In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 1

Carnegie Corp.of NY President Gregorian, Afghan President Karzai, James Billington in Jan. 2013 with then- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 201

In The Pay of Foundations

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

If you check out many of the left alternative media radio/tv shows, publications, websites or blogs that receive grants from the U.S. power elite’s liberal foundations, you'll notice that they rarely provide their listeners, viewers or readers with much critical news reporting or unflattering historical information about their foundation funders; and they generally also block U.S. left-wing grassroots anti-war activist viewpoints that are not within the parameters approved by the establishment liberal board members and program managers of their foundation funders from being heard on their shows, printed in their publications or featured on their websites or blogs very often.

Yet as long ago as 1915, a Colorado miners’ representative, John R. Lawson, in a statement before the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, noted that a “skillful attempt” was “being made to substitute Philanthropy for Justice” and there was “not one of these foundations, now spreading their millions over the world in showy generosity, that does not draw these millions from some form of industrial injustice,” since their millions represented “the withheld wages of the…working-class.” And as the now-deceased former CounterPunch co-editor Alexander Cockburn wrote on February 5, 2010:

“There are two important reminders about political phenomena...which help explain the decline of the left: first is the financial clout of the `nonprofit’ foundations, tax-exempt bodies formed by rich people to dispense their wealth according to political tastes. Much of the `progressive sector’…now owes its financial survival—salaries, office accommodation, etc.—to the annual disbursements of these foundations which cease abruptly at the first manifestation of radical heterodoxy. In other words, most of the progressive sector is an extrusion of the dominant corporate world, just as are the academics, similarly dependent on corporate endowments. A second important reminder concerns the…collapse of the organized…left which used to provide a training ground for young people…”

According to the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, U.S. journalists are supposed to:

"Avoid conflicts of interests, real or perceived.

"Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

"Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel, and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office, and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.

"Disclose unavoidable conflicts.

"Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. [Note: Including those who hold power within the U.S. multi-billion dollar foundation world]

"Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

"Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money."

But during the last 25 years, some U.S. “parallel left” journalists and “parallel left” alternative media organizations have been funding their news operations by accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in “charitable grants” from the tax-exempt foundations of the same U.S. power elite whose undemocratic abuses of power, crimes and immoral policies they claim to be—unlike the corporate-sponsored mainstream media—exposing and holding accountable in their “independent journalism” work and reporting. Take, for example, the foundation-sponsored Democracy Now! Productions radio-tv show which is broadcast on over 1,440  radio and television stations daily around the globe, according to the Democracy Now! Productions website.

 In the early 1950s--when the CIA was using the Ford Foundation to help fund a non-communist "parallel left" as a liberal Establishment alternative to an independent, anti-Establishment revolutionary left--the Pacifica Foundation was given a $150,000 [equivalent to over $1.4 million in 2018] grant in 1951 by the Ford Foundation's Fund for Education, whose “first chief was Alexander Fraser, the president of the Shell Oil Company,” according to James Ledbetter's Made Possible By… book..

Besides subsidizing the Pacifica Foundation in the early 1950s, the Ford Foundation also spent a lot of money subsidizing many other noncommercial radio or television stations in the United States. According to Ledbetter's Made Possible By..., between 1951 and 1976, the Ford Foundation "spent nearly $300 million on noncommercial radio and television."

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pacifica relied primarily on listener-sponsor contributions to fund the operations of its radio stations. And in the early 1970s, Pacifica also began to accept funds from the U.S. Establishment's government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting [CPB], according to Rogue State author William Blum--who worked as a KPFA staffperson in the early 1970s. By the early 1990s, according to the January/February issue of Extra! magazine, Pacifica was accepting nearly $1 million [equivalent to over $1.6 million in 2018 dollars] in "Community Service Grant" program money annually from the CPB to finance about 17 percent of "listener-sponsored" radio stations network's annual operating budget. 

In the early 1990s, some Pacifica administrators also then decided to again seek grants from the Ford Foundation and other U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations. As former Pacifica Development Director Dick Bunce wrote in the appendix to the "A Strategy for National Programming" document which was prepared for the Pacifica National Board in September 1992, entitled "Appendix Foundation Grantseeking National Programming Assumptions for Foundation Fundraising":

“The national foundation grantseeking arena has changed enough in recent years to make activity in this arena potentially worthwhile--for organizations prepared to be players and partners in the same field as NPR…Foundation fundraising at this level has extraordinary payoffs... It also requires `venture capital visits' to the foundations to open doors and conversations that lead to partnerships.

“In initiating three top level contacts in April, May and June, and attempting to capitalize on the opportunities apparent to us, we have already been stretched beyond our capacity to really interface effectively with these funders...

“Short-Run Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grantseeking Program

“Seek Development Committee leadership in planning for Foundation grantseeking.

“Pursue 3 `anchor' grants to acquire funding beginning in FY'93 from the Big 3 foundations we've already begun to work with.

“Long-Range Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grantseeking Program

“Initiate an informal `feasibility inquiry' of foundation support for Pacifica's objectives by requesting visits with the dozen top prospects to shape proposals and establish relationships...

