Village Voice writers' pay cut while music editor is on vacation

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One would assume that, if you happen to write for him, he'll contact you about this when he returns:

http://poynter.org/forum/?id=32365

― Romanesko Lurker, Monday, 15 August 2005 01:59 (nineteen years ago)

yikes..does that mean my brother has to start buying powdered milk for baby?

― dan bunnybrain (dan bunnybrain), Monday, 15 August 2005 02:11 (nineteen years ago)

Wait, so how much does the Voice pay for a typical (what, 800 word) music feature or review or whatever then?

― chowder, Monday, 15 August 2005 03:04 (nineteen years ago)

!
:-(
music writing always seemed to be a hell of an unstable way to make a living anyway, but this just sucks. much moreso for all those who depend on writing as primary income.

i suppose they can replace most of the feature writers with snarky blogs.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 15 August 2005 03:16 (nineteen years ago)

JIFF JAFF: HELLO STERLING CLOVER

STERLING CLOVER: HELLO

JIFF JAFF: DO YOU HATE SNARKY BLOGS

STERLING CLOVER: NO I LOVE STAR TREK

JIFF JAFF: WHAT ABOUT STARFISH

STERLING CLOVER: I LOVE ALL CHILDREN OF THE SEA, EXCLUDING JELLYFISH WHO WILL STING YOU

JIFF JAFF: DO YOU THINK THE WRITERS DESERVE MORE PAY

STERLING CLOVER: I ONLY WRITE FOR ILX DOT COM

JIFF JAFF: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF VILLAGE VOICE

STERLING CLOVER: I WOULD RATHER BUILD A VILLAGE UNDER THE SEA WITH ALL CREATURES EXCLUDING JELLYFISH.

JIFF JAFF: HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS INTERVIEW SO FAR?

STERLING CLOVER: I ENJOY THIS INTERNET ESPECIALLY ILX DOT COM

JIFF JAFF: DO YOU THINK WRITERS SHOULD LIVE UNDER THE SEA AS WELL?

STERLING CLOVER: I DO

― 3, Monday, 15 August 2005 04:00 (nineteen years ago)

= kill yourself, man

― 3, Monday, 15 August 2005 04:01 (nineteen years ago)

wtf?

― David A. (Davant), Monday, 15 August 2005 04:12 (nineteen years ago)

= 3 is a snarky blogger

― 2, Monday, 15 August 2005 04:13 (nineteen years ago)

Ah. Well, you don't have to be, I s'pose.

― David A. (Davant), Monday, 15 August 2005 04:42 (nineteen years ago)

(I've spent most of today confused about most things.)

― David A. (Davant), Monday, 15 August 2005 04:43 (nineteen years ago)

"But you should understand that there's no one it hurts more economically than senior editors and other salaried employees, many of whom work at substandard wages on the explicit understanding that they will make it up writing."

Hmm, what wellspring of stupidity offers this gem? The hypothetical "Chuck Eddy" mentioned can still take $3000 of naps next year. The very real freelancers and their infant children will suck up the pay cut, take real jobs, or vend their offerings elsewhere. The readers suffer in pained eyeballs, the editors suffer in prestige, the writers suffer as always in the belly. Hope the union move wins big.

― Ian Christe (Ian Christe), Monday, 15 August 2005 07:36 (nineteen years ago)

that sucks.

hey ian, you gonna supervise my phd or what?

― N_RQ, Monday, 15 August 2005 07:42 (nineteen years ago)

― Beta (abeta), Monday, 15 August 2005 12:44 (nineteen years ago)

3 otm

― strng hlkngtn, Monday, 15 August 2005 13:47 (nineteen years ago)

i mean, after all, why pay for the steak when you can get the fatty, slightly rancid hamburger on blogspot demand?? but that's "new media business models" for you.

― strng hlkngtn, Monday, 15 August 2005 13:48 (nineteen years ago)

is the voice actually in financial difficulties?

