One of Tom Tomorrow's many characters. (Photo: Twitter)

Tom Tomorrow, the pseudonymous cartoonist who describes his comic strip, 'This Modern World,' as having run in the Village Voice "with a couple of small interruptions" since 1995 announced the paper ended its relationship with him today on his blog and in a series of expletive-laden tweets this evening.

"Unsurprising news: my cartoon just got shitcanned from the Village Voice by the assholes at corporate hq," Mr. Tomorrow wrote. 

In his blog post, Mr. Tomorrow said he has been expecting the paper to stop publishing his strip since the departure of editor-in-chief Tony Ortega last month.

"A few years back the powers that be at the Village Voice chain decided to shitcan all cartoons across the chain (costing me over 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," Mr. Tomorrow wrote. "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."

The cartoonist's departure from the iconic alt-weekly is the latest in a series of major changes at the paper and its parent company. Late last month, Village Voice Media, which purchased the Village Voice and took on its name in 2005, underwent a corporate makeover, spinning off its controversial classifieds ads site Backpage.com and transferring ownership of its 13 newspapers to a new holding company, Voice Media Group. Backpage had been the subject of intensely negative legal and political attention due to its wide array of sex ads.

Roughly two weeks prior to the restructuring, Mr. Ortega announced his departure from the paper to pursue a book project, however, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told the Observer he was pushed from his perch at the paper by management.  The Village Voice also suffered several layoffs earlier this summer.

On Twitter, Mr. Tomorrow speculated the situation at the chain may be dire.

"Made it almost to the end of the paper's run, which I can't imagine is terribly far away if they can't afford my cheap rates," he wrote, adding, "If I had a job at village voice media, I'd sure as hell be polishing my resume. #dyingchain."

He also had harsh words for Voice Media Group management.

"VVM has turned out to be the Bain Capital of the altweeklies. Few ppl at top made a fortune, lot of careers trampled."

Mr. Tomorrow also encouraged readers to sign up for his recently-created cartoon subscription service, "Sparky's List."

"If you’ve been considering joining Sparky's List, this would be a good day for it," he wrote. "This is one extremely good thing about the internet: the assholes who make these decisions can’t kill my cartoon, as long as readers are willing to support it themselves."

Late this evening, Mr. Tomorrow claimed to have a slew of new subscribers.

"The number of people who have joined SPARKY'S LIST in response to Village Voice dropping cartoon = a hearty FUCK YOU VILLAGE VOICE MEDIA," he wrote.

Update (11:07 p.m.): This story initially said Mr. Tomorrow had not responded to a request for comment. After tweeting with Mr. Tomorrow, we realized we had incorrectly copied his address from his site. He assures us he will give us a call tomorrow.

A sampling of print sex ads from the pages of the Village Voice circa 2007.

Backpage.com may be gone, but sex ads are here to stay at the alt weeklies formerly owned by Village Voice Media. Over the weekend, Village Voice Media announced it had reshuffled and separated its 13 newspapers from Backpage.com, the classifieds website with the controversial "adult" advertising section. Backpage may not be part of the newly-formed newspaper company, Voice Media Group, but that doesn’t mean its doing away with the highly profitable print sex ads.

“Voice Media Group will continue to support the current adult classifieds in Village Voice,” a spokesperson for Voice Media Group told the Observer this afternoon.

We called back to clarify that print sex ads would remain in the pages of the company's twelve other newspapers. Scott Tobias, the CEO of the new company, confirmed the ads will still run at all of the alt-weeklies in the chain.

"We will not be changing our business model," he said.

Backpage's adult ads have been linked to underage sex trafficking and prostitution leading the site to become the target of lawsuits, legislation and the ire of New York Times columnist Nick Kristof.

Tony Ortega. (Photo: Twitter)

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. 

Though writing about Scientology may be Mr. Ortega’s life preserver, a former staffer told us his relentless pursuit of scoops on the controversial church may have been a distraction during his final months at the paper.

“He was increasingly obsessed with Scientology and had neglected almost all of his editorial duties at the paper," the ex-staffer said. "Sometimes he wouldn't even edit features.”

The former staffer also said Mr. Ortega began to worry about his future when writer James King joined the staff in January from the Phoenix New Times, which is headquartered in the same building as Village Voice Media's corporate management. Mr. King was known among staffers as a favorite son of VVM Executive Editor Mike Lacey and the chain's bosses in Phoenix, a fact that made Mr. Ortega uneasy.

