This move actually seems kind of smart. I think the publishers may have realized how many people just remove the listings section and toss the rest.

The New York Review Of Books? Harper's? The Atlantic? The Believer? or you mean music. um, nobody?

But speaking of surfboards, if we were all required to write everything in limerick form, I might develop new and hitherto unknown talents, but overall you wouldn't be getting the best out of me.

There once was an album named Caesars
That nary had mention of skeezers
What should I say next?
I can't even flext
You see! this sucks! jeepers! or jeezers.

So, it has to be the right form.

So? I think The Village Voice looks fat in those jeans.

* and yeah, sotc, but that's more 'live reviews + news'.

i bitched about this elsewhere, but i can't honestly, in 2003, in america's current uh cultural climate, think that word counts dropping anywhere, anymore, are a good thing.

also, it was a really nice feeling the two times i basically had the frontpage of the voice section to myself. < /selfish>

kogan's contortions review: priceless.

and so on.

(i wrote an equally long screed elsewhere, but it never showed up)

On another note, I'm sad to see that paycuts for the Giddins and the Xgaus is even on the table. Shows, to me anyway, how impossible this goddamn Dubya economy is right now ... art, talent and the advancement of culture don't mean shit when only a few people get all the perks and there's no incentive for the powers-that-be to give a shit about the contributions of their workers. Keep fighting the good fight, VV folks. Hi Chuck and Chris P.!

Frank, People have to buy Time Out NY right, while the Voice is free and available online? Will these changes bring in more Time Out NY readers or advertisers???

To bring Simon Reynolds into this(Oh No! not again!) I see he's been raving on his blog about all the blogs he reads, and how he doesn't have time to read music features in newspapers and magazines (even if he could find music magazines he'd like)...

Jaw
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.
.
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drops.

The point is: Different subjects need different treatment; different writers work better using different forms; different people have different skills. If an entire profession shifts to a single format and a single writing style, then most subjects won't get treated, or they'll get treated badly; most writers won't get used, or they'll get used badly.

I think most albums only deserve about 250 (if that, if anything I want to see more GOOD pithy three sentence reviews - I like jokes - than GOOD epic reviews - you're either gonna sell me on this album in 1000 words or you're not gonna sell me on it) words anyway, and at least this year I'm a big fan of brevity. So while it's sad that a good mag is creating more rules about what it's capable of, I can't really get too hung up about this. If you're not satisfied with saying only A THOUSAND WORDS about an album, write a book about them on the web! That's first place anybody looking for a million words about your fave cult artist is gonna go.

If you don't know what I'm yammering about --

http://www.arthurmag.com

Jay Babcock, Editor

As I recall, Einstein's Theory of Relativity was more than 300 words. So was Austen's Pride and Prejudice. If writers are essentially forbidden to publish their ideas, then their ideas will never get any good, no one will have the opportunity to see or respond to anyone else's ideas, or to elaborate on them, the readers will never get confronted with new ideas, thought will wither.

Right, Anthony: Pasteur didn't have the right to do immunology, either; Wittgenstein didn't have the right to teach philosophy. But if they'd been prevented from doing so, the world would have lost something. And if people like me don't get paid to do what we do best, then it's not going to get done, blogs or no blogs, ILX or no ILX.

Frank, TS: Visions of Johanna vs Tarantula vs "if a writer isn't worth reading at 1,500 words, he's probably not worth reading at 300."

The only critics who comes to mind whose work I really, really enjoy in lengthy form are Pauline Kael and Robert Christgau. But Xgau's usually good with whatever space you give him (and when he's off, he can be bad with whatever space you give him). And Kael was, wowsers, PROFITABLE enough for her mag (she DREW young people to the New Yorker) that they gave her a lot of freedom. And xgau's got a webpage and has shown a willingness to embellish in hindsight (see "Grown Up All Wrong"), so he can certainly slap those extra paragraphs on elsewhere.

I love this assumption that shorter equals dumber. And since I thought Kogan's recent E6 reviews was kinda wack after the first two paragraphs and since I'm not sold on this idea that Meltzer needs to run free (I'm not a fan of people who self-nullify in the face of constraint, unless they do it entertainingly like Marlon Brando does. Meltzer doesn't), I simply do not share it.

I think this only really hurts the music section. For pretty much every other kind of criticism or feature writing, there are other venues where you can go long.

