The news was first reported on the Web site Gawker.
The high-profile departures follow news last week of the resignations by Will Bourne, the paper’s editor, and Jessica Lustig, the paper’s deputy editor. They said they were leaving because they could not carry out the layoffs the weekly’s owners, Voice Media Group, had asked them to make.
Jaimen Sfetko, a spokeswoman for the Voice Media Group, noted that in addition to Mr. Musto and Mr. Sietsema, The Voice’s longtime theatre critic, Michael Feingold, would be leaving. But the paper is adding employees to boost its film, food and restaurant coverage, she said.
“The net effect of these changes will be to slightly reduce the number of editorial employees at the publication — by less than one full-time position — and better align The Voice with the long-term business and editorial goals of the company,” Ms. Sfetko said. “This restructuring will allow The Voice to continue offering superior content and products to its New York audience — specifically film, music, restaurant, and breaking news easily accessible across both print and digital platforms — while also ensuring the sustainability of the publication.
Like many print outlets, The Village Voice, founded in 1955, has suffered from a steady circulation decline; the circulation was 148,862 in December 2012, down from 240,102 in December 2007, according to data collected by the Alliance for Audited Media.
News spread on Twitter about the departures of Mr. Musto and Mr. Sietsema, with many readers noting this was a major loss for The Village Voice.
Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer at The New Yorker wrote on Twitter, “The @villagevoice firing @mikeymusto amounts to @villagevoice firing itself: auto-da-fé.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/business/media/michael-musto-and-robert-sietsema-leave-village-voice.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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