 The June 7, 2006 front page of the New York Press | |
| Type | Alternative weekly |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner | Manhattan Media |
| Publisher | Tom Allon |
| Editor-in-chief | Jerry Portwood |
| Founded | April 1988 |
| Ceased publication | August 2011 |
| Headquarters | 79 Madison Ave. 16th Floor New York,NY 10016 US |
| ISSN | 1538-1412 |
| OCLC number | 23806626 |
| Website | nypress |
New York Press was a freealternative weekly in New York City, which was published from 1988 to 2011.[1]
ThePress strove to create a rivalry withThe Village Voice.Press editors claimed to have tried to hire away writerNat Hentoff from theVoice.[2] Liz Trotta ofThe Washington Post compared the rivalry to a similar sniping between certain publications in the eighteenth-century British press, such as theAnalytical Review and its self-styled nemesis, theAnti-Jacobin Review.[3] The founder,Russ Smith, was a conservative who wrote a long column called "Mugger" in every issue, but did not promote just a right-wing viewpoint in the publication.[4]
The paper's weekly circulation in 2006 topped 100,000,[5] compared to about 250,000 for theVillage Voice,[6] but this total fell to 20,000 by the end of the paper's run. ThePress touted a Manhattan-focused, controlled distribution system while a good portion ofThe Village Voice's circulation is outside the NYC metro area.[citation needed]
The print edition ofNew York Press was discontinued on September 1, 2011; its online edition was an aggregate ofManhattan Media's other publications. The print edition ofOur Town Downtown was resumed in its place, after merging withNew York Press.[7] NYPress.com is currently owned by Straus News.
The paper was founded byRuss Smith, who published it until he sold it in late 2002. Smith was assisted throughout this period byJohn Strausbaugh. Smith wrote a column starting with the first issue, which was published under the pseudonym "MUGGER"; it mostly focused on media coverage of politics, as well as restaurant reviews and personal anecdotes. At some point Smith began running the column under his own name, though still titled "Mugger"; it ran in theNew York Press until 2009.
During Smith's editorship, thePress ran regular columns by the radicalAlexander Cockburn; the conservativeTaki Theodoracopoulos;Christopher Caldwell, futureWeekly Standard editor;Soul Coughing lead singerMike Doughty (both under his own name and under the pseudonym "Dirty Sanchez"); Adam Mazmanian; Todd Seavey;Paul Lukas; occultist Alan Cabal;[8] Mistress Ruby; J. R. Taylor; Zach Parsi; C. J. Sullivan; Dave Lindsay; Jessica Willis; Spike Vrusho;Ned Vizzini; andDaniel Radosh.[9] ManyNew York Press writers and editorial staff from this time have advanced in their careers: examples include the author and screenwriterWilliam Monahan, authorDave Eggers;David Skinner, editor of theWeekly Standard andHumanities magazine; author and raconteurToby Young; author and columnistGeorge Szamuely;Amy Sohn,New York magazine contributing editor and author; authorJonathan Ames; theater critic Jonathan Kalb (two-time winner of theGeorge Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism); authorBen Greenman; faux-memoirist "JT LeRoy";Scott McConnell,American Conservative magazine editor; authorHP Newquist; writer Kevin R. Kosar;Sam Sifton,New York Times editor;David Corn, novelist andMother Jones Washington Bureau Chief.
The City Sun film criticArmond White joined the staff in 1997 and wrote until 2011.[10] He was joined for much of that time by film criticsGodfrey Cheshire andMatt Zoller Seitz; many of the trio's reviews were collected in the 2020 bookThe Press Gang: Writings on Cinema from New York Press, 1991-2011.[11]
Following the convention established by earlier New York underground papers likeEast Village Other,New York Press also regularly published cutting-edge comic art, including early work by founding art director Michael Gentile,Kaz,Ben Katchor,Debbie Drechsler,Charles Burns,Mark Beyer,Carol Lay,Mark Newgarden,Ward Sutton,M. Wartella,Gary Panter,Danny Hellman,Tony Millionaire,Ariel Bordeaux and others.Art Spiegelman was the comics editor in the early 1990s.[12] Ballpoint pen artistLennie Mace was also among the regular contributing illustrators.
