The Village Voice Is Dead
The Village Voice's remaining staff members have been plunged into confusion by the site's abrupt closure.
By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)
As we all know by now, The Village Voice has been killed — owner Peter Barbey delivered the news to staff in a Friday morning phone call, audio of which has been obtained by Study Hall.
“Well, today is kind of a sucky day,” says Bareby at the beginning of the call before going on to deliver the blow. “Due to the, basically, business realities, we’re going to stop publishing The Village Voice new material.”
Roughly half the staff was immediately laid off Friday, while the other half is sticking around to “wind things down” and tend to the project of “cleaning up” the digital archives for posterity, said Bareby — though remaining staffers have yet to receive instructions on how exactly to move forward.
One staffer told Study Hall it is unclear what the remaining staff’s jobs will entail. Barbey admits in the phone call he hasn’t exactly sure, either. But in a vague tangent, he seems to imply the Voice may have a future under a new owner.
“What that looks like, I’m not sure yet, and that’s something for the group that’s staying, they’re going to be working together,” said Barbey of the archive project. He goes on to suggest the death of the Voice had to happen in order to facilitate ongoing conversations with “entities,” seeming to imply the possibility of a sale.
“Also what that might be depends on the reaction from the community at large and the world at large. In fact, the reaction of the community at large and the world at large…I’ve been having conversations with other entities for months now…you know, it all depends. This is something we have to do. For some of them, this was something we have to before they could talk to us any further.”
Bareby goes on to say he will meet with the remaining staff to discuss the path forward. As of Friday afternoon, however, there had been no communication beyond the roughly four-minute phone call.
“I still love the Village Voice,” Bareby says shortly before ending the call. “So, we shall see.”
The reigning confusion after the call is par for the course, said the staffer.
“The entire Barbey regime at the Voice has been characterized by a severe lack of planning, and I think the way the shutdown is going is entirely appropriate,” said the staffer.
The death of the beloved alt-weekly isn’t exactly a surprise for the thin staff, which had watched last year as the Barbey regime halted the print publication and laid off 13 of 17 unionized workers — but there were more recent signs of the impending doom.
Last week, Bareby told several staffers he was considering axing all the freelance contributors — seeing as the vast majority of content is contributed by freelancers, that seemed a clear indication the writing was on the wall, said the employee who spoke to Study Hall.
Bareby did not return an inquiry seeking clarification on the shutdown and whether a sale was potentially in the works.
As for the reaction from the “community” and “world at large,” since the news broke there has been an outpouring of enraged and heartbroken tributes from New Yorkers [VICE] and media folks, both those who worked at the Voice and those who never did.
https://twitter.com/chick_in_kiev/status/1035578031249793024
Notably, Harry Siegel penned an essay for the Daily Beast recounting the time Bareby offered him a $170,000 columnist job (???) before firing the Editor-in-Chief, ignoring Siegel’s subsequent phone calls and buying a $26 million penthouse.
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