According to the ex-staffer we spoke with, Mr. Ortega went out of his way to establish a good relation with Mr. King

“Since James's arrival, it's been clear that Tony is afraid and saw that James had been sent in by corporate to keep an eye on him, and maybe even serve as his replacement. Hence Tony's willingness to pretty much lick King's asshole--he was hoping, it seemed, that this would be reciprocated positively by corporate," the former staffer said. "Tony always went out of his way to privilege King and treat him glowingly.”

Another source familiar with the beleaguered paper told us Mr. Ortega’s fears increased after a late August visit from the executive managing editor of Village Voice Media, Christine Brennan, a.k.a. “The Wicked Witch of Westword.” Ms. Brennan, who got her start at Westword, the chain’s Denver weekly, earned her nickname after gaining a reputation as a harbinger of doom within the chain who appeared whenever management was set to execute cutbacks at one of their papers.

The Voice’s music critic, Maura Johnston, also announced she is leaving the paper today in a note on her Facebook page.

"today is my last day at the voice. thanks to everyone who wrote for me, made music worth writing about, and read the section. i'm very proud of the work i've done," Ms. Johnston wrote.

So far, the Village Voice Media has made no announcements about a replacement for Mr. Ortega. We reached out to Mr. Ortega, Ms. Johnston and Village Voice Media. As of this writing, we have yet to receive a response.

These latest departures come after a rough summer over at the Voice. In August, four editorial staffers were laid off. The paper has also increasingly been dealing with legal and political drama due to its online adult classifieds operation, Backpage.com, which has been a crucial source of revenue for Village Voice Media in recent years.

For anyone who wants to wish Mr. Ortega well in his next chapter, a source familiar with the paper told us he will be having departure drinks at The Scratcher at 5 p.m. tonight.

BuzzMedia Can't Bill Out: Remember BuzzMedia? They're the Mom-and-Pop Blog Devouring Machine that recently took over Spin. And a press release today announces their latest new and exciting addition to the team: Suri's Burn Book! How excited is everyone for this? 

BUZZMEDIA’s mission is to define digital culture. One way we do this is by publishing digital media brands that engage a loyal and devoted fan following with their authentic voice, compelling original content, and unsurpassed storytelling. There are a limited number of influential publishers, and that is very true for the entertainment categ—

We'd rather not let you finish, BuzzMedia CEO Tyler Goldman, because at the end of the day, you just purchased a Tumblr. Then again, it is a brand world. And the more brands you own, well, the more brands you own.

One thing they didn't announce in that press release: That their Vice Preisdent/GM of Music Bill Jensen—previously Village Voice Media's Director of New Media—is out at BuzzMedia after just eleven months (compared to a five-year-plus run at Village Voice Media). An email to the publicist who sent us the press release about their acquisition of Suri's Burn Book wasn't immediately returned, because it's probably not the response they expected, is why. Jensen was with BuzzMedia during an intense spree of acquisitions, including the aforementioned Spin, as well as a foursome of punk rock blogs and an electronic music blog. What could ever be so volatile in a company dedicated to swallowing smaller companies as a growth strategy that would result in the parting of a fairly credentialed new media guru after only eleven months? You tell us.

Beloved Music Writer Gets Important Job: And speaking of Village Voice Media, last week, we took note of Bullett writer Luke O’Neil's piece about reading something so terrible it made him want to quit writing about music. The piece he read was an LA Weekly blog post titled "The 20 Worst Hipster Bands," and yes, it did in fact read like a bad Facebook note written by an insecure Young Republican having a tough first semester away from his parents. That guy who wrote it? His name is Ben Westhoff, and get this: Village Voice Media has put him in charge of the company's music coverage, "particularly the blogs," according to an internal memo. But of course.

And the guy who put him in charge? VVM executive associate editor Andy Van De Voorde, who is basically the Isaiah Thomas to VVM chief Mike Lacey's James Dolan (which is to say: not naming him alongside Lacey in this piece titled "How Management Killed The Village Voice" is to deprive the man of some serious due credit). As for Bullett's Luke O'Neil, if he hasn't hung up his music writer shoes and already started life as an organic tomato farmer by now, well, this ought to do it.

MSNBC President Excited Network Can Live Up To Base Expectations: So MSNBC president Phil Griffin exclaims with glee to Michael Calderone about the network besting others on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention:

"I'm thrilled. You kidding me?" Griffin told The Huffington Post, shortly after getting the news. "You have to take a moment. For all of us in here, we're just taking a moment. Nobody thought we could do this. But to beat CNN and Fox on a big night like that? To beat ABC and CBS on a big night like that? That is friggin' fantastic.