“Foundation Grants Summary: Late this spring we began our first efforts in national foundation grantseeking on behalf of national programming. We have a good chance of securing six figure grants in the coming fiscal year from any or all of the 3 foundations we're working with…, The second tier of foundation prospects is more challenging, and will require increased staff resources, a modest feasibility inquiry and active planning with the Board Development Committee.”

By 1995, billionaire speculator George Soros' Open Society Institute foundation had given the Pacifica Foundation’s KPFA radio station in Berkeley, California a $40,000 [equivalent to over $64,000 in 2018] grant. And in 1996, the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation gave Pacifica a $25,000 [equivalent to over $40,000 in 2018] grant to launch a daily radio news show, Democracy Now!, hosted and produced by long-time WBAI Evening News producer Amy Goodman, that was initially broadcast from Pacifica’s New York City area WBAI radio station in Manhattan on February 19, 1996.

Sitting on the board of trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York (whose assets had increased to $3.3 billion by 2017) in 1996, when it provided Democracy Now! with its initial foundation funding, were U.S. power elite-connected Establishment folks like then-Chevron board member and future Bush II administration National Security Advisor and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the managing editor of the Time Warner mainstream media conglomerate’s Time magazine, Henry Muller, and the multi-millionaire wife of then-U.S. Senator and future 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and Obama administration Secretary of State John Kerry, Teresa Heinz.

And in 2017, the Carnegie Corporation of New York board of trustees included former New Jersey Governor and 9/11 Commission Report Chair Thomas Kean, former New York Times Company CEO and president Janet Robinson, PBS NewsHour Co-Anchor/Managing Editor and Duke Endowment Chairperson Judy Woodruff and the former Commander of U.S. Central Command [CENTCOM) from 2013 to 2016, (Ret.) Genaral Lloyd Austin III, who “was responsible for military strategy and joint operations throughout the Middle East and Central and South Asia” during the Obama administration, according to the Carnegie Corporation website. The same website also noted that Carnegie Corporation of New York trustee Austin helped “to spearhead the 2003 invasion of Iraq as the assistant division commander for the 3rd Infantry Division” and in 2008 “returned to Iraq as the commanding general of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq during the period when the surge forces were drawing down under Operation Iraqi Freedom.”


 But the Democracy Now! Productions show, not surprisingly, has apparently never been very eager to provide its viewers, listeners or website readers with much news reporting that examines how the Carnegie Corporation of New York which initially funded it has, historically and currently, been controlled by members of the U.S. power elite, undemocratically concentrates institutional economic power and accumulates wealth from an economic system that exploits workers and middle-class consumers, and works to perpetuate a militaristic, plutocratic, politically undemocratic society in the United States. (end of part 1)

Exxon Mobil & The U.S. Mass Media Historically

In the early 1990s, before Exxon was allowed to merge with Mobil (despite U.S. anti-trust laws which are supposed to prevent corporate monopolies from being created within the U.S. economic system), Mobil was then the U.S. corporation with the largest direct investment in Saudi Arabia. It was then involved in two huge joint ventures with the Saudi Government: a refinery and a petrochemical complex. Each Mobil-Saudi business project cost more than $1 billion to construct.

In addition, 12 percent of Mobil's imported crude oil came from Iraq before Saddam Hussein decided to annex Kuwait's oilfields in August 1990, in his failed attempt to increase his bargaining power with Mobil and the other transnational oil companies at that time.

Coincidentally, in 1990 a member of Mobil's board of directors, J.Richard Munro, was also the then-chairman of the Executive Committee of Time Warner's corporate board.

Mobil had long been represented on the corporate board of Time magazine's parent company. As early as 1967, for example, Mobil's president at that time, Rawleigh Warner, also sat on Time Inc.'s board of directors.

Despite its historic ties to Time magazine, Mobil was not reluctant during the 1980s to take legal action against U.S. mass media institutions over which it had no control. According to a 1988 book by former Time-Life Broadcast Chairman Richard Clurman, entitled Beyond Malice: The Media's Years of Reckoning, in the 1980s Mobil created a new $10 million insurance policy for its top 100 executives "to cover their costs should any of them find a reason to sue for libel" any U.S. mass media institutions that print articles about them which the Mobil executives don't like.

Newsweek magazine's parent company, The Washington Post, was sued for $100 million by then-Mobil President William Tavoulareas in the 1980s, for example, after the newspaper printed a front-page article which, according to Clurman's Beyond Malice book, charged Mobil's then-president "with setting up his 24-year-old son in a multimillion dollar oil shipping business, which profited mightily from its special relationship with Mobil."

In 1987, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. found the Washington Post story on Mobil's then-president "substantially true" and ruled that "an adversarial stance"--even in relation to Mobil--"is fully consistent with professional investigative reporting." When the then-Mobil president appealed this court decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to even consider reviewing the anti-Mobil, pro-freedom-of-the-press verdict.

(Downtown 10/24/90)

Truthout's Moyers/Schumann Foundation Connection

On its website, the Truthout.org alternative media group makes the following claim:

“…We are almost entirely reader-supported. There is absolutely no controlling financial interest behind this organization. Over 95% of our financing comes from small, individual donations. The remainder comes from a small number of grants…We depend solely upon our readership for survival, and so we answer to them alone.”

