AAN News

Village Voice Enhances and Expands Web Site

VillageVoice.com to include daily editorial content, nearly 12,000 entertainment and shopping listings, and an expanded real estate and classified section (FULL STORY)
01-10-2005  1:40 pm  |  Press Releases

Former Voice Writer Jack Newfield Dies of Cancernew

Newsday reports that Newfield -- who worked at the Village Voice from 1964 to 1988, first as a columnist and reporter, and later as senior editor -- died Monday night at the age of 66. After leaving the Voice, he went on to write for the New York Daily News and the New York Post, and was most recently a columnist at the New York Sun. He also authored 10 books, including biographies of Robert Kennedy and Rudy Giuliani. Wayne Barrett, Newfield's colleague at the Voice, tells Newsday: "I think [Newfield] invented a whole new form of personal investigative journalism that was rooted in a consuming ethic and a brilliant search for truth."
Newsday  |  12-21-2004  4:08 pm  |  Industry News

L.A. Weekly Employees File Grievance Through Unionnew

At least five L.A. Weekly senior editorial and art department employees -- including veteran education reporter Howard Blume -- have filed grievances with management via the International Association of Machinists, the paper's bargaining unit, reports L.A. Alternative Press. Most are alleging that they're being pushed out of their jobs without adequate union process as specified in their contracts and only because they make some of the paper's top union salaries. These charges come on the heels of the September ouster of several veteran employees at The Village Voice, which, like L.A. Weekly, is owned by Village Voice Media.
L.A. Alternative Press  |  10-06-2004  3:25 pm  |  Industry News

Alt-Weekly Writers Bag Book Deals

Freelance journalist Becky Oberg wanted to expand her reportage for NUVO, an Indianapolis alt-weekly, into a book. Carlo DeVito, publisher of Chamberlain Bros., a Penguin imprint, was looking for new projects. Despite the fact that Oberg was, in her words, "an unknown, unagented, first-time author," DeVito called her and asked if she'd turn her story about an Army private's desertion to Canada via an "underground railroad" into a book. Why was a publisher scouring alt-weeklies for book ideas? Says DeVito: "We're always looking for a good story and a new point of view, and that's what a lot of these papers express." (FULL STORY)
Joy Howard  |  09-20-2004  4:02 pm  |  Industry News

Vincent Gallo Pulls Essay from the Village Voicenew

The filmmaker pulled his three-page essay from the Village Voice at the last minute because he didn't approve of the paper's choice of art for its front cover. According to the New York Post's Page Six gossip column, editor-in-chief Don Forst wanted to run a still from the film "Brown Bunny" in which actress Chloe Sevigny performs oral sex on Gallo, the film's star and director. Gallo, however, wanted the Voice to run his photo self-portrait, claiming its full-page publication was a condition of his involvement. Voice publicity director Jessica Belluci told the Post, "When he got wind that we wanted to use another image for the cover, he got all bent out of shape and pulled the whole thing."
New York Post  |  08-17-2004  1:18 pm  |  Industry News

Californian Remembers Golden Days at Village Voicenew

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll waxes nostalgic about his stint as a replacement editor and West Coast editor for the New York City alt-weekly 30 years ago. He fondly remembers those days of lothario limeys, noisy Village cafes and fierce internecine battles. He worked back then with Richard Goldstein, the Voice's recently departed executive editor, whom he describes as "a cutting-edge rock writer, a significant figure in gay rights journalism, a funny, eager, smart, loyal, sometimes even puppyish, fondly remembered former colleague."
SFGate.com  |  08-12-2004  4:19 pm  |  Industry News

The Village Voice Reduces Editorial Staffnew

Richard Goldstein, an executive editor who joined The Voice in 1966, was laid off last Monday in an ongoing restructuring that has seen the departure of at least a half-dozen editorial staffers, reports The New York Times. (Goldstein says he was fired, not laid off.) Publisher Judy Miszner tells the Times that advertising "could be better," and that the layoffs are an "ongoing thing relative to the changing environment and changes in how our audience is looking for information." Editor-in-chief Donald Forst says the restructuring is "tied into our efforts going from a weekly product to, with the Web, daily journalism electronically, in which we're putting stuff up on a daily basis, sometimes on an hourly basis."
New York Times  |  08-09-2004  12:04 am  |  Industry News

Village Voice Art Critic Discusses His Craft and New Booknew

Jerry Saltz knows it hurts to be criticized, but, he tells ArtsJournal.com, "If all criticism is enthusiastic it sells the art world short." He remembers after he wrote his first piece for the Voice, on Kara Walker's "painful, uneven show" at Wooster Gardens in 1998, he was terrified he'd be fired. A collection of his Village Voice reviews and essays, "Seeing Out Loud," has been published by The Figures press.
ArtsJournal.com  |  07-16-2004  6:21 pm  |  Industry News

Story of Buchanan Baby Helped Bush Win White Housenew

During the 2000 presidential campaign, longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative Roger Stone pushed an unsubstantiated story that Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan had had an illegitimate child while he was a Georgetown undergraduate. The rumor had dogged the candidate in earlier races, but this time the allegation was spiced up with a rumor that Buchanan had made payments to the mother to kill the story, Wayne Barrett writes in a Village Voice article that has special reporting by Jessie Singer.
Village Voice  |  05-19-2004  3:15 pm  | 

Toronto Star Reporter Plagiarized from Village Voicenew

The copying didn't go undetected because The Village Voice Online has too many readers in Canada. A former teaching assistant called the Toronto Star to point out that the narrative structure and phrasing in Prithi Yelaja's story about U.S. Army deserter Brandon Hughey reminded him of what he'd read in the New York City alt-weekly two days earlier. Star ombudsman Don Sellar reports that nearly a third of the Star article was rooted in a Village Voice story by Alisa Solomon. The remorseful Yelaja called Solomon to apologize.
Toronto Star  |  04-15-2004  11:45 am  |  Industry News

Author Explores Drug Policy's Human Costnew

A series staff writer Jennifer Gonnerman wrote for the Village Voice in 2000 laid the groundwork for her new book, "Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett." The book, which was featured on the front cover of the New York Times Book Review March 21, describes Bartlett's life post-release. After serving 16 years for a drug offense, she tries to reconnect with the children accustomed to seeing her in a prison visiting room. "What jumps out at you from 'Life on the Outside' is the extent to which imprisonment has been normalized," reviewer Brent Staples writes.
New York Times Book Review  |  04-01-2004  12:02 pm  |  Industry News

Writer Accuses John Kerry of Covering Up Evidence of POWsnew

The Democratic contender's eagerness to normalize relations with Hanoi led him to suppress testimony and withhold intelligence information when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./M.I.A. Affairs, Sydney H. Schanberg writes in The Village Voice. Some veterans and relatives of missing soldiers believe that Vietnam held back American prisoners of war as a bargaining chip for war reparations. But the Kerry committee's final report, issued in 1993, said there was "no compelling evidence" proving anyone was still in captivity.
Village Voice  |  02-27-2004  3:13 pm  | 

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