Archives for August 2018

It gave a home to the investigative reporters Jack Newfield and James Ridgeway, and the music critics Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, Ellen Willis and Greg Tate. Nat Hentoff focused on jazz and First Amendment issues from 1958 to 2009, and the nightcrawling columnist Michael Musto wrote on celebrities, drag queens and club kids, with wisecracks thrown in, for more than 30 years.

Steven Wishnia, who has freelanced for The Voice on and off since 1994, said he stayed up until midnight on Thursday, putting the final touches on an article about the return of residents to their building on the Bowery after they were ordered to vacate it because of safety hazards. On Friday, Mr. Wishnia received a link to his article along with a note from his editor, Neil DeMause.

“So the good news is that you have the honor of having written the last news article ever for The Village Voice,” Mr. DeMause wrote. “The bad news is also the good news.”

Mr. Barbey is an heir to a Pennsylvania retail fortune. With a net worth estimated at more than $6 billion by Forbes, the Barbey family has a stake in brands like North Face, Wrangler and Timberland. For generations the family has also owned The Reading Eagle, a Pennsylvania daily newspaper. Mr. Barbey has been its chief executive since 2011.

He first read The Voice as a boarding school student in Massachusetts and was drawn to its coverage of the mid-1970s New York rock scene and the film criticism of Andrew Sarris. On Friday he became the media mogul who was shutting it down.

“I began my involvement with The Voice intending to ensure its future,” Mr. Barbey said in the statement. “While this is not the outcome I’d hoped for and worked towards, a fully digitized Voice archive will offer coming generations a chance to experience for themselves what is clearly one of this city’s and this country’s social and cultural treasures.”

The death of The Voice occurred in a bleak economic climate for local journalism. Print circulation has plummeted for two surviving New York tabloids, The New York Post and The Daily News. In July, Tronc, the owner of The News, laid off half the paper’s editorial staff, which had already been severely reduced.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/media/the-village-voice-closes.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Among the other speakers were Tyler Perry, who joked that his father could tell his mother’s mood but what kind of Aretha song was playing when he got home, and Clive Davis, the music producer, who discussed plotting her career when he signed her to his label, Arista Records, in 1979, a low point for her.

“We were determined to show all musicians how long a career could last,” Mr. Davis said.

The funeral was the culmination of almost a week of events. On Tuesday and Wednesday, crowds of thousands waited for hours outside the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History for a brief glimpse at Ms. Franklin’s body. On Thursday, another viewing was held at the New Bethel Baptist Church, where a young Ms. Franklin had performed in the congregation of her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin. And on Thursday night, the Four Tops, Gladys Knight, Johnny Gill and others sang in a free “People’s Tribute” concert.

Recalling a woman of style

Ms. Franklin’s outfits change for each of the viewings, first in cherry red, then, in powder blue and finally rose gold. On Friday, Ms. Franklin, in a gold-plated brass coffin, was dressed in a cream-colored gown with gold sequins. Her high-heeled shoes were also gold with sequins and bright-red soles.

Many of those who attended also wore sparkling attire, some with fascinators on their heads. Their arrival was marked by hundreds of people who stood outside behind barricades. Henry Elders, 55, held a sign that read, “Aretha Made America Great Again.” His wife, Jenna Elders, said she was as enamored with Ms. Franklin’s fashion sense as her music.

“This was a woman who had style, big style,” she said.

Though entry to the service had been reported to be invitation-only, organizers ultimately allowed in about 1,000 fans who had waited in line for hours.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/arts/music/aretha-franklin-funeral.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

On the Victoria’s Secret website, you can search for the names of its representatives at 100 campuses, in schools from Columbia University to Grand Valley State University.

At Virginia Tech, as many as 1,000 of the 30,000 undergrads are being paid to promote products as varied as mascara and storage bins, according to an estimate by Donna Wertalik, director of marketing for the university’s Pamplin College of Business.

“We see so many brands that have it,” Ms. Wertalik said. “A lot of start-up brands will do it. They’ll look for students with credibility and influence to give them credibility and influence.”

Ms. Wertalik oversees a student-run ad agency called Prism. Of the 45 undergrads employed there, she estimated, half are paid to promote products on Instagram.

Companies outline expectations for what the sponsored posts should include, such as specific hashtags or promotions for particular items. Many also ask students to hold or attend events on campus.

Isabel Senior, a student at Duke University, worked for LaCroix, the sparkling water company. Each week for six weeks, she had to post one Instagram photo, one Instagram story and one post on a platform like Facebook or Snapchat. She also gave out cans of LaCroix at campus events like five-kilometer races and university-sponsored concerts.

Every Sunday, Ms. Senior had to send in a form with three photos from her weekly sampling event, along with screenshots of her posts. The company paid her in money and LaCroix products, and if she didn’t complete a task, she said, it docked some of the pay.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/technology/college-students-online-influencers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Instead, he’s become a civic freelancer, heading the government but peripheral to the moral function of society. Tragedy strikes and people simultaneously wish the President would make a statement and hope that Donald Trump doesn’t say anything.

Mr. Trump did not say anything about Mr. McCain in his hour-plus Indiana appearance. The rally was standard Trump combo platter, casting Mr. Trump as the president of the people who voted for him, and encouraging them to revel in grievance and animus.

He rehashed his 2016 election win, more than once. He whipped up the crowd against the media, the day the F.B.I. arrested a man for threatening to kill Boston Globe employees, using Mr. Trump’s phrase “enemy of the people.” He said that he was no longer allowed to call Hispanic gang members “animals,” a term he then repeated several times. He invited his crowd to imagine “if Crooked Hillary Clinton had won.”

Mr. McCain’s colleagues remembered a man who was a friend even while they fought. Mr. Trump, still playing his campaign-rally character on TV, promises the joy of savaging your enemies even after they’ve been defeated. His rally crowds (including the one in Indiana) still chant “Lock her up!” nearly two years after Mrs. Clinton’s loss, joined in one case by his attorney general.

This was the bargain the country made electing someone who became a celebrity for saying “You’re fired,” who uses the terms “nice” and “Boy Scout” as insults, who once told People magazine, “Man is the most vicious of all animals, and life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat.”

John McCain was, per nearly everyone who spoke about him, a battler, too. But he coordinated his last media blitz to say that American leaders should, after and even amid a fight, see their opponents as humans and not simply obstacles to be crushed.

It was his last argument from the grave, but as Mr. Trump has made clear, it is not something we can expect, for the moment anyway, in this life.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/arts/television/john-mccain-service-trump-rally.html?partner=rss&emc=rss