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Serving the scholastic field hockey and lacrosse community since 1998Archive for December 3, 2017
Dec. 3, 2017 — The take-aways, taken away
About two months ago, a page (more like 150 of them) turned in the history of the news media, as The Village Voice distributed its final print publication.
The Voice was one of many alternative weeklies that covered nightlife, politics, and art in styles that rarely found their way into corporate media.
Some of them have ebbed away, such as the Boston Phoenix, the Baltimore City Paper, and the Philadelphia City Paper. Others have hung on like Washington City Paper and Philadelphia Weekly.
Indeed, there used to be a time where I could have my choice of three daily and two weekly free newspapers that I could pick up from any of several colorful newsstands in the city. One of those weeklies: The Onion, which tried for a time to leverage its humor and satire to get young people to go to the events the paper would advertise in the back half — the serious half — of the publication.
I always liked reading these publications as a young adult. They gave you insight into a world that Holden Caufield never imagined. This was a world where the self — the indulgent, sinful, imperfect self — was at the forefront, seeking comfort, pleasure, and a sense that you weren’t the only odd person on the planet.
These days, however, we have the Internet for that. Communities of people who might like a certain musical genre, or comic book character, or TV show can spring up with frightful regularity to occupy a significant part of the mind’s eye of our culture.
The New York without a Village Voice print edition is one which is, to me, a bit tamer than it used to be. Gone are the cheap stores lining midtown along 34th Street, and up on the sides of the buildings are the same names you can find in the local mall.
It’s just not the same.
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