Also, I wouldn't really call the Voice one of the few publications that thinks gaining your interest means ruffling your feathers. I'm glad it's around to do what it does, but it's preaching to the choir.

Sheffield's best stuff was in the fanzines. The best that I saw of Jane Dark's was in the fanzines (though there's probably lots elsewhere that I haven't seen). I think even Chuck was at his best in the fanzines. Sinker's better online than he was in The Wire. I've not even seen Dave Q or Ally Kearney in the commercial prints. That tells you something right there.

It's funny to talk about length because lately I've been thinking about picking up Benjamin's "Arcades Project" (trying hard to be a pretentious aesthete here, ppl!), so last night I searched ILX for references to it (because I trust the good people around here a heckuva lot more than the Amazon reviews or whatever) and uncovered this great thread.

uh, totally unrelated to the current discussion. But I wanted to link to that good thread. For anyone who's been bored with ILM lately or whatever.

the payment structure wd be complex, but i am willing to work for the voice at this length

(eg i get to insert a hilarious demolishing/rewiring one-liner — one-worder sometimes — when and where i choose in anyone else's work)

also it would help if some of the people who said they were gonna fucking contribute WOULD

(only contributor thus far: kogan.)

btw, what zines did Sheffield write for? I'm a big fan of his SPIN Alternative Guide entries, and would love to find some allegedly better material. I know about Radio On, but are their others?

it's that invisible contribution which is being wiped out of publishing, in books and magazines and whatever: writing is better for being collective, like and (in fact) everything else

(JtN had noted that, whatever else you think of it, the new paul morley book is the worst PROOFED book he'd seen recently)

i am mean, yes, they had somewhat — primarily via args and discussions w.frank by letter and email — but there was still an awful lot of sludge and lameness: i totally needed the massed "editor-readers" of ilm (you need ppl who know things you don't, but ALSO ppl who don't know things you do, both asking questions at the same time)

(hence some of the problem of finishing my book is now that don't i have to start it all over again? hmmmm?) (and i know fr fkn sure that it will not be line-edited by my publishers to the level i wd like/need)

Mark s, I said you POST in code. I wasn't referring to your professional writing (which I merely tend to disagree with).

2. Blurbs are great, but in most cases they only allow for the expression of an idea, not the development or contextualization of it. What's being lost isn't a few column inches, but the ability to express a whole way of thinking and arguing--to back up your point rather than just flashily display it. (Whoever made the distinction between "reviews" and "criticism" is OTM.) Besides, no one can seriously suggest there's a shortage of blurbs in the world today.

3. No form of work is a "privilege" granted by management. Yes, I consider myself lucky that I make a living writing about music. But no publication is doing any of us a favor by publishing us--they're simply serving their readership, which is what they have an obligation to do, fuck the bottom line. And the "but teachers are useful members of society" dodge shows what sort of faulty logic skills tend to develop when no one forces you to prove your point at length.

You mean like where I support what I say in the first two paragraphs (about glam these days defining itself vocally) by actually analyzing how I thought Dick Valentine defined himself vocally, thereby demonstrating what I meant in the first two paragraphs? How would the review have been better if I'd cut it off after two paragraphs? Or, if the rest is wack, how would MAKING IT SHORTER make it less wack?

What you're saying is that people shouldn't explain their ideas, since explanations bore you. Or they should only explain ideas if you agree with their ideas.

Whereas I get bored when people don't explain their ideas (makes me suspect that they don't have them).

"Rambling" = you can't be bothered to follow the writer's train of thought (but perhaps the writer didn't make the connections well himself - PERHAPS BECAUSE HE WAS DENIED THE SPACE TO) (though neither happened in my E6 thing: I wasn't rambling, I had the space I needed [except not the space to connect to Cobra Verde, whom I wanted to include in the review], and the piece maybe would have squeezed in under the new format).

I think almost all of the articles in indie weeklies are too short. Even the Chicago Reader's main arts reviews, which are usually between one or two pages (at most, three), seem skimpy to me. I much prefer the length of cover stories from The Atlantic (maybe 8-10 pages) or even better, essays in academic journals (often 20-30 pages). I sometimes wonder what critics who seem turgid in 15 column inches would do with 100--sometimes I actually think they'd improve.

In answer to both questions, Blount, a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.

Generally, writers are opaque if (1) they don't explain themselves (perhaps because they don't have room), (2) they don't know how to explain themselves (which is me and every other critic when we try to describe music), or (3) they don't have anything to say.