― N_RQ, Monday, 15 August 2005 13:56 (nineteen years ago)

haha 'jiff jaff'

― deej.., Monday, 15 August 2005 13:56 (nineteen years ago)

the whole alt-weekly industry is in financial difficulties.

― strng hlkngtn, Monday, 15 August 2005 13:59 (nineteen years ago)

seriously, the more i think about it, the more the "bloggerization" (and i don't mean bloggers writing for them) of the voice makes my blood boil every time my eyes make contact with it.

― strng hlkngtn, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:00 (nineteen years ago)

london time out gets more and more shit in its content and its treatment of writers, but there financial success (or expansion) seems to be driving the change, rather than reduced funds.

― N_RQ, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:03 (nineteen years ago)

when everyone is a "writer", writers become cheap.

― my name is john. i reside in chicago. (frankE), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:06 (nineteen years ago)

Have alt-weeklies ever not been in dire financial straits? 'Hooker ads in the back' doesn't seem like a viable financial model to me.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:11 (nineteen years ago)

well i was a "writer" for TO before i discovered the blogosphere, but i'd love to see how bloggers =! writers. some of them are, some of them aren't [controversial mod edit].

― N_RQ, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:12 (nineteen years ago)

As I heard it (quite literally) the other day, the financial model problem is less the hooker-ad deal than the massive success of craigslist.com -- which punctures the whole classified ad structure of both dailys and weeklys.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:14 (nineteen years ago)

yeah, it's craigslist. and when i say "bloggerization" of the voice, enrique, i mean the voice paying for blogs. i.e. next week riff raff interviews greg tate on how he feels about his pay getting cut to pay for stuff like riff raff.

― strng hlkngtn, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:20 (nineteen years ago)

RIFF RAFF: HOW MUCH ARE YOU MAKING NOW?

GREG TATE: THE VOICE NOW PAYS ME IN STOLEN UNICEF PENNIES

― strng hlkngtn, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:21 (nineteen years ago)

wow, that's fucked!

― N_RQ, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:23 (nineteen years ago)

i don't mean to make it sound like that's where all the financial trouble is coming from when it's mostly lost classified sales! but it still irks me.

― strng hlkngtn, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:25 (nineteen years ago)

First cock-teasing us with the Luomo Black Dice remix and now getting my pay cut? Nick Sylvester, we can only resolve this with a serious game of Scrabble. Loser has to blog for free.

― Eppy (Eppy), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:26 (nineteen years ago)

i mean, get your grind on anyway you can, i guess, but i wouldn't want to put "pet rock inventor" on my future resume either.

― strng hlkngtn, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:28 (nineteen years ago)

RIFF RAFF: DO YOU LIKE THE BLOG FORMAT

NORMAN MAILER: A MODERN DEMOCRACY IS A TYRANNY WHERE THE BORDERS ARE UNDEFINED

― 3, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:30 (nineteen years ago)

What if you were the soda can tabs-as-vests dude?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:30 (nineteen years ago)

strongo he made a MILLION dollars

― 3, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:32 (nineteen years ago)

On my future resume I will put "I HAVE A GUN PLEASE GIVE ME A JOB OR I WILL SHOOT YOU."

― Eppy (Eppy), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:33 (nineteen years ago)

But then I'm strongly considering going to grad school.

― Eppy (Eppy), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:33 (nineteen years ago)

3 is right! Don't pity the people who get rich quick off of one fad and then figure out how to invest it well or something.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:33 (nineteen years ago)

ned i was quoting this dude
http://luminomagazine.com/2004.03/spotlight/officespace/images/tom/tom2.jpg

― 3, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:34 (nineteen years ago)

They should just export the blog format to the rest of their feature writing. (I think it started with the politics section anyway?)

TWINKLETOES: HOW DO YOU GET UR IDEAS?
MERCE CUNNINGHAM: A HEAVY SNOWFALL DISAPPEARS INTO THE SEA. WHAT SILENCE!

