A proposed cover line was, “One For The Road.” The mock-up was a popular pick amongst staff-an ode to the weird and wonderful-but ultimately the Dylan cover was shipped off to the Staten Island presses, one last time. I’m told top editors drew up several options for the last cover, including an old, quirky black-and-white image of beloved columnist Michael Musto (a special edition of his famous column, La Dolce Musto, appears in the issue) hitchhiking while wearing nothing but a trench coat and tighty whities. “I think there’s a fear of hard news stories coming from the top,” the employee said. One Voice employee spoke of concern amongst current and former staff members that a “desire for softer, feel-good stories” could dominate the company’s transition to a singularly digital outlet. ICYMI: If there’s a future for The Village Voice, it’s digital And while poignant coverage of the art world has been and will continue to be a strength and crucial part of the legacy of the Voice, such an imbalance stands out given the political firestorm that has dominated the last two years of American life. And if we are to learn anything from recent cover choices at the Voice, stories that have populated covers and homepages of peer publications-the ones with outsized impact on marginalized communities-have taken a noticeable backseat. In the nine months since Donald Trump was sworn in as president, the Voice has released just four hard-news cover stories.īut the cover of any newspaper communicates to readers the most important story of the week. Impressive reporting on the continued disarray of the city’s public transportation system, on the local consequences of Trump’s repeat attempts at a Muslim travel ban and dedication to the deportation of undocumented immigrants, and regular accountability reporting from City Hall and the New York Police Department, among others, has filled the interior pages of the alt-weekly. This is not to say Voice writers and freelancers have not worked hard to pursue such stories. (It’s five hard-news covers if you count a photo essay of protests in front of Trump Tower on the president’s first post-inauguration visit to New York City.) In the nine months since Donald Trump was sworn in as president, the Voice has released just four hard-news cover stories-a misstep during a never-ending news cycle focused primarily on a story (Trump) the Voice had been hip to for, quite literally, decades. The decision seems in line with a trend toward prioritizing arts and culture reporting over traditional news reporting, as evidenced by a quick scan of the covers so far this year.
The cover of the final issue of The Village Voice. But in arguably the most important year in generations for the type of scrappy, nobody-is-safe news reporting the Voice defined, featuring a long irrelevant (albeit a Greenwich Village icon) music star on the cover seems at best a missed opportunity. Pleasing fans of The Village Voice has never been easy-and for much of the alt-weekly’s history, according to a Village Voice employee who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, the newspaper “could say fuck you to anyone,” including the readers it served. The bold image chosen to grace the last cover to populate those familiar, grimey red boxes scattered across New York City? Bob Dylan.
I worked as a staff writer there from June 2016 through last month.) The announcement of the end of the print edition of the 62-year-old giant was met with a wave of nostalgia from former writers, editors, and readers last month, when Pennsylvania-based owner Peter Barbey announced a late-in-the-game shift to a digital-only operation, with a focus on “new events, products, and initiatives.” (The Voice is nothing if not regular stream of drama: Soon after, the company announced that 13 of its remaining 17 union members would be laid off. But by 8am, a copy of the last issue had surfaced on Ebay, on sale for $15. A woman working at a nearby newsstand shrugged her shoulders when I asked if she’d seen any new copies yet. Three boxes near Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus held the penultimate issue. At 7:20am, I walked two blocks from my Washington Heights apartment looking for a copy. Today’s the day: The last print edition of The Village Voice hit newsstands this morning-or it was supposed to, anyways.
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