Will Bourne

They met with the staff at 11 p.m. on Thursday and said that Christine Brennan, executive editor of Voice Media Group, had instructed them to cut five positions from the 20-person staff. Rather than carrying out the cuts, they resigned and left immediately.

“When I was brought in here, I was explicitly told that the bloodletting had come to an end,” Bourne told the Times. “I have enormous respect for the staff here and the work they have been doing and I am not going to preside over further layoffs.”

Bourne succeeded Tony Ortega as editor of the Voice in late November. We’ve reached out to him for comment and will update when we hear back.

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Will Bourne

Bourne comes to the Voice from Inc., where he served as editor-at-large since July. Previously Bourne had been executive editor of Fast Company for four years, and during his time there the magazine won several awards (George Polk Award and Cunningham Award in 2009) and was nominated for several others (2010 Magazine of The Year, Mirror Award, George Loeb Award).

At the Voice, Bourne hopes to bolster the paper’s historically strong political presence and expand its influence in other areas.

“The Voice is an amazing — and resilient!! — institution and, as the recent election showed, so is liberalism,” Bourne told FishbowlNY via email. “I plan to reinforce the paper’s position as a showcase for progressive — but balanced, disciplined — journalism, and to make it an even more forceful presence on the culture front. The recent changes and new ownership at the company have made the entire VV chain much healthier and I am honored to be part of the process of helping it grow.”

Bourne starts at the Voice November 26.

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Dan Perkins

“Unsurprising news: my cartoon just got shitcanned from the Village Voice by the assholes at corporate hq.” Tweeted Perkins. Shortly after, he posted, “Oh, also: FUCK VILLAGE VOICE MEDIA. Did more harm to altweekly cartooning than the economy and the internet combined.”

He then added on his site that he saw this coming, ever since Tony Ortega left the paper:

As some of you know, a few years back the powers that be at the Village Voice chain decided to shitcan all cartoons across the chain (costing meover almost a dozen major cities in a single day — it was like a nuclear first strike on my career). The one exception for me was the Village Voice itself, because editor Tony Ortega was a hardcore fan of my cartoon, and fought some serious battles to keep it in. He resigned a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been waiting for the axe to fall there, and was not remotely surprised to learn just now from the interim editor that my cartoon will no longer be running in their paper.

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McManus’ work has appeared in Philadelphia Weekly, Houston Press, The Chicago Reader, SF Weekly and more. He has also written one book.

A replacement for Ortega has not been named yet.

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Tony Ortega

Ortega announced that he was leaving to pursue a book proposal about Scientology.

From Ortega on the Voice’s Running Scared blog:

Many of those stories I could not have produced without the involvement and aid of our amazing commenting community. Your tips and knowledgeable analysis have made this blog live and breathe. I regret that at least for now, this show is going off the air. But perhaps soon, as I pursue my new goals, I’ll be able to post a story here and there in another venue. I hope you’ll look for me when that happens.

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AgencySpy: Diet Coke is throwing 30-second birthday parties for all the people who keep drinking it despite it tasting like crap.

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“I would be disingenuous to say I hadn’t considered the possibility that this would happen to me eventually,” he said.

Voice editor-in-chief  Tony Ortega commented that the paper will continue to provide “comprehensive film coverage” through its other film writers.

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(Via paidContent)

The people behind The Village Voice have lost their damn minds. That’s the only explanation we can think of for it suing Time Out New York (TONY) because the magazine used “Best of NYC” without permission from the Voice.

PaidContent reports that the Voice is suing for trademark infringement, and wants the profits from a TONY issue which used “Best of NYC” on its cover handed to the paper, and all the remaining magazines destroyed.

Yes, we’re serious. This isn’t an Onion article. The Voice actually thinks that they own the rights to “Best of NYC,” which might be the most generic phrase since “The big apple,” “Number one movie in America,” or “Hey tourist, try walking faster a**hole.”

