Hentoff, Village Voice Legend Terminated

“After the initial shock, I’ve been taking calls all day,” Hentoff told The Black Star News today, “It’s like reading your obituary while you’re still alive.”

[National: On Media]

Long time Village Voice columnist, Nat Hentoff, who’s been with the paper since 1958, was laid off, along with two others from the editorial staff.

“After the initial shock, I’ve been taking calls all day,” Hentoff told The Black Star News today, “It’s like reading your obituary while you’re still alive.”

Hentoff most recently has written on civil liberties and human rights issues; he has also focused on African crises points, including Sudan’s Darfur region and Zimbabwe.

Others also terminated were Fashion writer, Lynn Yaeger, who has been with the paper for 30 years and staff writer Chloe Hilliard.

Hentoff, 83 years old, graduated from Boston Latin School, received his B.A. with honors from Northeastern University and was a Fulbright Fellow in 1950. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in education and an American Bar Association Silver Gravel Award in 1980 in honor of his reporting of law and criminal justice in his columns.

The weekly Village Voice was founded in 1955 by Norman Mailer and two of his friends Daniel Wolf and Edwin Fancher. The paper was based on the premise of open-mindedness, yet combative, as well as self-effacing. It was the voice of its time but things changed.

Sold to New Times Media in 2005, it now faces an upstream battle of collecting advertising revenue in a dried up economy. Hentoff also has written 18 non-fiction books, nine novels and two memoirs.

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