Thumbsuckering: Louis Menand on the VOICE in The New Yorker

In a diverting but hasty survey of the history of the Village Voice over its decades on the streets (and sometimes on the ropes), Louis Menand hastily sums up: "The Murdoch purchase did not end the Voice's distinctiveness. It was a durable brand. Of course, the paper will share the fate of every other print medium in the digital age, whatever fate that is. Still, more than other magazines and newspapers, the Voice was doing what the internet does now long before there was an internet. The Voice was the blogosphere... and Craigslist fifty years before their time. The Voice also helped to create the romance of the journalistic vocation by making journalism seem a calling, a means of self-expression, a creative medium. It opened up an insecure and defensively self-important profession. Until its own success made it irresistable to buyers who imagined that they could do better with a busisnes paln than its founders had done from desperation and instinct, it had the courage to live by its wits." While the article does not mention the present straits of its current owner, nor its New Years Eve firing of 50-year-veteran Nat Hentoff, the fairly banal summation graf has the backhanded felicity of only implying the sad situation of many journalistic institutions today, bled or wracked by buccaneers enabled by bankers who haven't an ounce of ink in their veins.