Major Shakeup at Village Voice Leaves Only J Hoberman Standing
Filed under: Executive shifts, Newsstand, Politics
The bees have been buzzing for a couple days now with word that the Village Voice, once one of the great bastions of print film criticism, is gutting its film staff. Critic Michael Atkinson was given the boot a couple days ago, and now film editor Dennis Lim has also been shown the door, leaving only J Hoberman (pictured, right) to hold down the film criticism fort at the Voice. Gawker wrote up Atkinson's firing earlier this week, with a scathing indictment of the shakedown going on at the Voice, noting that the old guard is being replaced with an awful lot of friends of Voice EIC David Blum. Anthony Kaufman is mourning, especially, the loss of Lim, who, as Kaufman notes, has been a champion for independent film over the years. The IFC Blog wrote up the Voice makeover as well, bemoaning the loss of one of the few reliable print outlets that bothered to cover indie film . And David Poland, natch, has a write-up on the sackings as well.
As interesting as the string of firings over at the Voice are to follow -- including the rather shocking canning of Robert Christgau, the Voice's venerable top music critic -- what's really going to be interesting is to see what happens there over the next few months. Will the old vanguard of Village Voice critics be replaced with more generic voices writing across publications? Will the Voice's coverage of independent film be silenced as a result of the turnover?
Perhaps even more interesting than the Voice cannings was the news that Jeff Johnson, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, got sacked last week as well after publicly refusing to go along with cutbacks ordered by parent company The Tribune Company. Editor Dean Baquet, who had resisted the cuts as well, was asked to stay on and agreed to do so,at least for now. These shakeups at major print outlets are kind of fascinating to follow -- makes you wonder how much of an impact the internet is going to continue to have on print publications, and on film journalism in particular. At the rate things are going, film sites like Cinematical, indieWIRE, Green Cine and Movie City News might be the only places really covering independent film at all.
What do you think about all these shakeups? Village Voice readers, what do you think is likely to be the future of the arts coverage at the Voice with the senior arts staff gutted? Can the Voice continue to be a vanguard of the arts with its key voices gone? And Los Angeles folks -- what do you think of Jeff Johnson being fired? Is the Times in danger of losing its status as a top-notch publication with The Tribune Company demanding newsroom cuts to increase profits? And what role does the internet play in all of this -- both in terms of print pubs like the Voice and LA Times needing to focus more on their internet, and in terms of the broader impact of the internet on journalism?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-08-2006 @ 3:06PM
Justin said...
Well Cinematical will only be a legitimate film coverage site for me if 2 things happen. Firstly, a better search database for film reviews because the one you guys currently have is beyond cack. Secondly, would be getting rid of some dead weight writers on here that seemed to have been picked off a college campus somewhere and bring in a few established names. I hear Michael Atkinson is free :)
Speaking of Atkinson, he's long been my favourite critic next to Ebert (I know, I know..different styles and all that). I'll certainly bemoan the loss, the Village fucked up there along with booting out Dennis Lim. I'll certainly try to follow both of their careers now.
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10-09-2006 @ 9:40AM
Rico said...
The VOICE has completely fallen off. It's so sad to see. This week's COVER story was about a loser on American Idol. They really have nothing more to say.
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10-08-2006 @ 3:20PM
Kim Voynar said...
Thanks for the feedback, Justin. As I announced earlier this week, we will have a complete index of all our film reviews up in January, so it will be much easier to find our reviews after that. We're aware that it's been a long-standing issue on the site, it's simply been a matter of getting the WIN tech team's time to make that happen. In the meantime, you can find many of our reviews in one place over on Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/source-1723/ .
I'm a fan of both Atkinson and Ebert myself -- very different styles, but if everyone had the same voice, film criticism wouldn't be nearly as fun, would it? Anyhow, thanks for the feedback, we're always evaluating the site and how to make it better, and we always appreciate hearing from our readers.
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10-08-2006 @ 4:33PM
Justin said...
Thanks for the link Kim, I'm certainly bookmarking that. I check Cinematical along with a couple of other sites as much staple for new film reviews and sometimes when an indie finally gets wider release to a screen closer to home, I'd a torrid time finding them here again. Great to know something's being done. I'm sure once that's complete, nothing's stopping the Cinematical machine.
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10-08-2006 @ 8:17PM
Nature of Mathematics said...
If a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody there to hear it...
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10-09-2006 @ 9:26AM
Sam said...
I hear it falling, Nature.
I'm a big fan of the VV's reviews section, and Mike Atkinson especially. I guess I would feel better if they brought in someone else to replace him, but to gut the paper like this means, like the Gawker article alluded to, that they're just going to probably have a "national" NewTimes/VV critic that will be syndicated in all the papers. Which any New Yorker will rightfully treat as BS and pick up the NY Press and Armond White (who still does cover independent film, btw).
Ever since the NewTimes/VV merger, the paper has slowly and consistently gone downhill. Now it seems like the wheels have really come off the wagon. What a shame.
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10-15-2006 @ 1:39PM
RonJ said...
It's more of the end story of the Village Voice, its memorable reporting and commentary now eviserated by the Phenicans - New Times trumpets investigative and hard hitting pieces but in practice it's a corporation of soft-news bean counters as they turn the Voice and other papers in milder mannered entertainment sheets.
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