David Schneiderman, editor-turned-publisher-turned-CEO of the Village Voice, the granddaddy of alternative newspapers, from its days as a downtown staple to its long, slow decline in the Internet age. died Friday after 28 years in office. Edmonds, Washington, near Seattle. He was 77 years old.
His daughter Kate Schneiderman said at the hospital that the cause of death was pneumonia caused by chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which he was diagnosed with two years ago. He lived in Woodway, Washington.
After being named editor-in-chief in 1978, Mr. Schneiderman enhanced The Voice's journalistic strategy, diversifying the nearly all-white, all-male newsroom and replacing traditional newspapers and magazines with The Voice. Considering the increasing competition to imitate Voice's cutting-edge culture. Media coverage and its cavalier tone.
His hiring by Rupert Murdoch, who bought The Voice in 1977, added a chapter to the paper's famous counterculture.
In a statement, staff vowed to refuse to work “as a new editor secretly imposed without warning from management.” Mr. Schneiderman was unable to continue working for several months until his predecessor's contract expired. The staff backed away from the threat.
He entered the clique-infested newsroom at 11th Street and University Place, where journalists injected their opinions into the copy and defended their right to veto edits. A former New York Times editor who wore a coat and tie and was a vocal favorite. foil.
He brought an easy-going, slightly bewildered disposition that eased the tension. More importantly, he was passionate about strong journalism.
“People realized that he wasn't what we stereotyped him to be from the Times, and that he actually had a lot of good ideas and was a serious person and a really good journalist. “I knew right away that it was,” Joe Conason, a 1980s Voice investigative reporter, said in an interview.
Mr. Schneiderman strengthened The Voice's reporting efforts. He hired Wayne Barrett, who investigated real estate developers who few took seriously, Donald J. Trump, and Theresa Carpenter, a crime reporter who won her first Pulitzer Prize for The Voice in 1981. . He also fended off Mr Murdoch's calls to clip Mr Conason's wings for regularly writing critical comments about him.
“The Voice brought a layer of professionalism to The Voice that some people in the '60s and '70s didn't like,” he wrote in an oral history of the paper published last year. Tricia Romano, a former “Voice'' writer, said: “Freaks came to write,” he said in an interview.
“He was very good at connecting with people and getting through all the craziness,” she added.
Schneiderman's agenda included diversifying The Voice. He named a woman senior editor and made the paper a launching pad for young black writers. He supported music and cultural critic Stanley Crouch to write a column and hired writer Thulani Davis (later an opera librettist). Under him, the paper printed its first Gay Pride issue in 1979.
Mr. Schneiderman also fired Alexander Cockburn, a strong critic of Israel, for accepting $10,000 from the Arab Institute, a research group, for a book about Israel's invasion of Lebanon. He said Mr Cockburn had “damaged the credibility” of The Voice.
Mr. Schneiderman took the publishing job under new owner Leonard N. Stern, a pet food and real estate tycoon who bought The Voice in 1985. He appointed former arts editor Karen Durbin as the paper's second female editor in 1994, a decision that exacerbated the rift between hard news reporters and culture writers. According to the oral history, Ms. Barrett wore a dress to the office the week Ms. Durbin took over.
Mr. Schneiderman pushed the paper to grow beyond its counterculture traditions and strident left-wing politics as its core readership grew older and wealthier. Many on the staff – influential pundits and columnists who supported the idea that inmates should run asylums – feared that The Voice would lose its edge. Frightened, he steered in the opposite direction.
In 1988, Mr. Schneiderman and Mr. Stern launched the weekly tabloid “7 Days,'' an uptown version of The Voice, with entertainment listings and clever coverage of New York trends and scenes. The production was a great success, but due to lack of publicity it ceased operations after two years.
Even though traditional publications, including the Times' art and style sections, erased some of Downtown's DNA, competition for entertainment coverage from other New York weekly magazines, including Time Out New York, It eroded the circulation of the Voice.
The circulation and profits of the moribund “The Voice'' led to movements that were once unthinkable. The $1.25 newsstand price was eliminated and the paper became free in 1996.
“One of the downsides of The Voice over the past few years is that it has become sort of self-ghettoized, and we've lost a generation of readers,” he said, writing for the paper since the 1950s and winning the Pulitzer Prize. says award-winning cartoonist Jules Pfeiffer. , told the Times in 1996.
The shift to a giveaway model benefited circulation, which more than doubled to 250,000 by 1999, and the paper said increased advertising more than offset the decline in revenue.
Mr. Stern, with the advice of Mr. Schneiderman, who was named president of Mr. Stern's VV Publishing Company in 1988, began working on other alternative newspapers, first in 1994 with LA Weekly, then with Seattle, Nashville, and Twin. Bought the Cities paper.
But with the advent of Craigslist, the free online portal for classified ads that generates half of The Voice's revenue, Stern saw the writing on the wall and suddenly decided to sell.
“The moment Craigslist came to town, literally within a few weeks, our advertising was slow. Then it stopped growing and never grew again,” Schneiderman said of Romano's oral history. spoke.
In 2000, a chain of seven newspapers, including the flagship Voice, was acquired by a group of investors. They made Mr. Schneiderman chief executive of the new company, Village Voice Media, and held a small stake in the company.
the company has merged In 2005, it partnered with New Times Group. New Times Group is a rival chain of alternative weekly magazines that Mr. Schneiderman previously accused of cutting staff at newspapers he acquired. Mr. Schneiderman was responsible for exploring online opportunities for New Times. However, he resigned a year later.
“I remember sitting in a meeting in my conference room and suddenly I felt insignificant,” he is quoted as saying in the oral history. “I was like a potted plant.”
David Abbott Schneiderman was born in Manhattan on April 14, 1947, the youngest of two sons of Robert D. Schneiderman and Mary (Torres) Schneiderman. His father was a children's clothing salesman who later retired from Izod. His mother was an executive assistant at J.C. Penney. David grew up in the Long Island suburbs of Hewlett and Rosalyn.
He earned a bachelor's degree in 1969 and a master's degree in international studies in 1970 from Johns Hopkins University.
That same year, he was hired by the Times as deputy editor of a new editorial page that collected opinion columns that appeared opposite the editorial.
His marriage to Peggy Rosenthal ended in divorce. In 2006, he married Dana Faust, managing director of advertising in the Times' Seattle office.
She and his daughter from his first marriage, Ms. Schneiderman, survive him, as does a son-in-law, Benjamin Drachler. stepdaughter Madeline Drachler; four grandchildren; and his brother, Stuart Schneiderman.
After leaving The Voice, Mr. Schneiderman commuted from his home near Seattle to San Francisco, where he was an executive at the corporate communications firm Abernathy McGregor Group (now H/Advisors Abernathy). He retired in 2016.
Two years later, The Voice ceased publication in print and was published exclusively online, ending publication in its 63rd year. By that time, full-time staff had been reduced to just 18 people.
“Newmark certainly destroyed newspapers,” Schneiderman said of Craigslist founder Craig Newmark in his oral history. “There's no two ways about it.”
