Re: Happy b’day, Village Voice, RIP
This is really sad. I started reading the Voice in 1967 or 1968, and wrote for it pretty regularly from 1987 to 1992. It started going slowly downhill during the recession of the early 1990s, when then-owner Leonard Stern (the Hartz Mountain magnate whose son, Eddie, was caught up in the mutual fund timing scandal http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/funds/2003-09-05-trading-scheme_x.htm), obsesed with declining profitability at the paper, cut back the news hole. Successive owners and editors have only made things worse, to the point where it’s hardly worth picking up a free copy (except when they name my radio show in the Best of NYC 2005 issue). It was a great paper throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And now it’s guaranteed to suck even worse than it has.
Doug