The Village Voice, 36 Cooper Square, New York NY 10003, Tel: 212-475-3300 (editorial), 800-831-8080 (subs), Fax: 212-475-8944. $47.95/year (52 issues).

Founded in 1955 by a couple of tightly-wrapped bottom-line types, the Village Voice has had a long run as the elder statesperson, if you will, of this country's "underground" and "alternative" publications. From the start, the Voice was intensely interested in both politics and the arts. In its early days, this meant long pieces on the Bomb and the struggles of the city's left-liberal "reform" Democrats back-to-back with, oh, Norman Mailer's taking on the New York production of "Waiting for Godot." More recently, these two strains have been running together -- with the Voice's rainbow of columnists slugging it out over politicized "cultural" issues while political factionalism invades the pages of the new Voice Literary Supplement (VLS).

For anyone interested in either alternative politics or the arts (and not put off by this tabloid's relentlessly "downtown" attitude), the Voice can be a real bargain -- almost more in-your-face prose per week than one can find time to read, and still live a life. True to its origins, the Voice also continues to run long, uncompromising investigative pieces on subjects the established press refuses to touch -- e.g., the decades-old domestic spying apparatus run by the Anti-Defamation League (Voice, 1993-05-11).

-- Steve Badrich

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