Village Voice Cans Three in Editorial, including Nat Hentoff
This just in: Adding to the media meltdown, my former alma mater, the Village Voice, just laid off three more in editorial. [Full disclosure, I was laid off myself for "matters of taste" in 2007]. Among those laid off is Nat Hentoff, who’s been at the paper since 1958, writing about jazz, and later, civil liberties in his weekly long-running column. Fashion writer Lynn Yaeger, who has worked with the paper over 15 30 years, starting in classifieds, before moving into editorial, was laid off, along with staff writer Chloe Hilliard, who was hired under the current editor, Tony Ortega in 2007. We know, we keep saying this, but we continue to be amazed that there is anyone left to lay off.
Nat Hentoff’s Greatest Hits Compilation.
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I am astonished that anything to do with the Voice still has the power to make me sad, but this does. This does.
It’s pretty awful. i mean why even keep up appearances by keeping Musto, Barrett, et al. why not just fire them all and be done with it?
that seems like a fairly nonsensical statement. i would presume that “musto, barrett, et al” would feel like their continued employ is about more than “keeping up appearances”
Screw the sadness. Remember the sex in the bathrooms .The drugs. The editorial parties where we showed porn movies like “Lesbian Bun Busters” and the all-male “Super Barrio Brothers”. The smoking room. The foosball table. Fucking interns on desks. The fistfights. Uppers for everyone on Mondays (this was before my time, sadly). A fun, excellent, wonderful place to go to, and we got a GREAT paper out every week. Tongue kisses to all of you out there. Happy 2009.
J.O.A.T.F.O Productions — Coming soon……
I just hope that they have an awesome retirement package because that’s awfully messed up for them to be let go when they’ve put so many efforts towards what this paper is today.
J.O.A.T.F.O Productions — Coming soon……
I’m confused. How can something be a “former alma mater”? Once an alma mater, always an alma mater, no? And the most distressing thing about Hentoff’s demise (outside of the timing around the holidays) is the realization that as much as we hope this downcycle is over, it’s not even close to being over… and the print publishing sector will never recover.
Sad about Nat. Chloe just got there and regarding Lynn, you reap what you sow. My Voice memory doesn’t go back beyond the 80s, but if remember correctly, Lynn was quite close to the voice’s rep during a period when quite a few staffers were forced out and the union didn’t do jack. Her first senior gig came when she replaced an editor “fired for taste.” I understand that these layoffs come during a period of universal media misery, but back when journalists were still holding meaningful cards in their hands, folks like Lynn chose not to use them in order to secure preferred treatment from management. Oh well.
Noooooo! These three writers were the ONLY REASON I READ THE VOICE! What the fuck!
Who’s making these assinine decisions? I could list other lame writers who should go before these three.
to TG: what i mean is that the new ownership has no affinity for what the Voice was and there had been talk of cutting Hentoff and Yaeger for a while, but they take forever to get around to doing what they really want to do which is replace the entire staff whole hog. it seems the only thing that keeps them from getting rid of the others is that there will be a similar outcry of ‘the voice isn’t the voice without _X” that they seem to want to avoid.
Perhaps now Nat can take some time off to crawl out of his own arse. In a media town that is scared witless to let go of its familiar faces, no matter how long ago they became irrelevant, I hail Hentoff’s exit as loooooong overdue.
Now I officially have no reason to read the VV without Nat Hentoff in its pages. Lynne Yaeger is singularly the fashion observer that has anything to say that really matters!! And Chloe Hilliard’s investigative pieces were INSIGHTFUL and intelligent!! WFT, does the VV want to drive away all independent thought and loyal readers???
This is sad about Nat and Lynn Yaeger. But the Voice has laid off most of the people who made the paper what it was, though J. Hoberman and Wayne Barrett are still hanging in there — but for how long?
Re Ruscitti: In my days at the Voice (back in the ’70s and ’80s), there were drugs and there was the occasional fistfight. But no sex in the bathrooms or on desks. We went home for that — it’s much more comfortable.
hello my days were your days, mostly (I worked at the Voice from 1983-1999). Both desks and bathroom were sexually christened, as well as couches (like the one outside of the then office of Karin Durbin/Jon Larsen/Don Forst). Where were you?
Some have insisted that the current management does not know what The Voice was. Well what it is, is passe. Most print media is fading not so gracefully. I feel sorry for any writer who loses their venue but here’s a thought; maybe they should collaborate on a book about The Voice. With all that seems to have gone on, they could call it The Villagers or something like; When the Village Burned Down. It would be a good read.