but it's not at all a phrase I'd ever use. Moreover, I don't think the issue has anything whatsoever to do with either branding or naming conventions.)

Anyway, I was riding the W train home to Astoria the other night, and I had stuffed in my bag a copy of this week's New York Press (which I read for all the obvious reasons -- to read what I've written for that week and also to see what my friend Jerry Portwood is putting into the paper), The Village Voice (which I read...well, I don't really know why...boredom?), and the New York Observer, which is my weekly guilty pleasure.

Anyway (anyway), something the community had better start to think seriously about is not so much how difficult it is to get press, but what the community is going to do to persuade media outlets to wake the hell up to the community in some meaningful way. I don't know how many of you kept up this week with the Q&A the culture editor of the Times, Sam Sifton, was having on nytimes.com, but I frankly found his answers flippant in the most egregiously condescending way, and I hope some of you noticed that the Times didn't even bother to select many theater-related questions in the first place.

Here's another reason I'm thinking about OOB and media. Reading the Voice this week, I flipped forward quickly, as always, to the theater section...excellent piece by Alexis Soloski on Morning Star (which is probably the biggest piece the Peccadillo is going to get for this production); good coverage of a play at HERE, of Doppleganger at the 3LD Art and Technology Center, of James Rasheed's Professional Skepticism at the Abingdon, and of the Potomac Theatre Project's repertory (which I wrote about in Back Stage before anyone else did), plus David Ng on The Civilians' Gone Missing, if a few weeks late. To look at what coverage there is, I guess it's not bad, but our standards and expectations have fallen, too, let's remember. It just isn't remotely proportional to the amount of work that's out there, even in July.

None of this is revelatory; I know that. I mean, if I were from Butte or something, it might be seeming as if I'm leading up to something revelatory, but anyone who knows how much media coverage of theater has shrunk certainly knows that this was, comparatively speaking, a good week for the Voice. Then I flipped to page 57 and stumbled upon J. Hoberman's excellent piece on the Woody Allen film Manhattan. This is what journalists and critics of the old school would classify as a critical "appreciation" or a "reassessment" piece, and there used to be lots of them all the time, before advertising (or the lack of it) became such a great hulking behemoth as to vanquish such pieces 99% of the time.

Yet the Voice, for reasons I cannot fathom, ran the piece. It runs 1,243 words -- and the reason for it is because there's a weeklong revival of the film (through July 19) at Film Forum. Now, I know Film Forum advertises, but it isn't as if you're going to find the theater section of the Voice devoting 1,243 words to anything -- not a new play, usually (Michael Feingold usually will mix reviews of two productions into one piece), and a quick cut and paste tells me that Alexis' piece runs 743 words.

So here's the thing: What do we do about a major alt-weekly which, like all newspapers in this worrisome journalistic time, undoubtedly measures the level of ink it can provide to its writers by the level advertising yet, at the same time, devotes an inordinate amount of column inches to a 30-year-old film playing in just one theater that you could just as easily order from NetFlix?

It seems to me that OOB has to figure out how to flex its muscles in such a way as to leverage better coverage out of such publications. That includes Time Out, by the way. I'm talking about banding together in such a way as to literally attempt to hurt publications financially if they do not change their editorial viewpoints.

I know my colleagues will read this and say I am committing professional suicide. But I don't think so. I think the problem is that OOB is too scared to demand change. Or is it?

Sphere: Related Content