Amen.

Are they deliberately trying to alienate all their readers?

(BTW, I'm a faithful reader of Tom Tomorrow both here and at Daily Kos.)

...the first thing they did was to fire the progressive editor (Knute Berger) and chief editorial columnist (Geov Parrish), and phase out political coverage in favor of "lifestyle" interests. Except, of course, for creating a mock advice column, "Ask the Uptight Seattlite," which mocked the stereotypical resident here as a faded flower-child clinging to political correctness and tree-hugging, a figure of ridicule for the "hip," ironic urban neo-yuppies and yuppie-wannabes they saw as their new demographic. The only time they got political: when the City of Seattle criticized them for the VV's "backpage" website (allegedly) taking insufficient measures to prevent underage teens from advertising in their "escort services" section, which criticism they of course treated as an infringement of the First Amendment worthy of ranking alongside the most heinous civil-liberties violations in the history of the world.

Those allegations by the City of Seattle were proven to be false, that the VV had every safeguard short of face-to-face interviews with ad-placers to ensure that no one underage was placing ads. The VV was right in that aspect since it believes that consenting adults should be able to freely advertise their desire for social connections. What those social connections entail are between the consenting adults.

From 'HOPE FOR JUSTICE;'

http://hopeforjustice.org/2012/09/26/seattle-weekly-under-new-ownership-dropping-ads-that-foster-underage-prostitution/


"Seattle Weekly Under New Ownership; Dropping Ads that Foster Underage Prostitution..."

"Some controversy still lies in the fact that Seattle Weekly will continue to offer print space for other adult ventures (i.e. massage parlors and phone sex), even though they recognize that it is the escort ads that were the most destructive in terms of underage activity, due to the fact that proof of age wasn’t always required from the pimps placing the ads.

Me thinks the poster protesteth too much!

"right in that aspect since it believes that consenting adults should be able to freely advertise their desire for social connections".

we're allowing them to acquire ownership of the internet.

How many people here frequent the Media group?

I added them to my list.

I moved to NYC in 1979. Back then, each issue of the Voice had so much good stuff in it that it was hard to find the time to get through each issue before the next one hit the streets a week later.

These days, the paper is considerably slimmer. What content remains is indeed much more tilted toward the "lifestyle" category.

Occasionally, the cover story exposes some stark injustice, generally on a local NYC topic, that the other media aren't touching. These are all-too-infrequent reminders of what the Voice once was.

with his cartoons - I'd love to order it.

Just look'em up

all political writers were either fired or had their salary reduced to nothing and they quit

and basically it is a classified ads (but they still have the single best ads for live music in the NY/NJ area and movie ads in the city).

and prudes should not look in the back of it, the last 10 pages are all sex ads now, very descriptive ones too.

It is free in Manhattan and almost impossible to find outside of the city.

but when the rightwing syndicate purchased them, that was the end of them being the #1 political weekly(or close to #1) in prestige nationwide.

If someone asked me should they subscribe, I would say no, and don't pay the weekly price at a newstand (but if you see a box on the street, take a free one(as it is free in Manhattan.)

by the time I left. It just didn't have any content that particularly interested me anymore. It used to be very radical and cutting edge, but by the time I left the city it was just a boring rag.

Sad. NYC has sold out to corporations in a number of ways.

and once the voice went free in Manhattan, and has been getting smaller and smaller and worse and worse (only Mike Musto is still there, though Dan Savage has a sex column in the back)
but one can read it all online (SIGHHH) and before it was free, not enough people paid the weekly price.

and on top, the corporations of course don't want any left of center news

Also competing were those 2 free daily "newspapers" both right wing based in content which of course helped stop people from buying other newspapers, not that any of them are really good anymore
(Murdock's Post and Daily News and the Wall Street Journal
and the NY Times which since Jayson Blair and Judith Mller,has also become further and further rightwing.

That's what happened when (though he wasn't perfect) Dan Rather was tossed to the wolves and the public didn't care and believed the other side, and all media became trash.
Which is how we ended up with 12 years of Bush and another Bush looking toward 2016.

to have been vulnerable to a take-over by of all weak little imitators, the Phoenix New Times!

There's a free weekly (non-VV) in my area. That weekly carries Tom Tomorrow. His cartoons are funny. I was shocked to read he was fired. And then I read about Village Voice Media in Wikipedia, what happened to it in the mid-2000s sounds like what Bain Capital did to companies like Sensata and Staples. No, I do not have memories of VV like you do as I would consider 2006 or 2007 the time I was old enough to care about whatever VV covered (I was in the middle of high school at the time).

what a pathetic decision. Tom Tomorrow is one brilliant cartoonist.

I've been reading Tom Tomorrow since I was in college. I hope he blasts the VV in a piece.

My older sister of all people, actually had a subscription to the VV back in the 60s, shortly after she made the mistake of turning down scholarships to college to marry her redneck husband. When at her house, I loved reading the Voice while the adults made small talk over coffee, as it was a window out of my stupid upstate town to a world with options, not to mention it's coverage of music.

Sis has been fully assimilated since then, a classic example of a low-information voter as are her four adult kids and we don't talk anymore.

I like your post.

More seriously, I like most of his toons and I'm sure they will still be with us for a long time through one media channel or another.

Since Village Voice broke off its prostitution facilitating Backpage.com restructuring was very likely.

You're not affecting the circulation of the VV, nor are you affecting the revenue stream of its advertisers.

I don't CARE about the VV or it's advertisers. But if his book sales get a big bump, it's still numbers and he might get another gig (a better gig maybe) because it's a way to show he has a fan base.

Maybe it's just me, but I never found Tom Tomorrow funny and I skip over his strips.

Fortunatley for Tom, in this internet age, you can publish just about anything you want on the web and no one will stop you.

If you've kept aware of the state of absurdity of politics and media, the satire may seem self evident, sort of like The Onion.

Myself, I think he's outdone in the cartoon world possibly only by Mike Luckovich.

I'm sure a lot of people like it, but it is just not my thing.

Last edited Wed Oct 10, 2012, 09:21 AM - Edit history (1)

I mostly like Dilbert and XKCD. Haven't kept up with the latest.

SF Bay Guardian for me.

media deregulation and consolidation has been a blight upon our land for far too long.