Voice Over
Russ,
Bust the union, indeed! I'm for unions on principle--and in practical,
self-interested terms, the union was what allowed me to make some semblance of
a decent living when I worked there, not to mention its role in representing a
militant staff culture and defending the autonomy of editors and writers,
especially in the Murdoch era--but all that aside, the union has nothing to do
with the Voice's editorial problems. The Voice was much better in
the '80s when the union was stronger, relatively speaking--not that it was ever
really strong, but it seems totally toothless now. On the contrary, the
Voice has been done in by '90s corporate culture with its emphasis on
cost-cutting, its cult of efficiency, and its deep distrust of creative work
because it's ultimately unquantifiable and resistant to control from the top.
If a publication is built around writers with strong, individual views and
identities, and people read the paper because of those writers, it gives the
writers and editors a lot of power; and I think it has suited Leonard Stern's
business agenda (I'm not suggesting it's a conscious conspiracy) for the
Voice to stop being a writer's paper. Free distribution also changes the
nature of the readership and the relationship between readers and
writers--people aren't shelling out money to read particular writers, and it's
harder for writers to tell who their audience is.
A while ago I had a conversation with the Voice's managing editor in
which he said I was one in a long line of Embittered Alumni. I thought that was
witty, and briefly considered making up a Village Voice Embittered
Alumni button. But in fact I'm not bitter--the Voice was where I really
developed as a writer and editor, and I'm grateful to it, on the whole--I'm
just frustrated: I think the paper served a crucial function as a space for
cultural reporting and analysis and culturally radical ideas that were censored
elsewhere, and it isn't serving that function anymore, nor has any other
publication come close to replacing it. The Voice was the first
publication to give a forum to pro-sex feminists, the first so far as I know to
blow the whistle on the "ritual sex abuse" day-care trials. There was a time
when something like the Monica Lewinsky scandal would have prompted an
outpouring of debate and analysis from all angles. If something like Littleton
happened, the Voice would have sent a reporter out there for a few weeks
and would have had the best story on what was really going on there. And so on.
Well, R.I.P.
Time's up. See you in New York.