Yet according to the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy’s Form 990 filing for 2007, Truthout.org was given a grant of $500,000 by the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy “for general support to strengthen editorial content through 2008.”

The president of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy that subsidizes the Truthout.org website is Bill Moyers, the former Johnson White House Press Secretary turned-PBS show producer/host. Besides funding the Truthout.org web site, the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy also owned stock in the following corporations in 2008: Goldman Sachs; American International Group; Fannie Mae; J.P. Morgan Chase; Wachovia; Washington Mutual; Wells Fargo; Exxon Mobil; Chevron; ConocoPhilips; Royal Dutch Shell; General Motors; Ford Motor; Time Warner; Time Warner Cable; Time Warner Telecom; Viacom; CBS; Yahoo; Microsoft; Google; General Electric/NBC; Disney/ABC; United Technologies; Boeing; United Health Group; Starbucks; McDonald’s; and Coca-Cola

Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media & Democracy also gave the Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR] alternative media group a grant of $500,000 in 2007. In addition, the Institute for Public Affairs/In These Times magazine alternative media publication was given a $200,000 grant by the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy, while the Independent Media Institute/AlterNet alternative media group was given a $500,000 grant by Moyers’ foundation in 2007.

Between May 1, 2007 and April 30, 2008, the “non-profit” Truthout.org’s total revenues of $1,979,,617 exceeded its total expenses of $1,699,495 by over $290,000, according to its Form 990 filing for 2007. The same Truthout.org financial statement also indicated that the president of the “non-profit” Truthout.org alternative media group, Marc Ash, was paid an annual salary of $207,933 in 2008.

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 15

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-14.)

After the FCC allowed then-Voice owner Murdoch to purchase Metromedia’s television stations in the United States—despite FCC regulations which prohibited U.S. television stations being owned by foreign businesspeople—the right-wing Australian-born global media baron needed to quickly raise more cash to help finance his entrance into the world of U.S. broadcasting during the 1980s. To raise an additional $55 million, he decided to sell the Voice and his stable of Voice writers to the then-Hartz Mountain Industries owner and NYU trustee Leonard Stern in June 1985. Murdoch earned a net profit of about $30 million (in 1980s money) from buying the Voice in 1977 and selling it in 1985.

Former Voice owner Stern, a then-billionaire like Rupert Murdoch, described himself in 1985 as “right of center on defense issues,” according to the New York Times (6/28/85). And a few weeks after Stern purchased the Voice in 1985, the Times reported that “some Voice employees” were “uncomfortable existing under the same corporate roof with Hartz…” and “some Voice staffers speculate that the desire to recoup some respectability he may have lost because of Hartz’s problems could have motivated him to purchase the newspaper…” Stern’s Hartz Mountain Industries had just pled guilty to some white-collar crimes and antitrust law violations. The Times (7/7/85) also reported the following in July 1985, in reference to the billionaire New Jersey real estate developer who owned the Voice alternative media conglomerate between 1985 and 2000.

“Mr. Stern says he intends to take the same brand of…tenacious management to the Voice…And he is convinced that he has captured a prize: `It was the best media property that’s been offered to me in a long time. Hands down.’”

After NYU expanded eastward and moved its students into high-rise East Village dormitories, NYU trustee Stern also decided to move the Voice’s editorial offices closer to the East Village during the early 1990s. Yet although the Voice’s pre-tax profits exceeded $8 million per year in 1991, local advertisers had started purchasing less classified ad space in Stern’s newspapers by the early 1990s.

By the 1990s, Voice staff writers and senior editors apparently were earning more money than what most antiwar bloggers, antiwar indymedia journalists and grassroots antiwar activists earn from their antiwar work today. From a $6 million per year editorial budget, the owners of the Voice in 1996, for example, were apparently paying a full-time Voice staff writer $51,000 per year and a Voice senior editor $52,000 per year in 1996. And the Voice’s editor-in-chief was being paid $125,000 per year as long ago as 1996.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

June 2008 Update on Post-1996 Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History:

Despite its parent company's annual revenues of over $80 million per year, the journalistic quality of the Village Voice newspaper has, predictably, continued to deteriorate since the October 2005 merger of the New Times alternative media conglomerate with the Village Voice alternative media conglomerate created the Village Voice Media alternative media monopoly.

According to the New York Times (10/24/05), 53 percent of the Village Voice Media’s shares are owned by a trust which Village Voice Media chairman James Larkin and Village Voice Media executive editor, Michael Lacey, control—that is financially backed by a Boston-based private equity firm, Alta Communications. In addition, a minority share of the Village Voice alternative media monopoly is held by Wall Street-based investors like Goldman Sachs, Weiss Peck & Greer and Trimaran Capital Partners.

There’s apparently a possibility that the Village Voice staff writers who haven’t yet been laid-off by Michael Lacey and his Boston Back Bay and Wall Street financial backers since 2005 will be going on strike on July 1, 2008, when their existing union contract is set to expire. But until full control of the Village Voice Media’s alternative media monopoly is democratically shifted to the U.S. anti-corporate and anti-war counter-cultural communities and its staff employees in the various cities where it distributes its weekly newspapers, freedom of the press in the U.S. alternative media world will continue to be threatened by alternative media corporatization and U.S. special corporate interests in the 21st-century.