But good luck with the lawsuit Voice; you’re going to need it. Wait. Do they own “good luck,” too?

UPDATE:
As you can see from the comment by Tony Ortega below, the Voice does own “Best of NYC.” We still wish them good luck.

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While it sounded like the staffers might strike and resort to posting content to an alternative site, Voice Editor-in-Chief Tony Ortega thought it was much ado about nothing. He tweeted several times leading up to last night that the union threatens to strike every three years, and every three years they reach a deal.

Well thank god for this, because there was no way we were going to remember to check that Tumblr each day.

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As The Cutline notes, hiring someone who seems to be a conservative is odd for the Voice, but Tony Ortega, the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief, disagrees, explaining, “Harry just blew away everyone else who applied for the job.”

Siegel will write a weekly column for the paper and contribute posts for the Voice’s news blog.

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Somewhat unexpectedly, the Village Voice.

Politico cartoonist Matt Wuerker wrote to Jim Romenesko:

The Village Voice devotes an entire issue to the irony of cartooning being hugely popular while cartoonists have a hard time making ends meet. Then it turns out they didn’t pay for the cartoons they used in the issue. Instead they got the cartoonists to contribute them for “exposure.” Sums up the new media economy perfectly. It’s so ironic it would make a funny cartoon.

Voice editor Tony Ortega seems to indicate that the Voice deserves some credit for, uh, not covering this up, we guess:

[W]e asked some artists to donate their work. We then felt we couldn’t do that without disclosing publicly [they weren't paid].

Sure, it’s marginally better for the Voice to be open about the fact that it didn’t pay contributors, but Huffington Post likewise never hid the fact that many of its bloggers are unpaid. So we don’t quite see the difference. We’re all for transparency, but it’s unrelated to actually being paid for your work.

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So it’s due for some good news!

The Cutline reports that The Daily has poached  Zach Baron from The Village Voice, where he works as a writer and editor. Baron will be joining The Daily’s features desk, where he will report to culture editor and New Yorker pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones.

Cue joke about Baron helping The Daily find the richest dog in South Dakota or whatever.

“I wish him well,” said Tony Ortega, editor-in-chief of The Voice. We do, too!

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In the piece, the pleasingly gruff Barrett offers up some gems. He notes that he never got an explanation for being forced out at The Village Voice, says he’s never had much use for editors, and on that subject, says, “Tony Ortega is the hardest working editor and the most skillful editor of copy that I’ve ever had. But I’ve never liked him very much.”

Barrett also shows some sympathy to the mayors of the city’s past – who were often skewered in his columns – by telling the Times that his biggest regret is not writing more about the positive things Ed Koch did.

But before you think he’s mellowed out, there’s this:

continued…

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A rough start to the weekend for Sgobbo. Maybe he can get over it by rededicating himself to his writing, or you know, just saying that he did.

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After nearly 40 years of service, The Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett is leaving his post as the weekly newspaper’s leading political reporter.  Barrett published his farewell post on The Village Voice’s website and, according to a tweet by The New York Times’s Jeremy Peters, he was fired by the Voice.  Fellow political columnist Tom Robbins has reportedly quit in protest of Barrett’s firing, however he will remain with the paper until the end of the month.

Barrett, who has served under 14 different editors at the Voice, offered a long goodbye in his final column and waxed poetically on the tenets of journalism:

There is also no other job where you get paid to tell the truth. Other professionals do sometimes tell the truth, but it’s ancillary to what they do, not the purpose of their job. I was asked years ago to address the elementary school that my son attended and tell them what a reporter did and I went to the auditorium in a trenchcoat with the collar up and a notebook in a my pocket, baring it to announce that “we are detectives for the people.”

UPDATE: Village Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega denies that Tom Robbins resigned from the paper in protest of Barrett’s firing:

For [Times reporter Jeremy] Peters to say that Robbins quit in protest without even calling me and asking me about it is really irresponsible. I really enjoyed working with both of these guys. There are no hard feelings between either of us.

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