There's NYP 1988-2002, and then there's whatever it's been since. And that's not just me gassing about the good old days. [...] [T]he pretense that there's an unbroken timeline connecting the originalNew York Press to the current version is misleading and disingenuous at best.
Smith sold the paper in late 2002 to investment group Avalon Equity Partners for around US$3 million.[14] Publishers Chuck Colletti and Doug Meadow became the president and C.O.O., respectively. Immediately after the sale, Strausbaugh was fired. After an interim editor declined to stay on,Jeff Koyen was hired away fromThe Prague Pill. From 2003 to 2005, as editor-in-chief, Koyen continued publishing approximately 100 pages each week. From 2007 onward, thePress ran at less than 40 pages each week.
From April 2003 to July 2004, thePress had a sister publication,New York Sports Express, that was a free weekly devoted to sports. The publishers discontinued it.
New York Press attracted strong criticism in March 2005 for a cover story entitled "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope," written byMatt Taibbi.[15] The cover prompted outraged comments from a variety of New York politicians.[16] Within a few weeks editorJeff Koyen resigned due to the uproar. He was replaced by "interim editor"Alexander Zaitchik.
During Koyen's and Zaitchik's editorship, the paper ran regular columns byPaul Krassner,Michelangelo Signorile, andMatt Taibbi. Many of the writers from this time period, including Zaitchik, went on to work atThe eXile.
Harry Siegel became the paper's editor in August 2005, bringing along with him three editors and writers (Tim Marchman,Jonathan Leaf andAzi Paybarah). He directed thePress to a greater focus on local politics. In February 2006 all four men resigned from the paper, after the publisher rejected a planned cover story that would have shown theJyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons from the controversy in Denmark.[17] Siegel was replaced for a short time bySteve Weinstein, former editor of theNew York Blade. In 2006,Adario Strange, former editor ofThe Source, became the new editor. A year later, in 2007, Strange left the paper to return to film directing. After being promoted to publisher, Nick Thomas named Jerry Portwood, former arts and entertainment editor, as editor of thePress.
On July 31, 2007, the paper was acquired by Manhattan Media, the owner ofAvenue magazine and a small stable of New York community weekly newspapers. One of those weeklies,Our Town Downtown, was initially merged with theNew York Press. It was revived independently as thePress' replacement in August 2011.
In September 2007,David Blum was named editor-in-chief of theNew York Press. A former contributing editor ofNew York magazine andEsquire, Blum had previously been editor-in-chief of theVillage Voice. In June 2008, Blum left theNew York Press to assume another the editorship of02138, a new Manhattan Media acquisition. Blum was replaced byJerry Portwood.
From 2005 to 2007, thePress ran regular columns byAmy Goodman andEd Koch (formerMayor of New York City), among others.
In 2013, Manhattan Media sold itsOur Town downtown and NYPress.com to Straus News.[18]
Matt Taibbi was a contributor in the early 2000s until August 2005. An occasional arts and entertainment critic, and author of the "Slackjaw" column, staff writerJim Knipfel was one of the paper's mainstays for more than thirteen years. "Slackjaw" ran in the PhiladelphiaWelcomat for five years before it was picked up by thePress in 1993, where it continued through June 2006. Later, Knipfel worked as thePress' head writer.[19][20]Stephanie Sellars wrote theLust Life column in 2006–2007, which featured stories about sex from the perspective of a bisexual polyamorist.
...New York City, where Franki eats jelly beans with ice cream the occult renaissance outlived the Sixties. Groups like theOTO were very active there in the 1970s, and like-mindedesotericists gathered in occult bookshops like the Magickal Childe in Chelsea. While the rest of thecounterculture movement was being co-opted, these initiates created a counterculture of their own – a close-knit community devoted to drugs, sex, and magic. Luminaries like formerVillage Voice writer Alan Cabal, ...
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