Last Rites for the Village Voice, a Bohemian Who Stayed on Too Long

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... 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'.

> 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.

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.

> before the commercialization of New York

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

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.

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