Flash back to New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley's astute review last week of MSNBC's news coverage, entitled "How MSNBC Became Fox's Evil Liberal Twin" in which she explains MSNBC's core product as a diametrically opposed but otherwise nearly identical version of Fox News. All of which goes to say: Why wouldn't you watch the DNC on MSNBC? They're obviously going to give it every second of airtime is does deserve, doesn't deserve, and then some. They're taking the nuance out of singularity. It may be a numbers victory for MSNBC—albeit a shortsighted one—but it's also a symbolic data-point for what it's taken to get there, and that's abandoning the pretense of news in favor of being an informational arms dealer for one of two factions. Thrilling. [Huuffington Post]

Today's Sole Piece of Semi-Uplifting News: News Corp bonuses got cut. So, schadenfreude out. [The Guardian]

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Tips? Love notes? Easy instructions for the assembly of an army of paper cranes? Thoughts on how loving How I Met Your Mother makes you feel vaguely uncomfortable? Tumblrs for BuzzMedia to acquire? Send 'em here, and we'll try to talk someone out of something.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Image via Google News

The independent Manhattan movie house Film Forum has decided to pull its advertising from the Village Voice, citing concerns about Backpage.com, the classifieds site owned by Voice parent company Village Voice Media.

Longtime Film Forum director Karen Cooper told Off the Record that Nicholas Kristof’s Friday op-ed in The New York Times prompted her decision.

“It really held Backpage.com accountable for underage prostitution,” she said.

In it Mr. Kristof described a 13-year-old Brooklyn runaway coerced into prostitution and sold over Backpage.com, whom he called "Babyface," and called for Backpage.com to close its Adult section, as Craigslist did in 2010.

Given Film Forum’s eagerness to show the shows films that depict the tragedies of human trafficking, Ms. Cooper explained,  “it would be a hypocrisy to continue advertising.”

The nonprofit cinema has advertised in the Village Voice since at least 1971.

In July, Ashton Kutcher used Twitter to publicly pressure other Voice advertisers, including American Airlines, Domino's Pizza and Disney, to withdraw from the alt-weekly. In one of a series of editorial articles defending Backpage.com, the Voice had written that statistics distributed by Mr. Kutcher’s sex trafficking awareness group, Real Men Don’t Buy Girls, were incorrect. Mr. Kutcher later announced that American Airlines had pulled its advertising, though the company never confirmed it.

A group of attorneys general has also sent letters to Village Voice Media calling for Backpage.com’s adult serivces to be shut down. Others, including clergy members and Village Voice co-founder Norman Mailer’s son, John Buffalo Mailer, have spoken out against the website through Groundswell, a social justice organization backed by the Presbyterian Auburn Theological Seminary.

The Voice did not immediately respond to request for comment. In a public response to the attorneys general, however, Village Voice Media has said that censorship is not the solution to human trafficking, and that the company effectively monitors the escort listings.

On an unrelated note, Ms. Cooper added that she was disappointed that longtime Voice film critic Jim Hoberman was laid off earlier this month.

Mr. Hoberman, a 19-year veteran of the alternative weekly (24-year if you count his days as a freelancer), had this to say to Joe Coscarelli at Daily Intel [who, like the writer of this post, is also a former Village Voice staff writer.]:

I've seen a lot of people lose their jobs there in the last five years," said Hoberman, referring to the period after the legendary publication was sold to the newspaper chain New Times (now Village Voice Media). "I would be disingenuous to say I hadn't considered the possibility that this would happen to me eventually," he added. "I was shocked, but not surprised."

Notably, Mr. Hoberman was one of the chief stewards during the Village Voice writers' union contract negotiations last summer, which almost resulted in a strike, eventually averted at the eleventh hour.

Other Voice staffers past and present are making their displeasure very publicly known.

• Village Voice staff writer Camille Dodero: "send help."
• Village Voice staff writer Steven Thrasher: "Was I ever more professionally inspired then when #Hoberman was rallying the troops for our union fight?"
• Village Voice film editor Allison Benedikt: "Every layoff at the Voice hurts, but this one by far hurts the most, professionally and personally."
• Former Village Voice nightlife columnist Tricia Romano: "why call it the village voice anymore?"
• Former Voice web editor Francesca Stabile (who left the paper not a month ago): "Respect to Jim Hoberman, and may a much better publication earn the right to print his wonderful work."

