Up and down with the Village Voice

Louis Menand has a good read in last week's New Yorker about the rise of the Village Voice, the great granddaddy of the American alt-press, and the prominent role played therein by Norman Mailer. He was writing well before the letting go last week of Nat Hentoff, a marquee columnist with the Voice for decades, although such a move underscores the sentiment of this brilliant kicker.

“Until its own success made it irresistible to buyers who imagined that they could do better with a business plan than its founders had done from desperation and instinct, it had the courage to live by its wits.”

I read the Voice quite a bit back when Rupert Murdoch (!) owned it in the distant early 80s. The curious hybrid made for some terrific genre-pushing journalism, along with the kind of smart arts and entertainment coverage that remains a staple of alt-weeklies.

More recently, the paper has been marked by tumult and a lot of staff turnover since being acquired a few years back by New Times.