Next: At Age 42 lyrics

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 14

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-13.)

Although former Voice editor/publisher Schneiderman apparently did not find it objectionable to visit Murdoch in his New York Post office, to chat with the Australian right-winger about the Voice and about the Post’s battle with the News, Schneiderman apparently didn’t like to chat with Voice writers during the 1980s. As the New York Times (6/28/85) noted in 1985, “Mr. Schneiderman left the New York Times, where he was assistant editor…to become editor-in-chief of the Voice, but only after his appointment was delayed several months at the insistence of the Voice’s staff” and “Mr. Schneiderman adopted a policy of not socializing with anyone, which he still largely observes…” Schneiderman was willing, however, to socialize with other U.S. Establishment figures, apparently, as a member of the elite Council on Foreign Relations group during the 1980s.

In the Murdoch-Schneiderman Era, the Voice’s paid circulation started to drop, its appeal to people under 25 started to decline, and only 25 percent of its readers were actually residents of Manhattan—despite its large number of Manhattan resident-oriented classified ads. But because its classified ad publishing business had expanded greatly during the Murdoch-Schneiderman Era [before being ultimately hurt by the internet competition of Craig’s list in the 21st-century], its profitability increased to $5 million per year [in 1980s money] in pre-tax profits, despite the early 1980s decline in circulation. During this same period, the Voice axed its then-media criticism columnist, Alexander Cockburn. In The Nation (9/7/85), Cockburn later asserted that “The Voice is…spawned with Democratic reform politics and self-regard” and “Rolling Stone and the Village Voice may be able to coin revenues for their repugnant proprietors but the future is not with them.”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 15

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 13

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-12.)

David Schneiderman, a former editor and top executive at the Village Voice alternative media conglomerate for many years before it merged with Michael Lacey’s New Times alternative media monopoly a few years ago, had secured an MA from Maryland’s Johns Hopkins University in 1970—not from a school of journalism, but from its “School of Advanced International Studies.” He had been quickly pushed into a deputy editor position at the New York Times, prior to being brought Downtown by Murdoch to manage Murdoch’s stable of Voice writers in the late 1970s.

Before assuming his role as Murdoch’s Voice editor in January 1979, “Schneiderman sat in an office for six months,…mapping his strategy until Partridge’s contract was up,” according to Barefaced Cheek. The same book also revealed in 1983 that Murdoch was “obviously happier” with Schneiderman as Voice editor and that “Murdoch…appears to enjoy his…meetings with Schneiderman” and “occasionally” Schneiderman was “on the receiving end of criticism for individual stories, mainly about Murdoch.” Murdoch by William Shawcross also noted that “Schneiderman received the occasional irate telephone call” from Murdoch during the early 1980s.

Barefaced Cheek also revealed that after the Voice printed in 1981 “a thinly-veiled suggestion that the Post was getting a tax reduction on its South Street office building because of its support for Edward Koch, the [then-New York City] mayor,…Murdoch’s senior henchmen phoned Schneiderman to tell him how badly Murdoch viewed it…” The same book also noted in 1983 that “Murdoch clearly trusts” former Voice publisher/president Schneiderman “as much as he trusts anyone working for a paper that does not relate to anything he knows about” and “when David Schneiderman went for one of his meetings about the Village Voice, he found Murdoch bubbling with enthusiasm for the impending battles with the News, asking advice on what moves he should make.”

Coincidentally, one of the first editorial decisions which former Murdoch Magazines editor Karen Durbin made, after Schneiderman named her as Voice editor in 1994 [before she was eventually replaced by a former editor of New York Newsday], was to publish an article that was critical of the New York Daily News owner with whom New York Post owner Murdoch then did “battle with.”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 14

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 12

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-11.)

Initially, Rupert Murdoch attempted to change the Voice’s editor immediately during the period when he owned the Village Voice alternative media monopoly. As Barefaced Cheek by Michael Leapman noted, “on the Voice the first thing Murdoch did was to try to replace the editor, Marianne Partridge.” The Australian global media baron apparently ordered the Voice editor to report to his New York Post office on January 11, 1977, where he informed her that she was now fired. But when the Voice staff protested against him giving the axe to then-Voice editor Partridge so soon after his purchase of the Voice, Murdoch decided to back off for another year. But during Partridge’s stint as Voice editor under Murdoch’s ownership, Murdoch sometimes telephoned the Voice office “to complain vociferously about stories, nearly always stories about himself or his papers,” according to Barefaced Cheek.

The same book also revealed that Murdoch “was angry when [then-Voice media critic Alexander] Cockburn wrote an article scoffing at Paul Rigby, the Australian cartoonist and an old friend, then working at the Post.” Murdoch also “phoned and said he did not see why he should be vilified in his own newspaper” when “he heard that [the then-left-liberal] Nat Hentoff…was preparing a critical article about the Post,” and “the Hentoff article did not in fact appear,” according to Barefaced Cheek.

