Morris' upcoming retirement was announced Thursday morning via an e-mail from Brad Mindich (pictured) to employees of the Phoenix Media/Communications Group that was subsequently posted on senior writer Mark Jurkowitz's blog. Morris has worked for the company for 36 of its 40 years. "I find it a bit strange for me to be the one making this announcement," writes Mindich. "Barry has known me since I was a baby, known me well enough to have watched me taking baths in the sink of my family’s small West Roxbury apartment." Mindich is the son of Phoenix publisher and founder Stephen Mindich and has served as executive vice president for three years. Morris tells Jurkowitz that he's looking forward to new challenges, but adds, "It's very possible I can still play a role in the company."
The filmmaker pulled his three-page essay from the Village Voice at the last minute because he didn't approve of the paper's choice of art for its front cover. According to the New York Post's Page Six gossip column, editor-in-chief Don Forst wanted to run a still from the film "Brown Bunny" in which actress Chloe Sevigny performs oral sex on Gallo, the film's star and director. Gallo, however, wanted the Voice to run his photo self-portrait, claiming its full-page publication was a condition of his involvement. Voice publicity director Jessica Belluci told the Post, "When he got wind that we wanted to use another image for the cover, he got all bent out of shape and pulled the whole thing."
Richard Goldstein, an executive editor who joined The Voice in 1966, was laid off last Monday in an ongoing restructuring that has seen the departure of at least a half-dozen editorial staffers, reports The New York Times. (Goldstein says he was fired, not laid off.) Publisher Judy Miszner tells the Times that advertising "could be better," and that the layoffs are an "ongoing thing relative to the changing environment and changes in how our audience is looking for information." Editor-in-chief Donald Forst says the restructuring is "tied into our efforts going from a weekly product to, with the Web, daily journalism electronically, in which we're putting stuff up on a daily basis, sometimes on an hourly basis."