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:37 (nineteen years ago)

ned i was quoting this dude

Heh. And he succeeded BUT AT WHAT COST?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:40 (nineteen years ago)

dont jump to conclusions ned

― 3, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:41 (nineteen years ago)

oh for the days of andrew sarris' livejournal.

― N_RQ, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:42 (nineteen years ago)

OMG you guys I totally saw Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein the other day and he is a HOTTIE! I took this picture of him with my cameraphone.

[picture of schools chancellor getting coffee]

- Posted by Nat at 4:54 pm

― Eppy (Eppy), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:42 (nineteen years ago)

http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/election_countdown/vote/images/adoptavote.jpg

― strng hlkngtn, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:43 (nineteen years ago)

how do they decide which blogs are good enough to be salaried village voice add-ons?

― 3, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:48 (nineteen years ago)

I told you, via Scrabble.

― Eppy (Eppy), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:49 (nineteen years ago)

Have alt-weeklies ever not been in dire financial straits?

IIRC when The Village Voice was owned by R. Murdoch (late 70s) and Leonard Stern (80s) things weren't nearly as precarious. But the Voice's independently owned competition -- Soho Weekly News -- limped along with a fraction of the ads until folding in 1982. Look at NY Press, it's always been a shell of a newspaper. And Time Out must have some major financial resources behind it.

Clearly the current Voice's efforts to expand nationally, absorb New Times etc have been a mixed success financially. I bitch and moan about the Voice but I still pick it up each week and it'll REALLY suck if the management connives a way to shit-can their unionized staff in favor of cheaper and less provacative writers and editors.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:51 (nineteen years ago)

I'll take "less provocative" if that will mean less hectoring and less mired in early '90s identity politics.

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:56 (nineteen years ago)

BURN

― N_RQ, Monday, 15 August 2005 14:57 (nineteen years ago)

x-post
Talking about front-of-the-book, obviously, not the arts sections, which are actually - surprisingly - looking better after the revamp that integrated them into Choices.

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Monday, 15 August 2005 14:58 (nineteen years ago)

What pisses me off about the Voice is all the ultra-serious twelve-parters like Anya Kamenetz's interminable "Generation Debt" series, which take a valid topic and turn it into a tedious lecture... whereas over at the NY Press, Matt Taibbi would have written a single page on it that would contain just as much insight, plus a bonus paragraph on meth boogers or Moscow crack whores.

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Monday, 15 August 2005 15:02 (nineteen years ago)

Skipping 141 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

when jann wenner bought us magazine?

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 01:10 (nineteen years ago)

haha when VVM bought Seattle Weekly

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 01:27 (nineteen years ago)

Matos, seems to me you’re being pretty bold talking so negatively about New Times, your prospective employer, in such a public forum. Particularly when you consider the fact that the Seattle Weekly will likely be the #1 target on New Times shitlist for a major editorial overhaul - the Weekly espouses just the kind of NPR-listening wine-and-cheese liberalism that the NT hates. Not to mention Seattle is a market they covet, having nearly bought a stake in the Stranger three years ago. After the merger you’re going to see the Seattle Weekly look a lot different, and probably resemble the Stranger a lot more.

― Rick K., Wednesday, 31 August 2005 01:51 (nineteen years ago)

Matos is bold as fuck! Matos not scared!

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 01:56 (nineteen years ago)

Matos no wee willy weepy posting under fake name!

"I think you all suck."

--scaredycat (don't@hitme.com)

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 01:59 (nineteen years ago)

Matos is merely reacting to all that he's heard about the place; everyone who's gone through NT, I feel, has a different relationship/idea about the place, and in that way, working there is like being an adult child of alcoholic -- you're a product of an environment that breeds a definite passion for what you're doing but also is defined by a cruel, unpredictable negativity. You wind up feeling like you just gotta try harder for Dad and try not to get beat up by your equally as fucked up brothers and sisters. Some kids survive ACOA and grow a second skin; others crumble and need a couch. Even so, one of the main skills to have is in knowing a virtual three-vodka swerve is looming.

