The staff walkout that resulted was not entirely out of character. In contrast with the Voice, a middle-aged bastion of relative stability, the smaller Press (circulation circa 100,000) is a teenaged publication with an unstable past and an unruly reputation.
Last March, editor Jeff Koyen resigned after a firestorm was ignited by the paper’s publication of a tasteless piece headlined 52 FUNNIEST THINGS ABOUT THE UPCOMING DEATH OF THE POPE. New York Democratic senator Chuck Schumer memorably told the Daily News the story was “the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in 30 years of public life.” (The author of that piece, Matt Taibbi, is a Rolling Stone reporter who writes a Phoenix column that looks at sports through the prism of crime. This week, he writes on the hockey-gambling scandal)
Last August, when Siegel was hired to replace Koyen’s successor, Alexander Zaitchik, he brought in a team to, in Marchman’s words, “build up the credibility of the paper.” And to push it to the right — or at least away from the left — which was more in keeping with Smith’s founding vision.
Siegel and Marchman are founding editors of the neocon-influenced New Partisan blog, which describes its ideology as “partisans of the radical center ... socially liberal and fiscally conservative.” In his e-mail, Smith says “I think [the Press] has recovered well editorially from the period after I sold it — which was symbolized to me by Matt Taibbi’s moveon.org type politics, which did nothing to distinguish NYP from the Voice, which was the whole point to begin with, and frat house jokes — to when Harry took over, restoring some intellectual heft to the paper.”
Still, with the recent resignations leaving only one staff writer, the future of the Press looks murky. Smith asserts that “many people have already applied for editorial jobs” and is “certain NYPress will rebound very quickly.” Marchman is less sanguine.
“Frankly, it’s a mess,” he says. “I know they want to sell it and frankly, they’ll have a hard time with that. It’s been three editors-in-chief in a year.”
All of which suggests that as the Voice enters into uncharted waters under new out-of-town owners, the paper once confidently conceived as the antidote to the Voice faces an even more uncertain future thanks to its own fractious culture. The stakes at both places are high.
___
On the Web:
Mark Jurkowitz's Media Log blog: http://www.thephoenix.com/MediaLog/
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies: http://aan.org/gyrobase/Aan/index
Villiage Voice Media's Investigative Reporting Page: http://villagevoicemedia.com/investigative/index.html
Liberty Beat by Nat Hentoff: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0607,hentoff,72136,6.html
E-mail the author:
Mark Jurkowitz: mjurkowitz@phx.com
