We're happy to announce that the powers that be have selected a new editor in chief here at the Voice: Will Bourne will move into our EIC office on November 26.

Bourne is a veteran writer and editor who got his start writing for Seven Days, a weekly NYC magazine (now dead) owned by Leonard Stern, who also owned the Voice at the time. He has served as the editor at large for Inc. since July. Prior to that, he spent almost five years as the editor of Fast Company, during which the magazine won both a George Polk Award and a Cunningham Award in 2009.

We spoke to the new boss this afternoon, and he assures us that he's excited for the new gig.

More »

Village Voice

There's news to report on the who's-paying-our-salary front: The Village Voice is now under new ownership.

Our parent company, Village Voice Media, has been sold to a group of the company's editors and publishers in a deal that includes the Voice and our 12 sister publications across the country. The deal does not include Backpage.com, which was previously owned by VVM, but will now be a separate company with separate owners.

More »

This is Alan's cat, and that is Rush Limbaugh's grandmother's Jell-O Salad (long story).

Good news, Voice faithful: We've got a new film editor!

Please join us in welcoming Alan Scherstuhl to the Voice.

Alan is a longtime critic and editor with "too many degrees and cities" under his belt. He has covered theater, film, books, and news across the country, including some incredible rants in Los Angeles, and for his Studies in Crap blog column -- which returns to the Voice this week after running in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Kansas City -- Alan has archived hundreds of bizarre and terrible books, and even once cooked up a terrifying Jell-O salad invented by Rush Limbaugh's grandmother -- all in the name of journalism, of course.

More »

On Friday, August 3, the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association named me NLGJA Journalist of the Year 2012. The above video shows CNN's Miguel Marquez presenting the award to me in Las Vegas before I addressed NLGJA's annual gala with my acceptance speech, "Access: Use It to Give Voice to the Voiceless (and Hell to the Powerful)." Below are my prepared remarks, which do vary a bit from how I actually delivered them.

Good evening.

I want to first say what an honor it is to appear right after Chris Geidner, my homo journo brother from another mother. We're exactly the same age - ok, he's a month, to the day, younger than me - and I've been blessed to repeatedly cross paths with him on this amazing journey we've both been on during the past couple of years. Although I admire Chris greatly for the quality of his work, I admire him even more for wearing an open heart of gratitude on his sleeve in appreciation of the privilege we all have in doing this work. And it is a privilege; it's a gift. He understands how blessed each one of us in this room is who gets to earn their bread as a journalist.

Congratulations on your well deserved recognition.

Now, as for the rest of you, my fellow homosexual journalists: I'd like to talk to you tonight about the word access. I've been thinking about that word a lot lately, and I'll start with a kind of coming out story, regarding something I haven't admitted publicly before.

More »

C.S. Muncy

Congratulations are in order!

The Voice's Steven Thrasher has just been named the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association journalist of the year. Chris Geidner -- formerly of Metro Weekly, now of BuzzFeed, and frequent Voice video guest -- won NLGJA's other annual award, the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for Excellence in LGBT Media.

Thrasher, who has been at this paper since 2009, won the accolade for work that has appeared in the Voice, New York Times, and Out. The Voice stories recognized by NLGJA include "Diaz Family Values" -- which details Rubén Díaz Sr.'s bomb-lobbing against gay rights, his borough president son, and his lesbian granddaughter -- and "Maybe I do And Maybe I Don't" -- which explains some gays' decision not to marry.

More »

Steven Thrasher

"Drill, Baby, Drill" would have a different meaning here than Sarah Palin meant

Yesterday's Pride Parade was marked by extremely beautiful weather and a much more relaxed tone than last year's march, which was frantic right after Marriage Equality Act had just passed.

Although we wrote in this week's Voice feature that debate has grown limited in gay organizations, the march had a full spectrum of points expressed. In the alley where the Voice's contingent lined up, there was an Israeli group and a Palestinian supportive group queued up near each other. Yes, there were the onslaught of banks and finance companies marching which we wrote about last week, but there were groups as divergent as the anti-circumcision flank ("Dude, Where's My Foreskin?"), churches, anti-animal cruelty marchers, anti-fracking folk ("Drill Ass, Not Gas"), Occupy Wall Street, elected officials, and a surprisingly welcomed contingent of NYPD white shirts (perhaps welcomed because they held musical instruments and not battons and riot helmets).

