<![CDATA[Gawker: deborah jowitt]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: deborah jowitt]]> http://gawker.com/tag/deborahjowitt http://gawker.com/tag/deborahjowitt <![CDATA[Village Voice Continues to Collapse]]> Images-3-3The owners of wilting alt weekly The Village Voice continue to condemn their staff to the torture of a thousand cuts. Last week, the Voice's overlords at cost-cutting conglomerate The New Times laid off dance critic Deborah Jowitt after she'd served forty years at the paper. Now, an insider tells us that writer Chris Thompson—who relocated his family from San Francisco to take the job—has been let go. The problem, our tipster says, is that Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega has most of his hiring decisions dictated to him by his New Times bosses "and then he sulks because he doesn't really like them, and then decides they aren't 'working out.'" More Voice woes after the jump.

"[T]he Voice is now FIFTH in terms of ad sales amongst the entire chain," the insider tells us. "We used to be first, and now we are FIFTH. Kansas City['s The Pitch] does better than the Voice in ad sales. The [New Times] has proven over and over and over that when they go into anything other than secondary markets, they fail because they apply their boneheaded editorial strategy to the big papers, ignoring what actually worked for those cities. That's why San Francisco was their biggest money loser, because they didn't seem to get that no one wanted their cookie cutter philosophy in such an individualist town."

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5004747&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Village Voice's Dance Critic Out After Four Decades]]> I suppose that was kind of the Village Voice at least to allow Deborah Jowitt to celebrate her fortieth anniversary as dance critic. Because the storied New York alt weekly, now owned by cost-cutting conglomerate, New Times, has laid her off. We were forwarded this email: "Motherfucking assholes just fired three more people — one a dance critic who’s been here since 1968." The Village Voice says she's been asked to continue writing but, because of "budgetary constraints", as a freelancer. (Nathan Lee, the film critic, also lost his staff job.) That's fair enough: alt weeklies everywhere have been decimated by the exodus of classified advertising to the web; dance is increasingly irrelevant, culturally; and Jowitt had a good run. But the Village Voice's owners should slash costs once, and thoroughly, rather than allow the newspaper to suffer this debilitating torture of a thousand cuts.

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