New York Press

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New York Press
Type	Alternative weekly
Format	Tabloid

Owner	Manhattan Media
Publisher	Nick Thomas
Editor-in-Chief	David Blum
Founded	1988
Headquarters	79 Madison Ave., 16th Floor New York, NY 10016 Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
Circulation	105,005^[1]

Website: nypress.com

New York Press is a free alternative weekly in New York City. It is the main competitor to the Village Voice. It was founded in 1988, and originally conceived and published as a conservative voice in traditionally liberal New York. The paper developed an impressive following over its first decade, and by 1996 had forced the Village Voice to become a free paper to compete.

The rivalry with the Village Voice has expressed itself in other ways. Emulating New York Press's own popular "Best of Manhattan" annual feature, the Village Voice later began publishing its own annual "Best of New York" issue. Press editors have written about hiring away writer Nat Hentoff from the Voice. [1]

The paper's weekly circulation in 2006 was around 110,000, [2] in comparison with around 250,000 for the Village Voice. [3] The Press touts a Manhattan focussed, controlled distribution system while a good portion of the Village Voice's circulation is outside of the NYC metro area.

The paper was founded by Russ Smith, who published it until he sold it in 2003 to investment group Avalon Equity Partners for around US$3 million. [4] Publishers Chuck Colletti and Doug Meadow became the president and C.O.O., respectively. Smith still contributes his long-running column, which was originally published under the pseudonym "MUGGER" but is now simply called "Mugger" and published under his real name.

Although Smith was nominally editor-in-chief, the actual editor through most of the paper's history was John Strausbaugh. When Smith sold the Press, Strausbaugh was fired and replaced by former production editor Jeff Koyen. Since then the paper has seen a series of editors come and go. Under Smith, the often page-inflated paper was a money-losing operation, rumored to function as a tax shelter for Smith's wealthy family. Today, the paper runs less pages but is rumored to finally be breaking even.

On July 31, 2007, the paper was acquired by Manhattan Media, the owner of Avenue Magazine and a small stable of New York community weekly newspapers. One of those weeklies, “Our Town Downtown,” will be merged with the New York Press.

From April 2003 to July 2004, the Press had a sister publication, New York Sports Express, that was a free weekly devoted to sports. The publishers discontinued it due to insufficient circulation.

New York Press earned reprobation in March 2005 for a cover story entitled "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope," written by Matt Taibbi. [5] The cover prompted outraged comments from a variety of New York politicians, [6], and within a few weeks led to the resignation of its then-editor, Jeff Koyen. He was replaced by "interim editor" Alexander Zaitchik. Harry Siegel became the paper's editor in August 2005, bringing along with him three editors and writers (Tim Marchman, Jonathan Leaf and Azi Paybarah), and giving the Press a greater focus on local politics. In February 2006 all four resigned from the paper, after the publisher rejected a planned cover story that would have shown the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. [7] Siegel was replaced for a short time by Steve Weinstein, former editor of the New York Blade. In 2006, Adario Strange, former editor of The Source, became the new editor. A year later, in 2007, Strange left the paper to return to film directing. Upon his promotion to publisher, Nick Thomas named former arts and entertainment editor Jerry Portwood to editor of the publication.

In September, 2007, David Blum was named editor-in-chief of the New York Press. A former contributing editor of New York Magazine and Esquire, Blum had previously been editor-in-chief of The Village Voice.

Noted memoirist and longtime staff writer, occasional arts and entertainment critic, and author of the nearly two decade old "Slackjaw" column, Jim Knipfel was one of the paper's only mainstays for more than thirteen years. "Slackjaw" ran in the Philadelphia Welcomat for five years before it was picked up by the Press in 1993. Later, Knipfel worked as the Press' receptionist before moving into a staff writer position. In June, 2006, his column was discontinued. Film critic Armond White is another of the paper's mainstays.

During Strausbaugh's editorship, the Press ran regular columns by Alexander Cockburn, Taki Theodoracopolous, Christopher Caldwell, Soul Coughing lead singer M. Doughty (both under his own name and under the pseudonym "Dirty Sanchez"), and articles and reviews by future screenwriter William Monahan, Daniel Radosh, Dave Eggers, Todd Seavey, Paul Lukas, Alan Cabal, future Weekly Standard editor David Skinner, Toby Young, Amy Sohn, Jonathan Ames, "JT LeRoy", Scott McConnell, Kevin R. Kosar, and David Corn, among others. During Koyen's and Zaitchik's editorship, the paper ran regular columns by Paul Krassner, Michelangelo Signorile, and Matt Taibbi, and regularly featured writing by gadfly Christopher X. Brodeur, among others. Currently the Press runs regular columns by Amy Goodman and Ed Koch (former Mayor of New York City), among others.