“The destruction of the Village Voice” (Artforum)

Artforum gathers obits from Christgau, Greg Tate, Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman et al. The photo by Sylvia Plachy of Alexander Cockburn leading an editorial meeting is terrific; it provides the sort of romantic anti-romantic vision of what it must have been like to work at the Voice, at least in the minds of every writer who dreamt of doing such a thing. (I was lucky, under the editorship of Chuck Eddy, to pen maybe 8 or 10 record reviews for them, ca. 2000/2001, but it was never the right venue for me; I tried too hard to hew to what I thought was the Voice voice, as it were, and I laid the humour and the puns — not saying my reviews were actually funny — on way too thick. But hey, I have clippings I can one day share with my grandkids, so what the hell.)

Regarding the Plachy photo: anyone know who these people are? I can identify Cockburn, and Nat Hentoff to his left, but the other faces are unfamiliar. (I feel like I’ve seen another photo somewhere of the woman to Hentoff’s left, but I could be wrong.)