Lay-Offs Bring Curtain Down on Jewish Era at Village Voice (leftists of all persuasions)

[Omaha Steve]

http://forward.com/articles/177670/lay-offs-bring-curtain-down-on-jewish-era-at-villa/?p=1

Recalling the Alternative Paper's Glory Days as Writers Leave



Fred W. McDarrah/getty imagesVoice of a Generation: Norman Mailer and Voice co-founder Daniel Wolf work in the paper’s Greenwich Village offices in 1964.

By J. Hoberman
Published May 31, 2013, issue of June 07, 2013.


For much of its existence, the Village Voice was a paper where you could call a momzer a momzer and use just that term to do it. But the news in May that the out-of-town momzers who own the Voice had fired the paper’s last remaining signature writers — Michael Feingold, Michael Musto and Robert Sietsema: idiosyncratic, underground types all — effectively brings down the curtain on one of the most distinctive institutions in the history of New York journalism.

How Jewish was the Village Voice?

Well, New York’s countercultural paper of record was founded in 1955 by Brooklyn-born Jewish novelist Norman Mailer, Jewish political activist (and eventual senior adviser to Mayor Ed Koch) Dan Wolf and Edwin Fancher, a psychologist whom Wolf met in 1946 while standing in line to register for classes at The New School for Social Research under the GI Bill. Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, and Bob Dylan were all Voice heroes at one time or another. Tuli Kupferberg, the Beat poet and indefatigable member of the underground rock group, the Fugs, regularly contributed letters to the editor.

As for me, among the first articles I contributed to the paper was a 1976 piece on the revival of Yiddish-language talkies; among the people I interviewed was the great Yiddish actor Jacob Ben-Ami, then 87 and living alone in small apartment in the West 90s. For all I know it may have been his last interview. (He died the following year).

Snip to last 2 paragraphs: Later there were Latinos and Latinas (also largely local) as well as Asians. But most impressive in the 1980s and ’90s were the number of African-American writers and editors. These included Hilton Als, Carol Cooper, Stanley Crouch, Gary Dauphin, Thulani Davis, Nelson George, James Hannaham, Lisa Jones, Lisa Kennedy, Greg Tate, Colson Whitehead, Joe Wood and Ta-Nehisi Coates — a most impressive and variegated list.

Of course, not all identities at the Voice had an ethnic base. The paper had a large and vocal gay contingent and an even more outspoken group of feminists, not to mention leftists of all persuasions. We were unlike any other local publication. For me, that diversity was a great source of pride. It was also a source of great internal dissention. The Voice was a fruitfully argumentative place (something I also thought of as a Jewish form of discourse in the sense of my favorite saying, “Two Jews, three shuls”).

FULL story at link.

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[frazzled]

2. Sweet article: the good old days

So sorry that paper (a weekly tradition for me back in the late 1960s and 70s) went totally south.

Funny thing, though: although mr. frazzled has known the author for many years (I don't), I never knew he was Jewish.

[G_j]

3. used to look forward to it every week

wonderful paper!

[KoKo]

4. Yes it was...found my first apartment in NYC from it...and it was a great read

at that time...it was where the action was.