L to R: Frank, Bob, Michelangelo, Chuck, Sterling, Dennis, Simon

Hey Strongo! do you want a really long piece on my favorite Swedish rock band Katatonia? Not that I've written one, but I would.
Unless your zine is gonna have a garage rap theme or something.
Or you hate when i go long! Hah!
But seriously, sometimes i thank my lucky stars that i can write brilliantly in long AND short form. I'm like a blacksmith or something.

Again, I doubt the Voice will turn away a long-form piece of music criticism if it's that damn good. These rules are made to be broken.

OK, some possible reasons why there's a lot of bad writing about music.

1. A lot of music writers just don't read enough, or if they do they read other music writers, who also don't read enough, or if they do they read other music writers...
2. A lot of music writers are fans first, stylists second, so writing is a process of translation, rather than communication.
3. The grind of working at a weekly, filling a hole every week, means a certain percentage is gonna fizzle, no matter what length. A certain number of dead bugs are just gonna wind up in your Rice Crispies, you know.
4. Writing about music is really goddam hard, the pay is shitty, and anyone with sense goes into another line of work.

Let me add that the failure rate of music writing probably isn't any higher than any other form of published writing is--at least rock criticism usually tries something and fails, rather than filling in the blanks like most journalism. The quest for "competence" undermines more pieces of writing than nutso ambition ever has.

Yojimbo is one of the most overrated movies ever. Andrew Sarris: "Les Girls is Cukor's Rashomon, but where Kurosawa argues that all people are liars, Cukor suggests that all people tell the truth in their fashion."

The caption is wrong in the Seven Samurai pic; I'm the one at the far right.

In an effort to provide more points of entry for our younger readers, we’re making a few small changes to this year’s poll.

First, we’re asking that you vote for just three records. Our research showed that the old method of assigning points to ten albums disturbed many participants in our focus groups. (Sample comment: "Why is this all like math and stuff?”)

We’re also asking that you keep your comments under ten words apiece (5-7 words is the ideal length). This goal can be easily achieved by replacing the verb to-be with punctuation--for example, “Beyonce: Hott!!” or “Radiohead? Genius!”

Thanks for helping Village Voice Media continue to maintain the most profitable chain of alternative newsweeklies in America.

'Eyebrow Metal at the Disco Round'?

Frank Kogan = definitely out of touch (don't even remember the name of the "Hampster Dance" sequel, even though it was much better).

Ne'er a truer word spoke on the subject.

The other part that bugs me is that rock and pop are so referential by nature. I try as much as I can to avoid to avoid the easy comparisons -- Skynyrd by way of Donny Osmond by way Kool Moe Dee, that kind of shit. But sometimes you can't help yourself -- there's streaks of the new Super Furry Animals record that sound like the Moody Blues, the Association, etc. Can't avoid it, so why not use that reference? See, I think a lot of the longform "blah blah blah" comes from the fact writers don't want to hpold themselves to a template or a tight axis and are either afraid or unwilling to think hard enough to capture something succinctly or to find a theme they can defend in a small amount of space.

Anyway, that's my 2.5 cents ...

sean

to compete w.more recent media, writing has to be stronger and more vivid and adaptable and creative and just BETTER, and length is basically irrelevant to this, as a formula => the time and concentration required by present-day computer games — or more to the point, required by their consumers, who moved the form on from its earlier, less immersive models — is considerable) (is it comparable? i have no idea how to make the calculation: i mean, i read 6-8 hours a day, at work and away from work, and also regularly wreck tomorrow by "having" to finish a book tonight, eg reading till 4 in the morning and being no use next day, so reading for me is an addiction and a minor lifestyle "problem")

(PLUS: short writing as a portal to longer writing is a model the voice has worked on perfectly effectively for decades, along with every other magazine: it goes witty-grabby two-word headline, slightly longer strap, arresting photo, grabby first para and yr off...)

thanks, Tom! I knew someone around here would know something about it.

you could survey people on how they read the voice, but those calculations are subject to a high margin of error

and how do people read? do they just pick up the voice to look at the listings? do they pick up the voice to just read kogan or hoberman? do they pick up the voice and read the whole thing every week (like i do?) or do they use it for other things entirely? for instance, i picked up 5 copies of the voice the week before last, to have something to put under the flowerpots in my apartment so that when i water 'em they don't leak on the floor, but that doesn't mean i read the voice five times, savoring its deathless prose each time (maybe i did, but i don't remember)

i mean that's why the web rules, because you can measure unique hits w.r.t. time for any page on yr website -- but even w. that, there's no way of checking that someone actually *read* the article, just that an arrangement of pixels that was that article hit their screen for a moment

anyway, statistics are fuXoRed

My point was that it is far less dominant in its market (which at the end of the day is the local entertainment information market, not the serious intellectual journal market) than the NY Times is, and faces far more competition.

