In addition to the five senior editors in charge of arts coverage, The Voice also laid off three members of its design staff, including Minh Uong, the art director. It was a swaggering attitude that their chain of papers were so good and The Voice was an embarrassment and we have to get up to their level somehow." He added that Village Voice management had an "attitude of disdain for what I thought were the strong points of The Voice. But, he said, "I could see that this was coming," in part because of talk of centralized arts coverage. He added, "Having said that, I welcome the input of Michael Lacey and the parent company because I think they put out terrific newspapers and are journalists who are committed to the same type of coverage that I am."Įd Park, a senior editor in charge of the books section who said he learned by telephone on Wednesday that he was being let go, said he was "shocked and insulted" by the firings. We are obviously editing our own stories." Ward Harkavy, interim editor in chief of The Voice, said that the duties of those laid off "will be distributed, just as they are at many publications, among current local staff. Michael Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media, which is based in Phoenix and owns a string of weeklies around the country, did not return calls seeking further comment.
In a statement released yesterday, Village Voice Media described the layoffs as an effort "to reconfigure the editorial department to place an emphasis on writers as opposed to editors." The company added, "Painful though they may be in the short term, these moves are consistent with long-range efforts to position The Voice as an integral journalistic force in New York City." In a move that decimated the senior ranks of its arts staff, The Village Voice, the New York alternative weekly, yesterday dismissed eight people, including Robert Christgau, a senior editor and longtime pop music critic who had been at the paper on and off since 1969.
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