NY alt-weekly editor forced out over Pope deathwatch cover

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If we've gone this pre-Scopes Trial in godless Gotham, maybe it's all over!

http://www.gawker.com/news/media/commentary/jeff-koyens-exit-interview-035157.php

Naturally, the NY Press site is inaccessible. I didn't think twice about it when I saw it on the cover last week. And it's Chuckie Schumer's House protege who called for SEIZING AND TRASHING THE PAPERS.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Hmm, wow. I noticed that cover last week, and it struck me as kind of tasteless, but that's hardly a first for Press covers.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:13 (twenty-one years ago)

i thot koyen was publisher now? whatever, it's a shitty rag anyway (tho i will admit i sometimes read a. white, if only to get infuriated.) (oh and matt taibibi or however you spell his name is cool.)

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:16 (twenty-one years ago)

how is the-death-of-a-living-person-will-be-funny "pre-Scopes Trial"?

New York Press has always sucked and has always had to do stuff like this to get any attention at all.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:21 (twenty-one years ago)

The trashing the newspaper thing is pretty gross. (So's the paper itself obv.)

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:25 (twenty-one years ago)

There's just this big disconnect, is the thing. To plenty of non-Catholics pretty much everything about Popedom seems kinda funny; I mean, it's a weird position that comes with a funny hat and a bulletproof bubble-car and this dude has been the pope so long that the whole concept of someone else being the pope is kind of strange, like someone else suddenly becoming Michael Jackson. He operates as a sort of bizarre celebrity-figure. But to Catholics, of course, the pope is this huge massive deal, in ways that I don't think are ever completely understood by everyone else. I mean, it's bizarre: the Pope is one of few widely-known figures on Earth that a lot of people in the western world actually think of as more important than just A Person, which can be a difficult thing for everyone else to remember.

That said, this cover is kinda beyond that: I mean, even reading the pope as just A Guy with A Job, it's pretty tasteless to be counting down to his death. And I'd say that about people on death row as soon as the pope.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:28 (twenty-one years ago)

(Better way of putting the above: I can't think of the pope as anything but just some guy with an important job, and it's sometimes jarring to remember that for lots of Catholics there's a level of divinity to him. And is there anyone else in the western world who's considered actually semi-divine? We tend to just not do that; our divinities and semi-divinities are all dead and gone. We just tend not to do Dalai Lama-style divinities.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Matt Taibbi wrote the piece, didn't he?

>how is the-death-of-a-living-person-will-be-funny "pre-Scopes Trial"?

It was being chickenshit enough to suspend an editor of an "alt" paper for showing insufficient obeisance to organized religion that I was labeling.

NYP's overall tone bugs me, but they have some uneven-to-good columnists.

Re (theoretical) excessive 'meanness' I'd just google C Hitchens on the Pope...

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:31 (twenty-one years ago)

The trashing the newspaper thing is pretty gross. (So's the paper itself obv.)

So's running for Mayor of New York City.

It was being chickenshit enough to suspend an editor of an "alt" paper for showing insufficient obeisance to organized religion that I was labeling.

Was that it? Or was it being chickenshit enough to follow whatever profit motive seems most useful (serve the anger and shock value and 'edge' market right up until you draw outside attention that will bother your advertisers)?

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:35 (twenty-one years ago)

I haven't read Hitchens on the pope and don't like the idea of defending him either way but the fact is that his version of figure-bashing tends to be rigorous about producing huge supporting This is a Bad Person argument and evidence, as opposed to kinda clownish "hahaha weird the pope's gonna kick off" stuff. I mean, whatever, there's that spectrum between calling Mother Theresa on what she actually did for the poor and just photoshopping her with some dude Cing on her Ts.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:36 (twenty-one years ago)

So that's what it takes for an editor to get fired from NY Press. BUDABOOM!!

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Monday, 7 March 2005 22:43 (twenty-one years ago)

nabisco
not semi divine, never semi divine, but as a direct conduit to god, slightly (and i use the wd slightly on purpose) more impt then the average man.

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 02:55 (twenty-one years ago)

I really don't give a damn about the 'profit motive' involved in putting it on the cover -- if it had just been inside the rag, likely no furor ensues -- but going all Salem on it is indefensible and nauseates me. NY is supposed to be "an island off the coast of America," which is why I can sort of stand it. Til now, maybe.

Or as Lauren Bacall said in the Times a couple weeks ago, "New York was much more exciting when it wasn't all about money."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 15:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes it was much more exciting when it was all about Lauren Bacall.

I think Aaron wins this thread.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 17:45 (twenty-one years ago)

My sister's boyfriend is now interim editor of the NY Press.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 19:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Rotsa ruck! At least they've still got Cockburn.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 8 March 2005 19:24 (twenty-one years ago)

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