On May 10, 1978, however, Murdoch again decided he needed to replace the Voice editor, so he apparently ordered his Voice publisher at that time, Bill Ryan, to fire Marianne Partridge. But again Voice staff complaints caused Murdoch to back off, and Partridge “got to stay—till January 1979, when Murdoch designee, David Schneiderman, would take over,” according to The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall of The `Village Voice'.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 13

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 11

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-10.)

In February 1976, then-Voice editor Tom Morgan chose to publish a previously-classified copy of a House Committee Report On The CIA—the Pike Report—which had been leaked to the Voice by then-CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr (who later in the 20th century became a reporter for NPR). But then-U.S. Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller’s son-in-law, Morgan, shortly afterwards decided to resign as Voice editor in September 1976. So Felker next brought in a then-Rolling Stone magazine editor from the outside, Marianne Partridge, to manage his stable of Voice writers.

Australian global media baron Rupert Murdoch then figured it was an appropriate time to gobble-up New York magazine and the Voice [before eventually deciding to purchase the U.S. television stations of Metromedia in the late 1980s and set up a fourth television network, Fox Television, and a right-wing propaganda cable broadcasting organization, Fox News], apparently to reduce expected local media criticism of the way he planned to abuse power as the new foreign owner of the previously-liberal New York Post daily newspaper. Using about $6 million of his recently-acquired New York Post’s general funds and about $1.5 million of his Australian-based News America Company general funds, Murdoch gained control of both New York magazine and the Voice in January 1977, for an eventual cost of about $25 million.

The right-wing Australian global media baron then reached an out-of-court settlement with his former friend, Clay Felker, after Felker went to court to try to block Murdoch’s takeover of the Voice between 1977 and 1985. Since Felker, personally, didn’t own the majority of stock in the then-merged New York magazine/Village Voice company during the New York Magazine/Clay Felker Era (in which Felker took home a salary of $120,000 per year in 1970s money for being the Voice’s executive editor), Felker couldn’t stop the majority of New York magazine/Voice stock from being sold to Rupert Murdoch by twelve other stockholders during the late 1970s.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 12

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 10

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-9.)

During the New York magazine/Clay Felker Era of the Village Voice alternative media monopoly’s history, readers of the Voice apparently grew even more dissatisfied with the newspaper than they had been during the Carter Burden Era, since it became clear that the newspaper had no philosophical or moral anchor anymore. As The Great American Newspaper recalled:

“To any outside observer, it was obvious by early 1975 that the Village Voice was publishing less, not of quantity, but of substance, than it had ever published before…The Village Voice had stopped making trends that others would follow. It had begun itself to follow trends. It was covering—reacting to—events. It was publishing stuff that everyone else in publishing published. It had ceased to be the paper where a new writer could always be discovered, or a new idea always discussed…”

The same book also noted why Voice staff people grew more dissatisfied with the Voice during the New York magazine/Clay Felker Era:

“The crew of editors that came in under Clay Felker…found themselves, to use Movement lingo, inside a participatory police state.

“The problem was that Clay Felker would come down to his new acquisition on Wednesdays for a lunchtime editorial meeting…where the contents and the cover of the next week’s issue would be decided upon and then would come down again on Monday afternoon…charging through the 5th floor, raging and storming about how this story and that picture were not right, how the cover was awful, how everything had to be changed, forcing them to tear up all their plans and start all over again at the last minute. They began to dread living under the gun with Clay…”

Former Voice executive editor-in-chief Felker was apparently not a very mellow guy to work under. As The Great American Newspaper revealed, Felker “threw…screaming fits, howling and wailing and bellowing so that everyone on the entire floor could hear him…” He also again raised the Voice’s newsstand cost to 60 cents (in 1970s money) in late 1976.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 11

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 9

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-8.)

To pick up another $5 million in 1970s money quickly, in June 1974 then-Village Voice owner Carter Burden and his Wall Street lawyer business partner, Bartle Bull, peddled the Voice off to the then-owner of the previously-competing New York magazine, Clay Felker—for about $2 million more than what Burden had paid to gain control of the Voice in 1970.

In exchange for agreeing to sell the Voice to New York magazine during the 1970s, Burden and Bull also received some New York Magazine/Village Voice Company stock.

Clay Felker and his New York magazine had been launched in the late 1960s by Felker with the financial backing of Aeneid Equities and super-rich folks like Seagram’s then-chairman of the board, Edgar Bronfman, and an investment banker named John Loeb. In 1968, New York magazine had lost $2 million, but by 1973 it had 400,000 readers and an annual profit that exceeded $400,000 in 1970s money. After Felker and the New York magazine corporate board decided it wanted to gobble up the previously-competing Voice, Felker appointed then-New York City powerbroker and Lazard Freres investment banker Felix Rohatyn to arrange the purchase of the Voice’s stable of writers and other properties from Burden.

A few months after merging the Voice and New York magazine, Felker hiked the Voice’s price from 25 cents to 35 cents in Manhattan in August 1974. Not satisfied with one price hike per year, Felker again increased the cost of the Voice to its readers to 50 cents in December 1974. Felker apparently also began to control the Voice’s editorial emphasis in an overt way, named himself the Voice Executive Editor-in-Chief and brought in former liberal New York City Mayor Lindsay’s press secretary (and former U.S. Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller’s son-in-law)—Tom Morgan—to be the Voice editor for awhile.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 10

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 8

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-7.)

