David Schneiderman, editor-turned-publisher-turned-CEO of The Village Voice, the granddaddy of other newspapers, whose 28-year tenure went from an period of downtown indispensability to a protracted, gradual fade into the Web age, died Friday in Edmonds, Washington, close to Seattle. He was 77.
His daughter, Kate Schneiderman, mentioned the reason for his dying in hospital was pneumonia attributable to power lymphocytic leukemia, which he was recognized with two years in the past. He lived in Woodway, Washington.
After being named editor-in-chief in 1978, Mr. Schneiderman raised The Voice’s journalistic recreation, diversifying the newsroom, which was virtually all white and all male, and adapting to the more and more aggressive setting during which conventional newspapers and magazines mimic The Voice’s avant-garde cultural milieu and media protection, in addition to its light-hearted tone.
His personal hiring by Rupert Murdoch, who purchased The Voice in 1977, added a brand new chapter to the paper’s infamous anti-establishment tradition.
The employees vowed in a press release to refuse to work “for any new editor thrust upon us secretly and with out warning by administration.” Mr. Schneiderman was unable to take up his job for months till his predecessor’s contract expired. The employees backed off their risk.
He walked into the faction-ridden newsroom at eleventh Avenue and College Place, the place journalists defended their proper to inject opinion into their copy and refuse enhancing, as a coat-and-tie-wearing former editor of The New York Instances, a beloved foil voice.
He introduced an informal, barely embarrassed temperament that subtle the strain; extra importantly, he had a dedication to robust journalism.
“Folks realized fairly shortly that he was not what we type of stereotypically assumed he could be, coming from The Instances, and that he really had superb concepts and was a severe man and a extremely good journalist.” Joe Connasoninvestigative reporter for the Voice within the Nineteen Eighties, mentioned in an interview.
Mr. Schneiderman bolstered The Voice’s dedication to reporting. He employed Wayne Barrettwhich investigates an actual property developer few take severely, Donald J. Trump and Teresa Carpentercrime reporter who in 1981 gained The Voice’s first Pulitzer Prize. He additionally fended off Mr Murdoch, who needed to clip Mr Connason’s wings for writing critically and often about him.
“There was a layer of professionalism that was dropped at The Voice that a number of the individuals from the ’60s and ’70s did not like,” Tricia Romano, a former Voice author who revealed an oral historical past of the paper final yr, “The freaks came out to write,” mentioned in an interview.
“He was superb at simply connecting with individuals and navigating all of the craziness,” she added.
Mr. Schneiderman’s agenda included diversifying The Voice. He appointed ladies as senior editors and turned the paper right into a launching pad for younger black writers: He supported giving a music and cultural critic Stanley Crouch column and employed the author Shut up Davis (later opera librettist). Below his management, the newspaper printed its first Homosexual Parade problem in 1979.
Mr. Schneiderman additionally shoots Alexander Cockburna robust critic of Israel, for accepting $10,000 from the Institute for Arab Research, a analysis group, for a e book about Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Mr Cockburn, he mentioned, had “breached the credibility” of The Voice.
Below new possession, Leonard N. Stern, a pet meals and actual property mogul who purchased The Voice in 1985, Mr. Schneiderman labored his method as much as the job of writer. He appointed Karen Durbinformer arts editor, because the paper’s second feminine editor-in-chief in 1994, a choice that deepened the divide between laborious information reporters and tradition writers. Mr. Barrett, in accordance with oral historical past, wore a gown to the workplace the week Ms. Durbin took over.
Mr. Schneiderman pushed the paper past its countercultural heritage and hard-left politics as its core readership grew older and extra affluent. Many on the employees—influential critics and columnists who embraced the view that inmates ought to run the asylum—pulled in the wrong way, fearing The Voice would lose its edge.
In 1988 Mr. Schneiderman and Mr. Stern launched a tabloid weekly, 7 Days, an upper-class alter ego of The Voice, with leisure lists and expertly written views of New York developments and scenes. It was an enormous success, however ended the run two years later resulting from lack of promoting.
Competitors from different New York weeklies with leisure lists, together with Time Out New York, ate into The Voice’s circulation at the same time as conventional shops, together with The Instances’ arts and magnificence sections, shed a few of their downtown DNA.
The Voice’s waning circulation and income led to an unthinkable transfer: The $1.25 newsstand worth was dropped and the paper grew to become free in 1996.
“One of many unfavourable elements of The Voice in the previous few years is that it has type of ghettoized itself and misplaced a technology of readers,” Jules Pfeiffer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who contributed to the paper within the early Nineteen Fifties years, he advised The Instances in 1996.
The change to a handout mannequin was a boon to circulation, which had doubled to 250,000 by 1999, and the paper mentioned the elevated promoting greater than made up for the misplaced income.
Mr. Stern – with the assistance of Mr. Schneiderman, who was named president of Mr. Stern’s VV Publishing Company in 1988. – acquired different various newspapers, first the LA Weekly in 1994. and later newspapers in Seattle, Nashville and the Twin Cities.
However with the appearance of Craigslist, the free on-line classifieds portal — the supply of half of The Voice’s income — Mr. Stern noticed the writing on the wall and immediately determined to promote.
“The second Craigslist got here to city, actually inside a couple of weeks, our adverts — it was gradual. Then it stopped rising and by no means grew once more,” Mr. Schneiderman advised Ms. Romano of her oral historical past.
Within the yr 2000 the chain of seven papers, together with flagship Voice, was purchased by a gaggle of traders. They put in Mr. Schneiderman as CEO, with a small fairness stake, in a brand new firm, Village Voice Media.
The corporate merged in 2005 with the New Instances Group, a rival chain of other weeklies that Mr. Schneiderman had as soon as scorned for slicing employees on the papers it acquired. Mr. Schneiderman was tasked with exploring on-line alternatives for New Instances. However he resigned a yr later.
“I keep in mind sitting in a gathering in my convention room and immediately I grew to become ineffective,” he was quoted as saying within the oral historical past. “I used to be like a potted plant.”
David Abbott Schneiderman was born on April 14, 1947. in Manhattan, the youthful of two sons of Robert D. Schneiderman and Mary (Torres) Schneiderman. His father was a kids’s clothes salesman who later retired from the Izod firm. His mom was an government assistant at JC Penney. David grew up within the Lengthy Island suburbs of Hewlett and Roslyn.
He acquired his bachelor’s diploma in 1969. and M.A. in Worldwide Research in 1970. from Johns Hopkins College.
That very same yr, he was employed by The Instances as an assistant editor for the newly created Op-Ed web page, a group of opinion columns that sat reverse the editorials.
His marriage to Peggy Rosenthal resulted in divorce. In 2006 he married Dana Faust, managing director of promoting for The Instances within the Seattle commerce workplace.
She and Mrs. Schneiderman, his daughter from his first marriage, survive him, as does a stepson, Benjamin Drachler; a stepdaughter, Madeline Drachler; 4 grandchildren; and his brother, Stuart Schneiderman.
After leaving The Voice, Mr. Schneiderman commuted from his dwelling close to Seattle to San Francisco, the place he was CEO of company communications agency Abernathy MacGregor Group (now H/Advisors Abernathy). He retired in 2016.
Two years later, The Voice, which had stopped publishing in print and appeared solely on-line, went out of enterprise in its 63rd yr. Its full-time employees at the moment had shrunk to only 18 individuals.
“Newmark actually destroyed newspapers,” Mr. Schneiderman mentioned of Craig Newmark, the Craigslist founder, within the oral historical past. “There is not any two methods about it.”
