Scientology head honcho David Miscavige’s niece has a book deal for a tell-all about the organization. Tony Ortega, former editor-in-chief of The Village Voice, is trying to get a book deal about the subject (rather than just blogging about it at the alt-weekly). The Master is in theaters. There is ongoing interest in Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (and a Vanity Fair cover story). Read More
Village Voice Media is undergoing a makeover after some corporate maneuvering over the weekend. Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, the current owners of the alt-weekly newspaper chain, are selling it to the company’s current management. What basically amounts to a restructuring of the beleaguered company means that the newspapers are separating from Backpage.com, the controversial classified site that has been tied to sex trafficking and prostitution. Read More
The Village Voice’s EIC Tony Ortega announced in a blog post today that he is leaving the troubled alt-weekly to “pursue a book proposal about Scientology in its time of crisis.” Mr. Ortega attributed his departure to a desire to turn his “465 blog posts about Scientology” into a book that prompted him to make the jump, but sources with knowledge of the situation tell The Observer Mr. Ortega’s exit from the Voice was not his decision. Read More
The Village Voice’s latest journalistic campaign has an unlikely target in its crosshairs: The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
Casual readers might think the alt-weekly champion of New York’s little guys and The Times’ in-house humanitarian would be bound by ideology. But as a result of two articles Mr. Kristof wrote this year about Voice sister company Backpage.com, he has become the subject of what he calls a “disingenuous” attack published on the The Village Voice website. Read More
The Village Voice‘s longtime chief film critic and an institution at the paper, J. Hoberman, is out, his tenure ended by Village Voice Media as yet another in a long, ongoing series in staff reductions at the paper. The reactions from fellow staffers and among his contemporaries have been swift and unilateral in their disappointment and sadness. Read More
There was almost a full-on press melee in Philadelphia this weekend at the Alternative Newsweeklies Convention. According to Gustavo Arellano, The OC Weekly‘s "Ask a Mexican" columnist, he and Village Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega, New York Times culture editor Sam Sifton and Times media critic David Carr were called "nerds" by a "big mook" on Read More
In the wake of Norman Mailer’s death Saturday, it’s seemed like every news outlet in the city has had extended coverage of the writer’s rollicking life and his influence on American letters. But the paper Mailer helped found in 1955, The Village Voice, had surprisngly little to say.
This week’s edition of the paper Read More
Village Voice editor Tony Ortega has fired his number two, managing editor Deborah Kolben. Ms. Kolben, who started at the Voice last February mere days before then-editor David Blum was fired, is the eleventh woman to leave the newspaper since Mr. Ortega took over in March.
Here's the full list:
Deanna Martin, deputy Read More
Remember when Village Voice editor Tony Ortega ran sex ads on the front of his newspaper in an oblique attempt to poke fun at various puritans who had suggested he clean up his classified section?
Well, although he says it ain’t so, last week’s cover story about the health risks facing WTC rescue Read More
Three weeks after Manhattan Media bought the New York Press and declared that, unlike New York Magazine and the Village Voice, the paper would no longer print sex ads in its classified section, Voice editor Tony Ortega fired back by defiantly running eight naked ladies on the cover of his August 22nd issue.
The ladies’ Read More