― Rabblerouser, Wednesday, 31 August 2005 03:34 (nineteen years ago)

The Dallas Observer (New Times) music section is a joke. Weekly column praising/whining about the local scene (or lack of), a half-dozen bad blurb reviews of whatever alt-rock/indie is out this week, another half-dozen previews for some of the lame shows on deck.

Strangely, this is the only truly bad section of the paper. The film section has a couple of decent critics, they used to have a great sports columnist (now back in Philly, I think - John Gonzalez), one great columnist who trashes the Dallas govt. regularly. The fine arts section isn't anything special, but then again, fine arts in Dallas is nothing special.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 03:49 (nineteen years ago)

"You seemed capable and malleable" was what I took my bossman to mean. (Though I disappointed him somewhat.) A friend told me about a cartoon in Columbia Journalism Review: TEST YOUR STRENTGH, reads the banner, over a machine on which the lowest strength rating is Rock Critic. Could be this is the attitude at a lot of papers, mainstream or not (even alt guys might pick some of it up, at J school for instance; plus, as Milo points out, there are a fair number of "rock critic" feebs). And this is the newest or one of the newest job titles in periodicals, even though the recording industry goes back even further than the motion picture business, doesn't it? But it was several decades, probably a generation, before there were jazz critics of any significant number, much less quality. Even then, a specialized gig, like in Down Beat.(More of a trade paper, or sports paper, re hype and backbiting.) And Hi Fi Stereo Review.("This sounds great, in a meticuloulsly detailed way! Buy some new equipment from our advertisers, and you too can experience technical ecstasy!")For papers, it was more about live music, of any kind, for a long, long time.Record reviews seemed added grudgingly, and written grudgingly, at times, by somebody pressed into serve.("You said you wanted a raise, so.") And as Milo describes, getting to be more that way again (whining/cheerleading re same ol' club/concert scene). Especially as DVDs outsell CDs, which would be losing popularity anyway ("Buy a whole album for that one decent hit" vs. track-by-track downloads.) But I do know people who(walked in with some cred/clippings and) pointed out, in detail, to Powers That Be (in residence on paper, anyway) how crappy such a (Milo-described) section is, and who were then asked,"You want the job?" And they did and they took it and things got good-to-better, though still far from perfect. Been a while since I've heard of this happening, but maybe it still can.

― don, Wednesday, 31 August 2005 04:40 (nineteen years ago)

STRENGTH; sorry (what happens when feebs have to do own copy)

― don, Wednesday, 31 August 2005 04:44 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know the details, but my impression at the time was that the Voice didn't unionize until Murdoch bought the paper, and then the reason for unionizing was fundamentally to preserve the content and prevent Murdoch from shaping it. And then when a couple of years in Murdoch was about to violate an understanding the Voice writers thought they'd had with him, they stood him down and in effect told him that if he wanted to mess with the Voice they'd make sure he only got scorched earth. Since the Voice was the only one of his New York holdings that was actually making money, he backed down. No doubt the story was romanticized in the telling. Still, it's something that could have happened then but won't happen now, since for that kind of action you need a staff and readers who care passionately about preserving the content; and frankly, for most of the Voice, the content isn't up to what it once was, and the time for wildcat ferocity would have been two years ago during the format change. And I don't think the passion is there among staff and readers to take effective, risky action. Also, since staff is under contract, any job action could hurt the union. However, since the rest of the Voice holdings aren't unionized, now might be the time to organize, though again there has to be the passion for the content of those mags, and I wouldn't bet on that passion existing anymore.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 05:02 (nineteen years ago)

"Since the Voice was the only one of his New York holdings making money, he backed down." Yeah, though sometimes "romanticized in the telling," that's the gist of it: he's been quoted as saying he couldn't figure out a way to change it(or "It can't be changed," like a law of nature),without killing the goose etc. He couldn't Murdochize it in a subtle way, because that would be a contradiction in terms. As far as the Voice was concerned anyway: common practice to read Wall Street Journal for anything but the crazyass right wing editorials, but WSJ ain't the Post or the Voice. He'd probably thought of blending the last two, having crazyass rightwing editorals and rightwing-pandering features, bleeding toward the sex ads and lurid rock'nroll stuff; Fox News x Bart Simpson! The Paper You Love To Hate? Could it work now? (Recently on Book TV, a right wing author displayed his new one, South Park Conservatives, a group of which he very much approves.)