Others on the periphery—whose comments are being seconded through a series of retweets by Voice staffers—are taking much more insidery shots at the paper: "If only Hobes had written more about Scientology" noted The L Magazine film section's Twitter, in a direct shot across the bow to Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega's extensive posting on the religion for the paper's website. For his part, Mr. Ortega has issued the same statement to both Daily Intel and Capital New York, who initially reported the news, emailing:

"The Voice is committed to providing comprehensive film coverage, and will continue to publish our many fine film writers, both in print and online."

What he neglected to note here is that J. Hoberman—the widely acclaimed critic and Voice union shop labor leader who helped establish the Voice's reputation for excellent film criticism—just won't be one of them anymore. Ms. Benedikt may have articulated the sentiment best, concluding: "OK going to drink alcohol now. #hoberman"

That said, former Village Voice intern, staff writer, editor, and Hoberman protege Zach Baron (now reviewing film for The Daily) may have summed up the state of the once-storied alternative weekly's legacy best, in the form of the bylines of Voice legacy writers, all of whom have been laid off since Village Voice Media took over the paper.

Around that time, New York profiled the heads of Village Voice Media with a November, 2005 piece entitled "The Voice From Beyond The Grave" asking if the paper—a "former shell of itself"—could find new life.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

At the time the suit was filed, a spokesperson for VVM said the teenager's attorney was a "trial lawyer looking for a payday" by "attempting to milk a tragedy." VVM provided the IP address and credit card info of her pimp, Latasha Jewell McFarland, to the FBI. She was sentenced to 5 years in a federal prison in December.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Mummert ruled that the companies were protected by the Communications Decency Act, although the "plaintiff artfully and eloquently attempted to phrase her allegations to avoid its reach."

"Those allegations, however, do not distinguish the complained-of actions of Backpage from any other website that posted content that led to an innocent person's injury," he ruled. "Congress has declared such websites to be immune from suits arising from such injuries. It is for Congress to change the policy that gave rise to such immunity."

When Craigslist shuttered its "Adult Services" section last year, no one was naïve enough to think the move would mean the end of prostitution, but did anyone predict it could save alt-weeklies?

Backpage, which is a fraction of the size of Craigslist, is the only popular classifieds site left willing to host the paid escort and body-rub ads that are often thinly veiled fronts for prostitution. In the month after Craigslist closed its erotic services sections under pressure from Congress and state attorneys general, Backpage enjoyed a half-million-visitor bump in traffic, according to Quantcast, and became the No. 1 publisher of escort ads on the Internet. The Aim Group, a media consulting firm, estimated that in January, Backpage brought in $2.1 million in revenue from erotic services ads alone.

 According to Aim Group founding principal Peter Zollman, Backpage, which did not respond to requests for comment from The Observer, has not contested the reports. "We think that's because we're underestimating it by so much,"--- Mr. Zollman said. "If they wanted to challenge it, they'd have to tell us how much they really make."

Mr. Zollman said Village Voice Media (VVM) has only been in contact with his office once, via its attorney, who argued that escort ads placed on Backpage are permitted under the Federal Communications Decency Act. The Aim Group claims to be agnostic on the matter of prostitution, and has even criticized attorneys general who try to shut down the sites, but it's easy to understand why VVM might feel defensive. The Backpage windfall has come along at a crucial time, helping the company to plug a leak from a large legal judgment and keep itself afloat.

For more than two decades, Village Voice Media executive editor Mike Lacey employed a simple, often devastatingly successful strategy for gaining control of the country's alternative weekly business: acquire the local paper, cut editorial costs (lay off critics, reporters and, reportedly, entire fact-checking departments), pump the paper full of nationally syndicated content and splash an occasional local investigative piece on the cover. It was working like a charm until 2004, when the San Francisco Bay-Guardian sued VVM's SF Weekly for manipulating ad prices in an attempt to drive the rival paper out of business. According to court transcripts, Mr. Lacey told the staff on his first day as owner of SF Weekly that this was precisely his intention.

Despite facing legendary antitrust lawyers in a state notorious for its aversion to monopolistic practices, Mr. Lacey spent years appealing the court's award of $16 million, which grew to $21 million with interest, until the California Supreme Court threw out VVM's petition. During the proceedings, the company revealed that it owed creditors $80 million and claimed it could not afford to pay the award. Lawyers for the Bay-Guardian threatened to force bankruptcy.

In January 2011, VVM and SF Weekly settled the issue privately. Though the terms of the agreement were not disclosed, between the settlement and what one attorney familiar with the case said were legal fees of at least $5 million to fight the case, VVM was likely left with an eight-figure hole burned in its pocket.

