Village Voice To Shut Down For Good

NEW YORK — The Village Voice, New York City's storied alt-weekly, is shutting down for good. The Voice will stop publishing new stories amid "harsh economic realities" facing the 62-year-old publication, owner Peter Barbey said in a statement Friday.

Eight of the Voice's 18 remaining staffers were laid off Friday, a spokesperson for the publication said.

The Voice's demise comes just a year after it ended its iconic print edition, which was distributed for free in red plastic boxes across the city.

"The Village Voice was created to give speed to a cultural and social revolution, and its legacy and the voices that created that legacy are still relevant today," Barbey said in a lengthy written statement.

"Although the Voice will not continue publishing, we are dedicated to ensuring that its legacy will endure to inspire more generations of readers and writers to give even more speed to those same goals."

Barbey, who bought the Voice just three years ago, broke the news to its staff of 15 to 20 people in a Friday conference call, according to Gothamist, which first reported the news.

Barbey called the occasion "kind of a sucky day," Gothamist reported.

The Voice's staff will work to preserve its voluminous print archives online to give "coming generations a chance to experience for themselves what is clearly one of this city's and this country's social and cultural treasures," Barbey said in the statement.

Known as the nation's original alt-weekly, the Voice was founded in a Greenwich Village apartment in 1955 by a group that included the author Norman Mailer. The paper became a cultural touchstone of New York City and went on to host work from famous writers such as Wayne Barrett, Ezra Pound and Robert Christgau. It has won three Pulitzer Prizes.

News of the Voice's eventual shutdown came about a month after another of the city's journalistic institutions, the New York Daily News, slashed half its editorial staff.

Journalists, politicos and others mourned the Voice's final death.

"The Voice made its mark covering big stories without losing its downtown edge all while picking up some Pulitzers along the way," City Comptroller Scott Stringer said on Twitter. "New Yorkers – this one included – will miss The Village Voice.

(Lead image: Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)