A SIMPLE PLAN. Gabriel Sherman at the New York Observer writes that Chuck Eddy is the 17th employee to leave the Voice since it was taken over by New Times/"Village Voice" Media in November.

Who is Chuck Eddy? Sherman offers this:

"There have been many good music editors, but Chuck Eddy was the most efficient, most professional I worked with," said Voice senior editor and rock critic Robert Christgau on April 18. "He was fabulous to work with. He was the only editor who got his sections in not on time, but ahead of time. He was so easy to work with. He was great."

Eddy had signed the petition protesting the recent dismissal of James Ridgeway.

Sherman also reports that online managing editor Nathan Deuel and Web manager Akash Goyal are among the paper's recent departures.

Sherman's column identifies Michael Lacey as the person responsible for many of the changes at the Voice, which include getting rid of The Essay, the Bush Beat blog, and the Shelter, Press Clips, and Mondo Washington columns. Sherman's sources tell him of drastic cuts in the film review budget, lay-offs of two out of five copy editors, and the elimination of the three-person fact-checking staff.

In a telephone interview with Sherman, Lacey claimed that the changes are designed to create space for more magazine-style reported pieces and says that there is no place for commentary in the Voice.

"We have a reputation for doing hard news," said Lacey of his newspaper chain. "We call people up and get the information. We dig the records up. If people aren’t comfortable with that, they’ll have to find employment elsewhere."

It's really "so simple," according to Lacey: "It’s almost like reading See Dick Run. Our job is to go out and get the information about how the deal went down. All the punditry that goes on in your head at 2 in the morning is no more valuable than a sophomore in college debating over espresso. The deal is always more interesting and more complicated than you know sitting at your typewriter. Once you go out and start talking to people, you get a lot of new information."

Lacey's words about doing more reporting than punditry don't ring true to me in light of the fact-checking cuts. Fact checkers are an important part of the reporting process, yet they seem to have vanished under his aegis.

Furthermore, it's not clear whether Lacey can do anything but create a brain drain at the Voice. Months after his arrival, the paper has no permanent editor-in-chief. The cuts have been radical, but one would be hard-pressed to see any improvements, let alone evidence of the direction change Lacey claims to seek.

And the "wisdom" of that direction change is dubious. Lacey, who resides in Phoenix, Arizona, may be out of touch with the New York metropolitan market. At a time when national security issues have never been more relevant to the city, Lacey eliminated Ridgeway's Mondo Washington. Lacey claims to be moving the weekly Voice away from its distinctive mix of reporting towards a local reporting niche, but it's hard to see the wisdom of such a move when one considers how the city's ultra-competitive media market is already dense with well-staffed websites and broadcast news and daily periodicals as well as weeklies.

So far, the evidence suggests that Lacey's stated goals might not be his actual goals. "[Mr. Lacey] wants to cut the budget and fatten profits,” former Voice editor Karen Durbin told Sherman. Right now it does seem that "simple."

The more that quality staff drains away from the Voice, the more other media outlets and media entrepreneurs can use the brain drain to their advantage.

Here's Lisa Chamberlain's blog Polis on the subject. And here's more of the charming New Times/"Village Voice" Media point of view, from Robert Ferrigno. Both links courtesy of Romanesko.


BONUS: KEN "KARNAK" AULETTA

Sherman's article quotes media expert Ken Auletta:

"The original Voice was an iconoclastic newspaper,” said New Yorker media critic Ken Auletta, who covered city politics for The Voice in the early 70’s. "Increasingly, the paper became predictable. You would pick up a headline and know what’s in a story. Despite the fact it’s now free, you’d walk by it and not read it because you’d know what’s in it. I suppose I’m being unfair because I wasn’t reading it that often. And maybe I missed it, but there were few surprises."

Auletta's absolutely right: He's being unfair.

Photo: David Marc Fischer