READING BETWEEN THE HEADLINES. Gawker's latest post on the Nick Sylvester fabrication fiasco says that the The Village Voice "has eliminated its once-impressive fact-checking department" and takes note of a few arguably relevant Sylvester headlines from his prouder days:

What a Fool Believes
Without A Prayer
Bullshit Happens

But didja happen to notice Sylvester's headlines in the current issue?

"Do you wanna kiss me?"
E-thics (Subhead: Morals get fuzzy as biz tries to embrace the blog world)
Liars Clubbed

Coincidence? Conspiracy?? Cri de coeur???

Gawker cites a rumor that suspended senior associate editor Sylvester (who until yesterday also wrote for Pitchfork) isn't just young but "fatigued," too. Perhaps more fact-checkers could have lessened the poor boy's load. I really do mean that: There's a reason why fact-checkers exist(ed), and I think I see a direct correspondence between workload and fabrication in a number of these cases.

The controversial "Do you wanna kiss me?" article was disappeared from the Voice site; now it seems that it might be missing from Google cache, too. I think it might have turned up somewhere else, but I can't locate the link at the moment--sorry!

Meanwhile, I wonder if the sudden rash of bizarre problems at the Voice (like this Nat Hentoff column only appearing online while the previous week's column reran in the hard copy due to "a production error" acknowledged in print but not, it seems, online) has anything to do with a certain someone Jim Knipfel calls Baldy Fuckwad.

Too bad the esteemed Sidney Schanberg bailed and the paper allowed the long, glorious run of Press Clips to come to an end. This would have been a great story for that column. Maybe Schanberg could be hired back as the paper's ombudsman.

Previous Sylvester coverage here.

Here's more coverage (with attitude!) from Gothamist.