
Last Rites for the Village Voice, a Bohemian Who Stayed on Too Long - artur_makly
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/end-village-voice.html
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8bitsrule
Interesting that some many people see the VV as 'so radical'.

A lot of people didn't see it that way at all. E.g. this article on the East
Village Other [https://hubpages.com/politics/The-East-Village-Other-
Overvie...](https://hubpages.com/politics/The-East-Village-Other-Overview-of-
an-60s-Underground-Newspaper) says "reaching a peak circulation of 65,000 in
1969. It became popular because it was a true alternative to the establishment
Village Voice, Herald Tribune, and New York Times."

The author's assertion that "To read The Voice was to read ... of America’s
underground cultural and political landscape in the second half of the last
century and into this one" is pretty funny. It even leaves John Wilcock out of
the list of those who 'started' The Voice, and who left it in 1965 to edit the
EVO. EVO and Krassner's _Realist_ were a helluva lot more 'underground'.

~~~
notyourday
Reddit was radical. Delicious was radical. Metafilter was radical. Village
Voice was radical only in the view of those who were shocked that the
"Prettiest Woman In New York is a Porn Star" ( by the time VV wrote about her
Stoya was moving to the mainstream acting and directing - VV was six years
late)

Village Voice niche got decimated not by the internet but by a smartphone.
Picking up VV ( or City Paper or Philadelphia Weekly or SF Weekly ) was a
ritual to find out what to do around town that week or to have something to
read while sitting in a diner or waiting for someone in a park.

None of the publications ever had enough good content ( which is why they were
weeklies ) as a percentage of the total content but they had a captive
audience. That captive audience disappeared with the arrival of iPhone and
Android phones. The weekly needed to compete with Hacker News, Craigslist,
Porntube, New York Times, Reddit, etc and none of them could.

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jackfoxy
> _The internet flattened “alternative culture” — first Napster, and now
> Spotify, allowed obscure music to bypass the critics; Netflix and Amazon
> made experimental film accessible without your needing to read about it in a
> Hoberman review. The Voice was once a lodestar to freaks and geeks
> everywhere. Now the lodestar is both nowhere and everywhere._

The internet eats everything.

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ilamont
The Boston Phoenix and Time Out London along with a bunch of scruffy local
'zines were my windows into music, movies, and culture when I was in my late
teens and early 20s. I picked up the Village Voice when I was in NYC or saw it
for sale elsewhere - in addition to the arts and culture coverage and
listings, they went deep on investigations and exposes that was really
refreshing.

Later I was the editor for a daily newspaper's weekend supplement, which
mimicked the alt-weekly style and voice. Like the author of TFA, I regarded it
as one of the best jobs I ever had although the pay was basically poverty
level wages.

While I lament the loss of the Phoenix, the Voice, and many others, others
seem to be doing well (I was happy to see Time Out Tokyo when I visited over
the summer). It's also encouraging to see that windows to music, arts,
culture, are thriving online, many of them controlled not by third-party
gatekeepers, but by the creative people themselves.

~~~
xamuel
Which online "windows to music, arts, culture" would you recommend?

~~~
ilamont
Creative Independent:
[https://thecreativeindependent.com/](https://thecreativeindependent.com/)

Sterogum: [https://www.stereogum.com](https://www.stereogum.com)

Lots of little sites that come and go (not unlike the zines of yesteryear)
such as GigGuide Taiwan:
[http://dead.gigguide.tw/articles.php](http://dead.gigguide.tw/articles.php)

And I enjoy following some of the creative people who have good social media
accounts that they run themselves. Gives fans an unmoderated window into what
they are seeing/thinking/doing, something that was very difficult to
experience 30 years ago.

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jonahb
> before the commercialization of New York

That's funny. Before the commercialization of New York, it was a Lenape
settlement.

~~~
sewercake
probably referring to the large amounts of capital put into real-estate
etcetera starting in the 80's

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walrus01
I am somewhat surprised that The Stranger (Seattle) and The Georgia Straight
(Vancouver), the same type of papers, remain financially viable and not in
receivership.

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artur_makly
i will sincerely miss Dan Savage's column.. sniff.