As early as January 1970, the Voice was already controlled by the husband of the CBS media conglomerate board chairman’s stepdaughter--who was also the nephew of a Columbia University trustee and CBS, Lockheed and Pentagon weapons research think-tank director—and by a Wall Street lawyer. And during the Carter Burden Era of the early 1970s, the Voice moved its then-corporate headquarters to University Place and 11th Street in Manhattan and began to operate in a much more corporate-oriented way. As The Great American Newspaper recalled:

“In March of 1970, the paper raised its price to 20 cents an issue. That was only the start of a new profit drive ordered by its absentee owner…The drive continued—the price went up to 25 cents in May 1973…The rates for ads increased…and…so did the number of them…The audience they had was capable of being milked far more than it already was in support of the Voice, overhead was low…and profits actually reached a high of 14 cents on the dollar in 1973…”

Although Burden paid one of the Voice’s founding owners, Dan Wolf, a $72,000 (in early 1970s money) salary to continue to be the newspaper’s editor, Voice writers were initially not paid much more under Burden’s ownership than they had been under the Voice’s original owners. Voice columnists, for instance, were paid less than $95 a week at a time when the Voice’s market value already exceeded $3 million in early 1970s money. This caused some Voice staff people to start grumbling and Voice staff salaries were finally increased somewhat near the end of the Carter Burden Era. Yet as late as March 20, 1974, Voice staff photographer Fred McDarrah made the following complaint in a letter to a Voice manager:

“First of all it is clear to me that the Voice can afford to give me more money because it is the largest paid weekly in the country and there is no two ways about it, it is profitable to somebody…The paper grows in circulation, advertising, income and future profits but I as an individual employee do not benefit by this…It is a poor excuse and a deception to say the Voice can’t pay more…”

The “somebody” to whom the Voice was extremely profitable during the Carter Burden Era was, of course, its then-owner: Carter Burden. By early 1974 it was discovered that he “was dipping into the paper’s cash reserves to liquidate his bank obligations,” according to The Great American Newspaper. The same book also described the reason the super-rich Voice owner suddenly needed to use the Voice’s surplus cash to pay off his personal debts, instead of to finance more investigative reporting:

“His level of annual income was more than handsome enough to suit all but a handful of people in the United States of America for the rest of their lives, but Carter Burden considered himself to be in financial trouble…To the existing credit crunch of his bank loans had been added, in recent months, the extra burden of heavy alimony for his now-divorced wife Amanda, and the decline of his stock portfolio…”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 9

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 7

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-6.)

By 1968, Mailer had sold 5 percent of his Voice stock to the then-owner of Manhattan’s WMCA radio station, Peter Straus (who later became the director of the U.S. government’s propaganda agency, Voice of America, in 1977). But it wasn’t until 1970 that the three founding owners of the Voice sold control of the publication to super-rich members of the U.S. Establishment and to outside corporate interests.

In 1968 students at Columbia University had occupied university buildings for a week in support of six demands, before New York City’s “liberal” mayor at the time, [the now-deceased] John Lindsay, ordered his cops to clear both Columbia’s buildings and its campus of students, in what turned out to be a bloody police rampage. One of the six demands made was that then-Columbia University Trustee William Burden—who also then sat on the corporate boards of CBS, Lockheed and American Metal Climax—resign his position as then-chairman of the executive committee of the Pentagon’s university-sponsored weapons research think-tank: the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA].

http://www.ida.org/

IDA’s then-executive committee chairman, Burden, was the uncle of 19th Century U.S. robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt’s great-grandson, Carter Burden.

[The now-deceased] Carter Burden was also then married to the stepdaughter of the then-CBS Chairman of the Board, [the now-deceased] William Paley. CBS Board Chairman Paley, like Carter Burden’s uncle, was also a Columbia University Trustee. After the Voice printed a few articles which were very critical of the Columbia University Administration’s handling of its 1968 student revolt, Carter Burden apparently became interested in buying the Voice. Burden also apparently decided it might help his political career in 1969 if he started negotiating with then-Voice owner-editor Wolf about purchasing the Voice.

Just before Burden started a 1969 primary campaign for a NYC council seat, “a profile of him and his [then] wife Amanda…appeared” in the Voice, “followed by an editorial endorsement from Dan Wolf (in which Wolf revealed to the readers of the Village Voice that Burden was…`the best representative of the new politics running in the primary’…but not the fact that he was a prospective buyer of the newspaper they were reading),” according to The Great American Newspaper. Then, in January 1970, Burden turned both Wolf and Fancher into millionaires overnight by paying them $3 million for 56 percent of the 70 percent of Voice stock which Wolf and Fancher had come to own by that time. Burden also acquired an additional 24 percent of Voice stock by buying most of Norman Mailer and Mailer’s lawyer’s remaining Voice stock, as well as WMCA radio station owner’s Straus’ Voice stock. A Wall Street lawyer who was Burden’s business partner in his Voice acquisition, Bartle Bull, also obtained Voice stock at this time.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 8

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 6

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-5.)