(This break down of that 257,469 number seems to indicate that circulation outside New York (ie, paid circulation) basically amounts to a rounding error, btw.)

The question is not how big that circulation number is, but whether it's going up or down.

I think the amount of time people have in the day to read has more to do with changes like this than how smart they are or whether they play video games.

But you never know. Michael Wolff wrote a good column about this issue recently, taking off from the Guardian's plans to do a US version (he charmingly overrates the Guardian and neglects to point out that the "multiple entry-point" strategy is also a Brit invention, but anyway):

"While the American evolutionary step has been to forsake hard news for soft—for instance, the Times’s and the Journal’s ever-expanding leisure, consumer, and service sections—the Guardian in “G2” has morphed headline news into a daily bath of stylish opinion, context, and narrative. It’s high-concept news. It’s story-behind-the-story news—which is, of course, the real story. It is not unlike the kind of magazine journalism that flourished in the U.S. a generation ago—before cableization and tabloidization and consolidation.

This is the marketing point: Unlike American packaging genius, which is about packaging down (resulting in the deterioration of taste as well as attention spans), Rusbridger packages up.

While I was standing in Rusbridger’s office and leafing through the prototype, thinking that this was novel and exotic—quixotic, even—and quite a profound misunderstanding of the American market, it suddenly occurred to me that I was overlooking the obvious. The Brit niche.

Against the background of the rise of Fox, the deification of tabloid queen Bonnie Fuller, and of the general decline of quality U.S. publishing, there’s been something of an exceptional, and profitable, highbrow British invasion. Arguably the two most successful print publications to be introduced during the past decade in the U.S. market are The Economist and the Financial Times. (The third is Maxim, also English in lineage, and a different packaging story.)

Both The Economist and the FT succeeded by pursuing the opposite strategy of almost every other U.S. publication: offering too much, rather than too little, information—and charging plenty for it.

Rather than a lot of readers at a small price, the idea is fewer readers at a greater price (whereas most U.S. magazines discount their subscription price as much as 80 percent). Rusbridger figures that the American Guardian, charging a hefty subscription price, will be in safe financial territory at a 100,000-level circulation. (Advertising, in this approach, is welcome but not the main driver.) In other words, against the trend of all other commercial media (wherein the price the consumer needs to pay or is willing to pay gets progressively lower), the job here is to make the magazine—the writing, the attitudes, the opinions, the content—worth more by being better, smarter, more exclusive.

Being foreign helps. It’s not a mass-produced American product. It’s imported. Authentic. Hand-tooled. Tasteful. Indeed, in some fine irony in this jingoistic age, its non-American-ness (and, hence, its ability to be anti-American) makes it worth more.

And being written helps. The very thing that every American publisher eschews—long articles by actual writers—starts to look like something valuable. (Every week, The Economist goes on—and on—at quite an amazing and interminable length.)

The smarty thing—which runs against the Fox-led Zeitgeist—might, counterintuitively, work here too. The Wal-Marting of the publishing business (as well as every other business) invites the inverse strategy: You’re too dumb, too low-class, too fat for our magazine. Sorry, it’s not for you. That’s a marketing approach that could potentially be worth real dough."

as for the 'smarty thing' -- doesn't the new yorker lose money every year (and conde nast keeps it afloat as a 'prestige publication' or something, right?)

Not measurable. Newspapers, or at least the one I worked at in
Allentown, PA, tried to get a handle on this with reader surveys
and polls. The object was to find what sections were most favored,
the most wretched, what the objections were...

The results were always the same, for the entire duration of my
relationship with the publication: Sports and funny pages, sports
and funny pages, sports and funny pages. The dating ads page was
popular, too. Eventually the latter fell into ill-repute, however, because it was discovered that prostitute services were using it.

No matter what changes were made, what editors sacked and hired,
what design makeovers were instituted, graphics scheme changed,
story length changed -- the results were always the same.

Sports and funny pages.