― don, Wednesday, 31 August 2005 06:45 (nineteen years ago)

[Rock critics as feebs in test your strength cartoon] Could be this is the attitude at a lot of papers, mainstream or not (even alt guys might pick some of it up, at J school for instance; plus, as Milo points out, there are a fair number of "rock critic" feebs).

Yeah. That was the way of things at the Morning Call in Allentown, now owned by Tribune. Anyone who wrote about music, or pop entertainment in general, was regarded with contempt. The only way I brushed them back was to start doing investigative journalism and secure a Knight Fellowship for a seminar on issues in nuclear proliferation for journalists at UMD's journalism school.

There was a lot of snobbery to it. It's not like the local metro, sewer meeting and police blotter reporters at such digs are great shakes. Put it this way: The pop music writers were better bloviators
and writers of thumbsuckers; the "hard news" reporters were better stenographers to ninnies in local government. Which is better? I sure couldn't tell.

― George the Animal Steele, Wednesday, 31 August 2005 07:02 (nineteen years ago)

>He'd probably thought of blending the last two, having crazyass rightwing editorals and rightwing-pandering features, bleeding toward the sex ads and lurid rock'nroll stuff; Fox News x Bart Simpson! The Paper You Love To Hate? Could it work now?

It's called the New York Press, and no, it doesn't work. (I applied for the managing editor's job over there not long ago, hoping to get it just so I could cut Russ Smith's column. Oh, well.)

― pdf (Phil Freeman), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 11:08 (nineteen years ago)

Weird – I applied for a general assignment reporter job at the Morning Call; by the time one of the editors called wanting to set up an interview, it was too late as I’d accepted a job at the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader (which sucked eggs as a workplace – turnover was insane there, I couldn’t keep track of the hirings, firings, and defections to rival papers over my 7 ½ month tenure there before getting fed up with the job, my bosses, and the area and bailing out).

― Raymond Cummings (Raymond Cummings), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 11:35 (nineteen years ago)

Weird – I applied for a general assignment reporter job at the Morning Call; by the time one of the editors called wanting to set up an interview

Be glad you didn't end up there. Wilkes-Barre, I can imagine, was bad, too. But the Call was simply a lot more wretched than it had to be for a newspaper serving a community of that size. Unfortunately, some of my friends are still there, resigned to it.

― George the Animal Steele, Wednesday, 31 August 2005 15:27 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, "If you/I don't do it, somebody else will."

― don, Wednesday, 31 August 2005 16:25 (nineteen years ago)

haha yes, Rick K, I should just put my tail between my legs and sit in the corner because--OH NO!--I might lose a job I might lose anyway whether I say anything or not about five-month-old private memos, because--OH NO!--I'll never be able to earn money doing anything ever again if NT buys my paper.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 17:50 (nineteen years ago)

COME ON OUT AND SHOW YOURSELVES NT BIGWIG LURKERS!

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 17:51 (nineteen years ago)

LET THE BLACKLIST BEGIN!

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 17:53 (nineteen years ago)

you'll never work in this town again.

― rob harvilla (rharvilla), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 17:55 (nineteen years ago)

damn it, and right when I fixed up the alcove

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 17:56 (nineteen years ago)

Hey, always remember the golden rule: "He who makes the gold makes the rules." All's you can do is edit the section and review the music and if someone taps you on the shoulder, then so be it.

I have a great job now in NYC and still keep my toes wet in rock-crit. So NT, in a strange way, did me the greatest favor anyone possibly could in buying me a ticket for the Shitcan Express ... :-)

― Chris O., Wednesday, 31 August 2005 17:57 (nineteen years ago)

oh, you don't work in this town? you work all the way out... really? alright then: you'll never work there either.

