On Tuesday the independent weekly New York City newspaper, The Village Voice decided to shut down its print edition. As the New York Times reported, there is no information when exactly the Village Voice will fulfill this decision after sharing printing news for 62 years. The Voice has received three Pulitzer prizes, the National Press Foundation Award and the George Polk Award over its history.

The reason for the significant changes

The Village Voice is famous for its investigative reporting, and its culture columns. Peter D. Barbey, the owner of this alternative newspaper, explained that his main purpose is to renew The Village Voice and concentrate on more modern forms, having an opportunity to reach the readers more often than weekly.

Now, the audience has moved online and want daily publication in various media forms. For the last time, the writers who made The Voice popular and distinctive, have died.

Nevertheless, many New Yorkers considered The Village Voice to be a talisman of the downtown life and said they will miss its print publications, the Guardian reported. On Twitter, people showed that they were shocked and disappointed after the company's announcement.

The New York Times noted that since the Voice had redecorated its website, it got a significant increase in its audience traffic. According to comScore data shared with The Hollywood Reporter, the website gained 1,318,000 multi-platform unique visitors from the US for July.

The future plans in the history of The Village Voice

Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, and Norman Mailer founded the weekly newspaper in 1955, which contained political and cultural news and different advertisements for escort services. The number of printing reached 120,000 copies even during a hard competition with other popular tabloids.

In 1996, the newspaper started its free distribution. The main competitor of the Voice, the New York Press, was closed six years ago.

Peter Barbey said that it is not the end of the Voice newspaper. He noted that the readers “expect us to do what we do not just once a week, but every day, across a range of media.” He added that nowadays readers want "a range of media, from words and pictures to podcasts, video, and even other forms of print publishing."

The company will think over various ways for partnerships and promising events hosting, like The Pride Awards. It announced that the newspaper will “maintain its iconic progressive brand with its digital platform and a variety of new editorial initiatives.”
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