This led people with any sense to realize the surveys were useless.

If they were correct, the only reason to have a newspaper in
southeastern Pennsylvania was to furnish readers with sports
and comics sections. Entertainment section? Forget it! Hard
national news? B-o-o-r-i-n-g! Local news? Sometimes I want to
know if my neighbor was arrested for securing a hooker.

For some reason, the majority of people who answered reader
surveys, or where contacted for them, or felt compelled to tell
the newspaper something, were always those -- only men, fairly
obviously -- who liked sports and comics above all else.

So entire swaths of readership weren't being sampled at all.
Women were the most glaring omission. Perhaps they, as well as
others, were too smart or too busy or both to reply to idiotic surveys.

Our Assistant Managing Editor used to complain about content in
a nonsensical manner. People in modern America were too busy
to enjoy the Food section, he said. The recipes were too long. Every recipe should be for something that could be made in fifteen minutes
or less. Thanksgiving Day turkey recipes? Who has the time?!? Instead, how about -- how to make potato chips with the microwave?

The rationale for the clampdown is that 18-34 won't read long pieces and won't turn the page and is intolerant of anything but soundbites.

This was the same lash used at The Morning Call twelve years ago.
It's a broken record in journalism. The young are impatient --
boy, that's news -- and won't read long. And then twelve years
go by and the young aren't young anymore, they're middle-aged.

And everyone knows the middle-aged and worse, the old, don't read,
don't go out, don't buy things, don't have money, are idiots
and unattractive to advertisers. So they're all lost to us.

Or is that what the record industry thinks? Now I'm confused.

I got people asking if this uncompromising and anti-commercial approach was losing me many readers. Some peopledid abandon it in disgust, at the loss of uncritical adulation for superheroes. But in fact the circulation better than tripled, we improved the production standards and started paying contributors for the first time.

Now this was obviously still very small-time stuff compared to VV, and a different medium, but it has left me suspicious of the notion that giving people something more demanding and intelligent that comes in bigger chunks necessarily entails any loss of sales.

Weirdly it's been historically difficult to flog ads on sports pages, apparently.

First entry in Mark Sinker's Radio Free Narnia. Quote unattributed, leading me to believe it's from Sinker himself.

I went to the Denver Public Library to see the new Voice in its print version, and I note that when a magazine devotes 3½ of its 30 music pages to reviews, and the rest to ads and listings, I don't necessarily believe it's on the brink of financial ruin.

I think I disagree though, at least for popcrit which is granted way difft. than what he's engaged in. I mean crit should be striking and provoke a response and say something interesting and at right angles to conventional wisdom -- recast, rethink, provoke examination on the part of the reader. I mean the reader's gonna go, listen, and they'll either get it or think something different, and if its a response to the lines of thought laid out in the review, then a disagreement is just as good if not better.

Music isn't supposed to be a frikin' ongoing enterprise/project -- its all instants of shifting meaning. I mean taking other ppls arguments into account and heading them off just seems a waste of time, and if the argt. is stated like real real RIGHT then you don't need to answer them but really just move so as to neutralize them which takes less words not more.

I.e. say a few striking true things, crack some jokes, get the hell out and let ppl. fill it in for themselves.

This is where you lose me. Why can't music be an ongoing enterprise/project, especially when seen through the eyes of human beings like ourselves (who have a tendency to see life and the important things in it as more than just a series of instants)? Isn't the life's work of someone like, say, Charles Mingus or Bob Dylan or Richard Melzer aren't worth considering as a project or an enterprise? What good does observing those 'striking true things' do if they're forgotten in the next instant?

Also which is not to dismiss long articles in principle, but just to express i can't deal with long articles *of that type*.

Oh and Dave I guess I mean there are many projects up for grabs and which we pick any instant is something new in the remaking of history too. The whole idea of an ongoing critical dialogue often strikes me as some sort of ivory-tower conception where THE HISTORY gets laid down by discussion and consensus. I'm saying keep history up in the air coz you can never trust where it will settle.

Especially the autobiographical stuff. All wars are fought over slogans of a sentence or less. Revolutions made with generally 3-5 words. Tou can distill in the moment but only if yr. not so egotistical as to "write for the ages".

i mean my ballot doesn't PROVE anything to anyone and the poll results don't CONVINCE anyone of anything. The poll doesn't create consensus, even if it shows it up where it exits. It records critical ferment.