― rharvilla (rharvilla), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 17:57 (nineteen years ago)

Who's the engineer on the Shitcan Express anyway?

― Chris O., Wednesday, 31 August 2005 17:59 (nineteen years ago)

And the best part of the editor's life? There's always baseball to help you wind down and keep balanced -- here's rooting for the Red Sox to run their own Shitcan Express on the A's.

― Chris O., Wednesday, 31 August 2005 18:01 (nineteen years ago)

Matos, no one is suggesting you cower in fear prematurely, or at all. But it is odd that you would go out of your way to publicly badmouth the same corporate masters who are likely going to be deciding your fate in a matter of months -- especially if you're talking negatively based on anecdotal evidence that you yourself admit is second, if not third hand. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggeting that the NT brass will suddenly become enlightened once they merge with VVM and embrace the Weekly's current m.o. They're certainly going to take exception to the chin stoking, reviews heavy, long think piece type music section you favor -- which is the antithesis of the way NT prefers to do things (even Harvilla must concede that, no?) But more significantly, they are going to overhaul the Weekly's masthead from the top down to fit their libertarian, civic politics heavy, knee breaker investigtive approach. Like I say, they'll be a lot more like the Stranger, only less gay. So while I'm sure fame and riches await you in other greener pastures, you might take the warning and stop acting like some journalistic hard ass, when it's pretty obvious that everyone at VVM and the Seattle paper in particular are scared shitless that their heads will be first on the chopping block.

― Rick K., Wednesday, 31 August 2005 23:30 (nineteen years ago)

it sounds like you wish everyone was scared shitless.

and Matos: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 23:41 (nineteen years ago)

the express has run plenty of 2,000+ chin-stroking music features to balance the blurbier stuff, to say nothing of the absurd 7,000-word monolith i just unleashed in a fit of 4 a.m. narcissism. does long-windedness rattle some people up top? sure. but the drive for smaller pieces/more bells and whistles is hardly exclusive to new times, and no one's turning into US weekly anytime soon.

look, i'm not trying to tell anyone, least of all VV people, that they've nothing to worry or bitch about. i just try and hack away at the New Times Douchebag Automaton criticism now and then. speaking solely for myself, i'd hope that in any kind of merger there's some acknowledgement of a paper's history and individual strengths/focuses. the layouts of our papers and the overall NT aura sometimes obscures the fact that they're distinct entities that can't help soak in the personalities of their regions and writers. john nova lomax at the houston press is as distinctive (and distinctively houstonian) a writer as a weekly could ask for. i understand the cookie-cutter backlash, but i can still disagree with it.

not that you need me to tell you this, matos, but keep railing. i'd do the same in your shoes.

o'connor, get away from me with this red sox nonsense. they're then new times of baseball.

― rob harvilla (rharvilla), Thursday, 1 September 2005 00:33 (nineteen years ago)

Does that make the Yankees the News Corp of baseball, then?

― David R. (popshots75`), Thursday, 1 September 2005 00:43 (nineteen years ago)

Dude -- NT or no NT ... fuck the A's. :-)

― Chris O., Thursday, 1 September 2005 01:45 (nineteen years ago)

But more significantly, they are going to overhaul the Weekly's masthead from the top down to fit their libertarian, civic politics heavy, knee breaker investigtive approach. Like I say, they'll be a lot more like the Stranger, only less gay. So while I'm sure fame and riches await you in other greener pastures, you might take the warning and stop acting like some journalistic hard ass, when it's pretty obvious that everyone at VVM and the Seattle paper in particular are scared shitless that their heads will be first on the chopping block.

Rick, have you ever read either The Stranger or The Seattle Weekly at all? Try using your mouth instead of your ass next time you post something.

― donut gon' nut (donut), Thursday, 1 September 2005 03:41 (nineteen years ago)

haha "deciding my fate," yes I am a chess piece.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Thursday, 1 September 2005 19:05 (nineteen years ago)

matos only pawn in game of life.