By the end of the 1960s, according to The Underground Press In America by Robert Glessing, “most underground editors, particularly the political radicals,” now found “the Voice timid, if not downright traitorous to their cause.” Jeff Shero, the then-editor of the now-defunct Rat newspaper (another Lower East Side-based counter-cultural newspaper of the late 1960s and early 1970s) told the now-defunct Evergreen Review in 1969, for instance, the following:

“I don’t think it’s sins of commission so much as sins of omission that’s the trouble with the Voice. Like the 21 Panthers now in jail on these trumped up charges. The Voice hasn’t said a word about it, not one word.”

Lesbian and gay male activists were also dissatisfied with the Voice’s coverage of the Gay Liberation Movement, when the Lindsay Administration’s cops in New York City raided the Stonewall gay bar and provoked the Stonewall Rebellion of June 28, 1969. In November 1969, about twenty-four Gay Liberation Movement activists picketed the Voice’s editorial office and representatives went inside to speak with then-Voice publisher Fancher. The gay liberation activists “told Fancher…that they wanted free ad space in his paper, a gay community news section, a gay editorial slant, and gay writers hired on staff” but “to none of this would Fancher give in,” according to The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall Of The `Village Voice’.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 7

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 5

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-4.)

Ironically, despite the big profits their newspaper took in during the Viet Nam War Era by marketing counter-cultural ideas and descriptions of street protests to its new antiwar readers, neither then-Voice co-owner Wolf nor then-Voice co-owner Fancher “ever marched in a civil rights or antiwar demonstration,” according to The Great American Newspaper. The then-Voice owners were also apparently not very eager to recruit many African-American editors or staff writers during the 1960s era of African-American mass rebellion. As Kevin McAuliffe noted in The Great American Newspaper, “for all the public hand-wringing over White Guilt and Black Power” the Voice “never had a black editor or a black staff writer” during the 1960s.

To attempt to give people in Manhattan a genuinely alternative newspaper during the Viet Nam War Era, Walter Bowart and Allen Katzman scraped together about $5,000 in 1960s money to launch the now-defunct East Village Other (EVO) alternative newspaper from an office at 10th Street and Avenue A, on October 1, 1965. Within three months, its paid-circulation had increased from 2,500 to 7,000 and it was being published on a regular bi-weekly basis.

The Voice apparently felt a competing Lower East Side-based alternative newspaper threatened its profitability. When Voice publisher Fancher heard that Voice news editor-turned-Voice columnist John Wilcock was “going around the Village telling people that the Voice was a dying newspaper and that EVO was `the voice of the future,’ he called him into his office and told him he could not stay at the Voice,” according to The Great American Newspaper. But despite the Voice’s attempt to discourage alternative journalists in the neighborhood from offering Manhattan readers a genuinely counter-cultural newspaper to choose from every other week, by 1969 the East Village Other’s paid circulation had jumped to 45,000 and it looked like its paid circulation would eventually exceed the Voice’s paid circulation.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 6

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 4

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-3.)

Its lack of hipness, however, did enable the Voice to suddenly attract a large group of culturally-straight New York Times junkies, who were desperate to read any newspaper, after Manhattan’s newspaper strike began on December 7, 1962. By the time the strike ended on April 1, 1963, the Voice’s weekly circulation had jumped from 17,000 to 40,000, it had begun to corner the West Village and Lower East Side market for printing classified ads, and it was on its way to becoming a big money-making machine for its owners—especially since it wasn’t very generous about paying much money to its regular writers. And as U.S. military intervention in Viet Nam escalated during the 1960s—thus creating a much larger antiwar, counter-cultural market for alternative antiwar newspapers—the Voice’s circulation jumped from 41,000 in 1965 to 138,000 in 1969.

After 1969, however, the number of Voice readers failed to increase very much, although its classified ad printing business guaranteed [until the impact of Craig’s list was felt] that it always remained profitable—even when its editorial contents didn’t excite many West Village and Lower East Side residents in Manhattan.

An additional reason the Voice’s circulation increased during the 1960s was that it apparently was helped by the Establishment-oriented Hearst media conglomerate. As The Great American Newspaper revealed, “Dick Deems, an officer in the Hearst publishing organization…eventually interceded on the paper’s behalf when it was having distributor problems” and “when that happened, the Voice got on more newsstands everywhere, which boosted its growth.” Not surprisingly, the Voice was never very eager to publish many exposes’ of the Hearst Dynasty’s media conglomerate.

By 1968, about 18 percent of the Voice’s income was coming from its classified ad sales and about 62 percent from its display ad sales—which sold for about $1,100 per full-page in 1960s money. The number of ad inches printed per issue during the Viet Nam War Era rose from about 1,200 in 1965 to about 3,300 in 1970, as the war escalated. Like the New York Times, about two-thirds of the newspaper was devoted to publishing commercial ads, although the Voice still claimed to be a counter-cultural publication.

Yet despite its many ads and post-1962 newspaper strike profitability, the Voice’s owners did not begin distributing it for free until the late 1990s and, instead increased its newsstand price to 15 cents in 1966 money in May 1966. By 1969, Voice owners were making a profit that exceeded $260,000 per year in 1960s money from their originally money-losing weekly newspaper.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 5

The 'Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 3

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-2.)