Since last spring, the company's efforts to patch that hole up have included the unthinkable (laying off legendary Village Voice investigative reporter Wayne Barrett in January); the surprising (selling off Kansas City Pitch to Tennessee publisher South Comm, Inc., in mid-March); and the long overdue: shutting down an experiment with a pair of sex blogs that were never publicly launched despite being published for nearly a year.

"It didn't quite work," new media director Bill Jensen told The Observer of the Naked City blogs, "and when we get down to doing budgets for the next year, we'd rather take that money along the lines of our core product."

As with all print media outlets, VVM´s "core product" is changing. Early this year VVM named a new group publisher, Joshua Fromson, formerly of SF Weekly, specifically for his agility with that property's digital product. He moved to New York and got started earlier this month, helping to launch a national "Best Of" app, which pairs GPS with the city guide content from the papers' various "Best Of" issues.

According to Mr. Jensen, VVM is better equipped than most media companies to weather the financial transition from print- to Web-advertising models, simply because alt-weeklies were never spoiled by full-page, four-color national campaigns. (It should be noted, however, that many local advertising markets have proven more volatile than the market for national ads.)

 "We've always had boots on the street," he elaborated. "We were going after the small, cool bar on the corner and partnering up with them to have small, inexpensive ads at a high volume."

He added that the complaint that editorial budget cuts have turned alt-weeklies into empty advertising vehicles is beside the point. "The ad is content," Mr. Jensen maintained. "People are looking at the ads as much as the stories. It's always been that way."

By the same token, some readers have noted in recent months that certain stories published by VVM read disconcertingly like ads, pushing agendas that serve the parent company's interests. For example, the City Pages article "Women's Funding Network Sex Trafficking Report Is Junk Science," which ran in all 13 VVM papers last month, criticizes the methodology of a small part of a report by sociological research firm the Schapiro Group, hired by the nonprofit to study underage prostitution. Author Nick Pinto used a candid quote from one of the advocacy group's directors on the strategic use of statistics to assert that the nonprofit willfully lied to lawmakers. "And it was all done to score free publicity and a wealth of public funding," he wrote.

Escort ads aren't the only growth area VVM has found in recent years. Medical marijuana dispensaries have also become vital sources of revenue for alternative weeklies. As Scott Tobias, president and chief operating officer of VVM, told The New York Times, "This is certainly one of the fastest growing industries we've ever seen come in." Which is why it raised some eyebrows that VVM hired a dedicated marijuana columnist, who at one point wrote an open letter to the state of Arizona chastising it for, among other things, blocking out-of-state medical marijuana cardholders from patronizing Arizona dispensaries, a potential advertiser in the Phoenix New Times.

Last week, The Village Voice ran a cover story, "Heroin.com," about the drug trade on Craigslist. The story included a disclaimer that seemed to indicate some sensitivity to the criticism that VVM is benefiting from illegal activity. "Using the same keyword searches that turned up numerous drug ads on Craigslist's New York City pages, we found only a single ad, in several variations, offering illicit drugs on local pages at Backpage.com," the editor and author wrote. "The Backpage ad was repeatedly flagged and taken down, and reappeared over several weeks."

As Backpage grows in popularity, more news stories have emerged suggesting that the kinds of abuses that led lawmakers to demand Craigslist shutter its erotic-services section are increasingly occurring on the site. In September a former child prostitute sued VVM for knowingly publishing advertisements of her, and later that month 21 attorneys general called on the company to follow Craigslist's lead and ban escort ads. VVM declined, but offered to continue cooperating with law enforcement officials on cases originating on the site.

The pseudonymous crime blogger Trench Reynolds aggregates news stories about crimes involving Backpage, in part because the stories often fail to get much attention beyond local papers. (And so far they have not been reported by VVM properties.) In April alone, he's found three stories involving underage persons sold or solicited through the site.

"Backpage says they review, but they haven't to my knowledge," Mr. Reynolds told The Observer. "Whatever steps they say they're taking, it doesn't seem to me like they're doing anything at all."

Note: An earlier version of this story said that the disclosure within the Village Voice's "Heroin.com" was anonymously written, it was in fact written by editor Tony Ortega and reporter Joe Coscarelli.

kstoeffel@observer.com

Among other things, it'll improve your vocabulary for insulting rival journalists.  

My favorite: "bull-goose loony."  

And creative ways of fantasizing about assaulting rival journalists.  

My favorite: strangulation by ponytail.

Enjoy!