The Village Voice, the alternative weekly newspaper co-founded by Norman Mailer and known for its culture coverage and investigative reporting, said Tuesday that it would end its print version and continue as an online-only publication.
Peter Barbey, who purchased the newspaper from Voice Media Group in 2015, said in a statement the move was part of media’s migration to the internet and that its readers now expect “a range of media, from words and pictures to podcasts, video, and even other forms of print publishing.”
The publication is still considering when it will end the print edition, said Luke Carron, a Village Voice spokesman.
The newspaper has been distributed free in the New York City area since 1996 and was mostly supported by classified advertising, which declined with the rise of Craigslist and other internet outlets.
The company has discussed a number of potential partnership opportunities, and will continue to host events like The Pride Awards, which honors work in LGBTQ communities, Barbey said in the statement.
The Voice was started by Mailer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and three others in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1955. It became a forerunner of the alternative weekly press movement that challenged mainstream newspapers in cities around the nation with their coverage of art, politics and other news.
The newspaper started the Obie Awards for off-Broadway theater and its three Pulitzer Prize winners include cartoonist Jules Feiffer. Investigative reporter Wayne Barrett and music critic Nat Hentoff wrote for the Voice for decades, and it also published the works of writers such as Ezra Pound, James Baldwin, Lester Bangs and Allen Ginsberg.
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