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 1 September 2005 19:09 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.sps-systems.co.uk/trolleyed/images/products/thwi6393.jpg

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 1 September 2005 19:12 (nineteen years ago)

also, if you actually bothered reading the thread and not just my answer to Banana Nutrament's kneejerk Beck dismissal, you might have noticed that none of what I wrote was "railing" or "acting like a journalistic hard ass." and that if it had been, I still have the right to do so.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Thursday, 1 September 2005 19:12 (nineteen years ago)

clarification: I was responding to BN's post, not to New Times. and Rick K, if I had been responding to New Times, why exactly are you taking it so personally, anyway?

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Thursday, 1 September 2005 19:14 (nineteen years ago)

hahahaha

― Chris O., Thursday, 1 September 2005 19:15 (nineteen years ago)

GUYS, NEW ORLEANS IS DYING: PLEASE JOIN ME IN ASKING OUR EMPLOYERS (WHOEVER THEY ARE, OR WILL BE) TO MATCH EMPLOYEE DONATIONS TO THE RED CROSS FOR KATRINA RELIEF.

― Pete Scholtes, Thursday, 1 September 2005 19:34 (nineteen years ago)

Agreed ... there's just too cultural influence down there to piss away ...

― Chris O., Thursday, 1 September 2005 19:38 (nineteen years ago)

oh yeah, and some people too.

― don, Friday, 2 September 2005 02:30 (nineteen years ago)

well, yeah, but they're poor black people, so need to get too worried or anything.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 2 September 2005 03:07 (nineteen years ago)

NO need, that is...

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 2 September 2005 03:07 (nineteen years ago)

yeah but I shouldn't've gone there never mind bye guys

― don, Friday, 2 September 2005 03:16 (nineteen years ago)

Really is astonishing how most of the footage from there seems to be of dirt poor black people either crumbling in their own destitude or shooting at people leaving hospitals. Makes me wonder if the media has its head up its ass. Racism in the powers-that-be is alive and well.

I haven't seen that many homies wilding out since at least the video for "Back That Azz Up." Another realization: Baby Williams can probably save three families just with his ice grill alone.

― Chris O., Friday, 2 September 2005 03:27 (nineteen years ago)

eight months pass...

I got it made. Paid to write bios for the artists and their promo for the labels, then re-paid for writeups about the exact same people in magazines.
I can cut & paste all I want from one to the other. Bio/promo writing is never signed, I use aliases in the mags, everybody knows and nobody gives a flying fuck. Pretty ironic and doesn't make me like the music industry any more than I ..don't.
-- blunt (blunt120...), August 16th, 2005 2:29 AM. (blunt) (link)
thanks for sharing that heartwarming news.
-- Sterling Clover (s.clove...), August 16th, 2005 2:32 AM. (s_clover) (link)
I could cut & paste
-- blunt

So for the record, upon entering a new ..freelancing relationship with this mag I finally met an editor who minded. Among other things it did convince me to quit this schizophrenic behaviour and abandon the relative security of friendly labels giving me work on a regular basis. Whatever, here I come.

― blunt (blunt), Monday, 22 May 2006 00:02 (nineteen years ago)

(no, "Whatever" isn't the name of the magazine in question, for which I might not even write anyway - just to clear that up)

― blunt (blunt), Monday, 22 May 2006 00:03 (nineteen years ago)

is Whatever an indie mag?

― gear (gear), Monday, 22 May 2006 00:07 (nineteen years ago)

Why it is a perfectly good name after all, I'm going to create the goddamn thing myself.

― blunt (blunt), Monday, 22 May 2006 00:10 (nineteen years ago)

eleven years pass...

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2018/04/06/fbi-raids-backpage-founders-sedona-home-website-down/494538002/

― Algerian Goalkeeper (Odysseus), Saturday, 7 April 2018 00:53 (seven years ago)

never forget

https://villagevoice.freetls.fastly.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/26_200.jpeg

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Saturday, 7 April 2018 03:51 (seven years ago)

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