As we waited to march with the Voice (lauded by the parade's announcer for this paper's coverage of LGBT issues going back decades, to Stonewall really), we got to watch a fair amount of the parade pass by and interviewed some of the politicians. Here are a few snapshots.

More »

The Voice's annual Pride Issue comes out later today, and to mark the occasion, we're taking over SiriusXM Satellite Radio's OutQ Channel 108 to celebrate.

Your truly will be guest hosting The Michelangelo Signorile Show from 2-6 PM Eastern. I'll be joined in the 2 PM hour by the Voice's Graham Rayman to talk about the NYPD and by Michael Musto in the 5 PM hour to talk about his latest column (and thoughts on covering a quarter century of Pride celebrations). That same hour, we'll also look more in depth at our latest feature story.

Through out the afternoon, we'll also be joined by participants in yesterday's Silent March to End Stop and Frisk (including GMHC's Dr. Marjorie Hill), MetroWeekly's Chris Geidner, The Advocate's Julie Bolcer, wunderkid composer Mohammed Fairouz, reporter Andy Mannix of the Voice sister paper City Pages, travel author Michael Luongo, and others. We'll also check out Fairouz's music, as well as the audio documentary work of Housing is a Human right.

More »

Steven Thrasher

Jason Villemez, left, and Mark Segal, right, listen to President Obama in the East Room

There was a small, touching moment while covering President Obama's address to the White House LGBT Pride Month reception that caught our eye: this gay couple holding each other, silently and wordlessly.

After the president had finished speaking, we chatted with them. They were Mark Segal, the publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News, and his boyfriend of eight years, Jason Villmez of the PBS Newshour.

Segal had a fascinating story. In 1970, he'd been a part of the Gay Liberation Front, which planned to pull off something called Christopher Street Liberation Day.

"We met right in front of the Village Voice office!" he told us with glee, recalling that, "We just hoped a few people would come out to join us. About 5,000 people came out!"

More »

Every week writers for the Village Voice and our parent company, Village Voice Media, produce elegant magazine-style feature writing--a gritty portion of which comes in the form of true-crime stories. Now VVM has collected some of its best recent true-crime yarns into an ebook: Seven Sins: A True Crime Anthology from Village Voice Media. Available on Amazon and iTunes, the book features seven stories, including the incredible tale of a young American Muslim woman "honor-killed" by her own father; the odd story of a young San Francisco woman so enamored of serial killers that she became known as America's most prominent "murder groupie"; and a historic murder case in Colorado in which the golden age of tabloid journalism collided with Erle Stanley Gardner, the larger-than-life creator of the Perry Mason mysteries.

The book's already drawing praise from crime-writing pros. "If you thought that short true-crime stories died with pulp magazines like Headline Detective or Police Files, you might be surprised to learn that they live on in the pages of big-city alternative weeklies," wrote Carroll Lachnit, the author of four murder mysteries, including Murder in Brief and Janie's Law. "Village Voice Media's collection of such stories from its publications is a dark tour of American society." Michael A. Kahn, the attorney and award-winning author of Trophy Widow and other legal thrillers, is also a fan. "Those who write about true crime must face the challenge that truth is often stranger than fiction--and messier and emptier and less coherent," noted Kahn. "All of which makes this collection the more remarkable. These Village Voice Media journalists have confronted the challenges head-on and produced a compelling yet chilling set of true-crime stories that would make Raymond Chandler proud."

Got an iPad or a Kindle? For just $2.99, you can curl up with some of our best stories about America's worst people. Raymond Chandler will thank you.

More »

Steven Thrasher

Brian Lehrer on the air

After publishing our piece yesterday "5 Reasons Why Touré Is Wrong On Blacks, Gay Marriage and Obama," we had the chance to talk about the president's new support for marriage equality with WNYC's Brian Lehrer.

We took calls from black listeners and talked to Lehrer about the many reasons why we believe black angst over gay rights is overplayed and how we strongly believe there will be no major fall out for Obama with black voters. Take a listen.

More »