Village Voice

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 4:27pm on Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Newspapers still matter in New York City, despite all the recent failures of American newspapers and the continuing declines in newspaper advertising revenue, which dropped 29 percent across the country in the second quarter of 2009, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Graham Rayman wrote about the newspaper business in the Village Voice on September 29, 2009:

"...newspapers—the things you hold in your hands—still matter in New York City. Sure, New York's newspapers are hurting. Revenue is down. Circulation at the tabloids is down. None of the papers, except the Wall Street Journal, has figured out how to generate steady, significant revenue off the Web. But none of them has gone out of business.

Of course, the number of New York City dailies today is only a shadow of those of the past: In the 1920s, there were 11 dailies published in Manhattan alone, and four in Brooklyn.

Yes, New York City is a special case: The Times and Journal are essentially national papers in scope, and the New York Post aims at being the nation's brassy tabloid. Newsday (unlike the Post and Daily News) aims almost entirely at commuters, not the residents of the five boroughs. And yes, amNew York and Metro are much smaller and little more than headline services."

The full story:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-09-29/news/how-new-york-city-s-seven-newspapers-are-nearly-surviving

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 3:50pm on Thursday, July 30th, 2009

New minted journalism school graduates are trying to stay positive, Michael P. Ventura wrote in the Village Voice on July 28, 2009:

"In a down economy, the smart play is to go to school to learn new skills, network, and ride it out. At least, that's the case in a normal industry. But conventional wisdom has it that planning for a future in journalism makes as much sense as signing up for a career as a Pontiac dealer.

That's not how members of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism's just-graduated class of 2009 see it, though. Despite the tough times, they are excited and hopeful that their freshly minted degrees will help prepare them for the news business's rebirth."

The full story:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-28/news/you-just-graduated-from-journalism-school-what-were-you-thinking/

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 12:37pm on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

In the January 5, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, Louis Menand wrote about the history of the Village Voice in the article "It Took A Village:"

"The Village Voice was founded in 1955. It is one of the most successful enterprises in the history of American journalism. It began as a neighborhood paper serving an area about a tenth the size of the Left Bank, in Paris, and it became, within ten years, an nationally known brand the inspiration for a dozen other local papers across the country. By 1967, it was the best-selling weekly newspaper in the United States, with a single-day circulation higher than the circulations of ninety-five per cent of American big-city dailies. It survived the deaths of four other New York City newspapers and most of its imitators, and it has had a longer life than the weekly Life."