Even in its early days, the Voice was not considered hip enough by some people in Manhattan. Initially, Voice co-founder Mailer wrote a column for the newspaper which he owned. But, as J. Kirk Sale noted in a December 1969 article in the now-defunct counter-cultural Evergreen Review magazine:

“Norman Mailer quit after 13 columns because `the Voice was square, not hip.’…Mailer was…right. The Voice was square, patriotic, safe, liberal, and middle class. Still is…”

The Voice’s initial news editor, John Wilcock, also told Evergreen Review the following in 1969:

“The Voice was never far out. I was on to things before they heard of them, and they wouldn’t touch them till they became legitimized somehow, someone else picked them up and said they were OK…It’s become really, a part of the `establishment.’”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 4

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 2

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for part 1.)

Voice co-founder Wolf was the husband of a social worker. After his involvement in the world of Manhattan alternative journalism enabled him to become a millionaire by the early 1970s, Wolf turned neoconservative and eventually moved into a City Hall office in 1977 to be an aide and close adviser to then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

Voice co-founder Fancher was a Lake Placid, New York prep school graduate who had become a Manhattan doctor. He had also inherited $30,000 (in 1950s money) worth of Orange County Telephone Company stock from his grandfather.

Fancher used part of his inherited utility company stock to come up with the $5,000 that he initially contributed to launch the Voice. [Now-deceased] Best-selling Novelist Mailer also put up $5,000. In exchange for his $5,000 investment, Mailer and his lawyer received 40 percent of the Voice’s stock. In exchange for his $5,000 investment, Fancher and his close friend, Dan Wolf, received 60 percent of the Voice’s stock.

The idea of naming their Manhattan alternative newspaper, “The Village Voice,” however, was apparently not thought up by either Mailer, Wolf or Fancher, but by a woman named Patricia Woods, who worked as an English teacher during the 1950s. Wolf took the title of Voice editor-in-chief, but a hip guy named John Wilcock was named the Voice’s first news editor. Other editorial employees initially included Florence Ellerbert and Jerry Tallmer, who was a former editor of Dartmouth College’s student newspaper. Although Wolf was approaching his 40th birthday when the Voice was first published, “in the first issue he would lie and say he was only 33,” according to The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall of the `Village Voice’ by Kevin McAuliffe.

Before the 1962 newspaper strike by local union people shut down all of Manhattan’s daily major newspapers for 114 days, the Voice was not much of a success, financially. In 1955, it only had a circulation of about 3,000, sold for 5 cents and lost up to $1,000 a week in 1950s money. It didn’t publish many classified ads, though, in those days and, therefore, consisted of only 12 pages.

To keep the Voice from going bankrupt in 1956, Mailer had to pour in about $10,000 more from his literary profits and Fancher had to shovel in another $10,000 from his utility company stock inheritance. But the Voice still had difficulty making money until the 1962 newspaper strike. Between October 1955 and the start of this strike, about $60,000 was lost by the then-alternative newspaper and then-Voice editor-in-chief Wolf had to be “supported by the income brought in by his wife, Rhoda, a social worker,” according to The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall of the `Village Voice’. The Voice’s circulation, though, had risen to about 17,000 on the eve of the big Manhattan daily newspaper strike.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 3

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 1

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly)

“The Village Voice became not something there because of the need for it, to give a voice to voiceless people, but a prize of booty on the battlefield of venture capitalism, something to be looked at and fought over, put into the portfolio of a corporation, used by one individual on the make after another…As of 1977, it had become part of a super-empire…”

--Kevin McAuliffe in The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall of the `Village Voice’ in 1978

Denver’s “alternative” weekly newspaper, the Denver Westword, may not be publicizing on a regular basis the current efforts of local antiwar activists to protest against the Democratic Party-controlled Congress’s failure to end the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and impeach Bush and Cheney, by mobilizing antiwar Denver residents to demonstrate outside the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

One reason might be because the Denver Westword is owned by the Phoenix-based Village Voice/New Times “alternative” weekly newspaper chain that also owns the Village Voice, the LA Weekly, the Seattle Weekly, the San Francisco Weekly, the Minneapolis City Pages, the Phoenix New Times, the Dallas Observer, the Orange County Weekly, the Houston Press, the Cleveland Scene, the Nashville Scene, the St. Louis Riverfront Times, the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, the Miami New Times and the Kansas City Patch. In fact, the free circulation of the “alternative” weekly newspapers which the Denver Westword 's out-of-state parent company owns represents 25 percent of the free weekly circulation of all U.S. “alternative” weekly newspapers.

But prior to the 2005 merger between the Wall Street bankers who had purchased the Village Voice from former Voice owner Leonard Stern for $170 million in 2000 and New Times media company owner Michael Lacey, the Voice was also not controlled by its original owners. For--like current Voice/Westword owner Michael Lacey--the Wall Street bankers, former Voice owner Leonard Stern and former Voice owner Rupert Murdoch did not provide the initial money or initial labor that was needed to launch the Village Voice on October 26, 1955. The Voice was actually started by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and Norman Mailer—using money from Mailer’s bank account and from Fancher’s inheritance.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 2