Print publication ends after 63 years as a city institution

THE VENERABLE Village Voice bid farewell Tuesday to its print edition after 63 years, turning a melancholy page in the history of New York journalism.

The left-leaning weekly, cofounded by the late Norman Mailer and once home to legendary bylines like Wayne Barrett, Nat Hentoff and Robert Christgau, is going digital-only.

In its heyday, the Wednesday arrival of The Voice on newsstands or in street boxes was eagerly awaited for its investigative reporting, arts coverage and the latest Jules Feiffer cartoon.

But the paper struggled to find stability in recent times, with a revolving door of editors, crushing layoffs and a move from their familiar digs in Greenwich Village to a new home in the Financial District.

“Talk about the end of an era: Adios to Village Voice, a newspaper that was once NY’s source of indignation and muckraking,” tweeted Pulitzer Prize-winner Laurie Garrett, currently a senior fellow for global health with the Council on Foreign Relations.

The move to a strictly web product was meant to “revitalize and reimagine The Village Voice brand,” according to a news release announcing the demise of the weekly printed paper.

For many New Yorkers, the disappearance of the print product signaled a sad changing of the guard at the paper launched by Mailer and others back in 1955.

“I’ll always be proud that The Village Voice is where I got my start in the business,” tweeted Rosie Gray, White House correspondent for The Atlantic.

Owner Peter Barbey said in a statement that the paper intends to “maintain its iconic progressive brand with its digital platform and a variety of new editorial initiatives.”

Barbey, whose Reading Eagle Co. purchased The Voice in 2015, envisioned a bright future for the online-only publication.

“For more than 60 years, The Village Voice brand has played an outsized role in American journalism, politics, and culture,” Barbey said.

“It has been a beacon for progress and a literal voice for thousands of people whose identities, opinions, and ideas might otherwise have been unheard. I expect it to continue to be that and much, much more.”

The paper was already available free, with The Voice first opting to give the paper away back in 1996.

Barbey, whose family went into the newspaper business in 1796, cited the immediacy of news in the digital era for making a weekly publication implausible.

“When The Village Voice was converted into a free weekly in an effort to boost circulation, it was at a time when Craigslist was in its infancy (and) Google and Facebook weren’t yet glimmers in the eyes of their founders,” said Barbey.

In contrast, he said the 21st century reader “expects us to do what we do not just once a week, but every day, across a range of media, from words and pictures to podcasts, video and even other forms of print publishing.”