VV

The Village Voice is dead.  On Friday it announced it had ceased all editorial operations.

The Voice was founded in 1955, and in the years before the internet, was one of the liveliest periodicals on the left. Though it came out of Greenwich Village, it spoke to a national, even international audience.

It had top journalists like Wayne Barrett and Jack Newfield.  The paper itself was a crusading voice for causes such as gay rights, and taking down the worst slumlords in New York.

I admit I read it mainly for the columns (and the Jules Feiffer cartoons).  I was a big fan of Nat Hentoff, maybe the greatest fighter for free speech of his day (and a decent music writer as well).

They had a great music section, run for years by Robert Christgau, "Dean of American Rock Critics," famous for his "Consumer Guide" columns and his "Pazz & Jop" poll, where a bunch of critics chose their favorites for the year.  There were plenty of other contributors who knew how to write about music, such as Lester Bangs, Chuck Eddy and Ellen Willis (and my friend R. J. Smith).

They also may have had the best cinema section around, headed by Andrew Sarris, as significant a film critic as America has ever had.  They also had Molly Haskell, Sarris's wife and a great critic in her own right, and a number of others, such as J. Hoberman.

In the modern, computer age, it was hard to keep an alternative paper--or any paper--going.  The Voice was bought and sold more than once in the past 15 years, and numerous regulars were fired or quit along the way.  It was already a shell of its former self.  But it's sad to see it go.