The tumult that has characterized The Village Voice in recent years resurfaced on Thursday when the top two editors said they were leaving the weekly newspaper.
Will Bourne, who became editor last November, and Jessica Lustig, the deputy editor since January, met with the staff at 11 a.m. on Thursday to announce their departure. In a phone interview, Mr. Bourne said that Christine Brennan, executive editor of Voice Media Group, had told them to lay off, or drastically reduce the roles of, five employees on the 20-person staff. Rather than carry out the cuts, he and Ms. Lustig resigned and left immediately, in the middle of closing next week’s paper.
The turnover at The Village Voice has become something of a pattern as the weekly and its owners have struggled to come to grips with declining revenue and increased competition for readers and advertisers on the Web. When Mr. Bourne took over, he became the sixth editor in chief of the paper since 2005.
“We are both leaving because I was summoned to a meeting and asked to get rid of five people, and we are on a short string already,” said Mr. Bourne, who worked at Fast Company and Inc. magazine before coming to the Voice. “When I was brought in here, I was explicitly told that the bloodletting had come to an end. I have enormous respect for the staff here and the work they have been doing, and I am not going to preside over further layoffs.”
In a statement issued on Thursday afternoon, the Voice Media Group said it would be “instituting further structural and staffing changes at the publication.” It said the changes would include “minimal staff reductions” but denied that five employees would be laid off. The changes, it said, “will ultimately support the ongoing sustainability of The Village Voice.”
The company said Pete Kotz would temporarily lead The Village Voice staff while managers searched for a new editor. Mr. Kotz has been Voice Media Group’s national blogs editor and the assigning editor for its national features program.
Ms. Lustig said she was leaving at the same time as Mr. Bourne because she shared his belief that the paper could not absorb further cuts.
In 2012, Village Voice Media ran into objections from law enforcement officials and civic groups over Backpage.com, a classified Web site that has hosted escort ads. The company split, separating its classified service and selling its chain of 13 weekly newspapers to a group of its former editors and publishers last September. The Village Voice, founded in 1955, has won three Pulitzer Prizes and published the work of Henry Miller, Tom Stoppard and Nat Hentoff.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 9, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the time of a staff meeting at the Village Voice. It was 11 a.m. Thursday, not p.m.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/business/media/top-editors-abruptly-leave-village-voice.html?partner=rss&emc=rss