I mean if someone treats it like consensus then it becomes that for them tho. I mean i guess i'm just flabbergasted that some people actually see their writing as a vehicle to CONVINCE PEOPLE. Like they're writing an elaborate formal proof for quality. I mean i wouldn't mind convincing someone i guess, but its like the LAST thing i think about when i write.

(my last was an x-post. final note before i go to sleep: yeah i love constructing and knocking down canons and etc. to some degree [tho probably far less than most ilmers and you who i know are a list-master] but gann's attitude isn't about this or that fun one but y'know THE ONE as far as i can tell.)

(& actually yeah i've never expected to be "convinced" by a critical piece in my life and it just honestly never occured to me that people would write them for that purpose.)

i've never had out a real discussion with him on why we have different takes on this.

Honestly, I'm not really sure where Matos says otherwise.

Also: convincing != forcing people down the canonical/'objective' road.

xpost

Which, y'know, maybe it should and maybe it shouldn't. But that depends what they want to do with it. Which is again, I figure, not my business.

So Matos if nothing proves anything than is it GOOD to try or not or simply how DOES trying (and Gann obv. does, as maybe do you and probably who knows who else, bangs maybe [but not meltzer]) change the nature of the article?

Also I realized today that I don't like "anticipated" arguments coz they usually anticipate arguing with someone BESIDES me.

I'm not sure why arguing a point has to be seen as some horrible, coercive, ego-filled bugaboo.

Also I realized today that I don't like "anticipated" arguments coz they usually anticipate arguing with someone BESIDES me.

I don't know what this means.

I think the problem in this thread is that I'm talking about two pieces by one author (one an example of how he'd like to write more, the other an explanation of why) and everyone else is talking in complete goddamn generalities.

motherfucking DUH.

No, you criticized long Gann-style articles because they say smart true things, then waste time trying to address any possible objection. Then people took you to task because of offshoots like this:

The whole idea of an ongoing critical dialogue often strikes me as some sort of ivory-tower conception where THE HISTORY gets laid down by discussion and consensus

...which doesn't necessarily follow from your original position, at all. I read articles like the Gann ones you cite not as attempts to head disagreement off at the pass, but as ways of considering multiple sides of a position. 'I like Charlemagne Palestine but I see some validity in the criticisms, and would like to address where they fit in my central argument'.

And how does an ongoing critical dialogue support laying down of THE HISTORY? It's when people *stop* disagreeing with each other that you get stifling consensus, not when they encourage discussion.

Aphorisms can survive a firm pruning hand because they're 'random access' rather than sequential, don't seek to 'make an argument air-tight' (in the words of Kyle Gann), and rely for their power on readers saying 'Aha! Yes!' and supplying their own examples.

So expansiveness and depth isn't dead, it's just hiding in places you little expect it. Vice! A bunch of short, apparently jokey things adding up one long, rather serious thing. Or a thread about brevity that runs to over 18,000 words.

can the '80s not be so back? please?

THEY KILLED JOCKBEAT!!!

WTF?!!!

All the other stuff hapeening at the Voice is also sad, even tho it has very little connection with my life now - I still feel attached to the paper - sadly, no longer the place I fell in love with.

Much much much smaller tabloid format on the way.

"kevin" still seems like a total douchebag!

just wading thru rss from over new years -- hentoff is out? wow

!!

Wow. Trica Romano wrote the following:

http://www.popandpolitics.com/2008/12/30/village-voice-fires-three-in-editorial-including-nat-hentoff/

This just in: Adding to the media meltdown, my former alma mater, the Village Voice, just laid off three more in editorial. [Full disclosure, I was laid off myself for "matters of taste" in 2007]. Among those laid off is Nat Hentoff, who’s been at the paper since 1958, writing about jazz, and later, civil liberties in his weekly long-running column. Fashion writer Lynn Yaeger, who has worked with the paper over 15 30 years, starting in classifieds, before moving into editorial, was laid off, along with staff writer Chloe Hilliard, who was hired under the current editor, Tony Ortega in 2007. We know, we keep saying this, but we continue to be amazed that there is anyone left to lay off.

Tricia

Hentoff? Jesus shit.

With Frank Kogan, more is more, and truncating me is never a good idea.
Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Wednesday, 6 August 2003

so this is basically a porn site now?

i pretty much fritter away 10 minutes of every day clicking on a NSFW photo gallery on the Voice site, i'm not gonna lie

i have no idea where these parties happen or who gets invited to them

not a huge fan of the new page layout

i havent been by the site in a while but it looks like theyve got like 2-3 good writers left and a whole lot of fifty-photo slideshows of parties where chicks flash the camera?

so i guess its kind of like vice magazine now?

http://www.80stees.com/images/products/Anchorman_Camp_Kid_Sports-T-link.jpg

hey, village voice, you're right.. i am stupid !

The Village Voice thinks you like tits, is probably right

So, I guess this is official now. (Fwiw, I've secretly known about Rob leaving for a couple weeks, but didn't know Maura was coming in until three minutes ago.)

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/03/please_welcome_10.php

you got scooped on another voice thread 47 minutes ago chuck!

okay not scooped.

anyhoo, congrats maura!

if congrats are in order. they are, right? probably!

ok this article being published on a VV site, given what they've done to freelancers is pretty. fucking. rich.

http://www.citypages.com/music/can-professional-concert-photography-survive-7446275

(or whatever they call the VV/new times whatever clusterfuck now)

Yep. As for one little aspect of the article, the below is kinda the same issue in my town. Punk and indie rock shows get documented on local media, but go-go, r'n'b, jazz, and myriad international styles exist only in instagram land among friends.

There are so many shows going on in this town where nobody is shooting.

city pages got sold in may
http://www.startribune.com/star-tribune-buys-city-pages/302763201/

Oh yeah well I hope they've stopped stealing local band photos of ppl flickr accounts and running then w/o paying or giving credit

Hilary Hughes who was their 2015 music editor is no longer listed on the masthead. Now they just list a "culture editor"

i remember her announcing on twitter that she was leaving VV maybe...a month ago? i didn't see anything about looking for or announcing a new music ed, wouldn't be surprised if that position was being eliminated.

ah, fuck
i liked Hilary.

x-post - yep now I see it. She tweeted Feb. 17th that it was her last day at the Voice.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2016/05/8599589/village-voice-hires-new-publisher-ahead-extensive-relaunch

well, fuck.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/nyregion/village-voice-to-end-print-publication.html

https://jacobin.com/2024/05/village-voice-new-york-book-review

Tricia Romano’s book I think has been discussed on other threads l think also. I got it but haven’t dug in to it yet.

That review is by Simon Reynolds' kid, I believe.

Alex Press? Definitely not related to Simon Reynolds.

Classmate of Mac Miller, though.

Alex Press? Definitely not related to Simon Reynolds.

Yeah, I looked up Reynolds' kid (who is a writer) after posting that.

I'm so glad that Jacobin review led with the late Arthur Bell. He quickly became my favorite Village Voice writer when I subscribed to the paper from afar during the late Seventies. And there were so many great writers in the paper then, I'd argue that was its peak period though whenever you discovered the Voice is going to be its peak period. Anyway Arthur Bell: he was a dogged reporter with a marvelous prose style, the epitome of Voice writing in those days: personal, political, knowing, smart, funny and sharp to the point of being a little bitchy at times. Bell wrote long features, occasional movie and even music reviews plus a gossip column Bell Tells - he set the template for Michael Musto. Arthur Bell's main subjects were gay politics and old-school show-biz, he'd interview cabaret singers and aging movie stars in his column. Frankly, this stuff read like dispatches from the Planet Mars to me, a straight college kid in the midwest, but the breadth and depth of his writing style - his voice if you will - were a total inspiration. His book Kings Don't Mean A Thing, expanded from his Voice investigation of the murder of a closeted gay heir to a newspaper fortune, is a classic of New Journalism reportage and long out of print. Haven't looked on The Village Voice website in awhile but a couple years ago there were several Arthur Bell archival stories: the genesis of Dog Day Afternoon story mentioned in that review and a wickedly hilarious you-are-there report on audience reactions to The Warriors in various movies theaters around the city.

oddly enough the john wojtowicz that kogan mentions at the start of this thread -- who is also a friend of mine -- is *not* the john wojtowicz who undertook the heist that inspired dog day afternoon and formed the core of the late arthur bell's village voice story which kicks off the review in jacobin of tricia romano's book by alex press (who is not related to simon reynolds)

actually i must ask frank's and my john w abt this

this is simon's writer kid:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/16/arts/music/roblox-video-game-music.html

simon's first piece for the times. on Front 242!

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/24/arts/recordings-view-disturbing-sounds-to-unruffle-the-new-age.html