"Today is kind of a sucky day." So said Village Voice owner Peter Barbey on Friday in announcing to the staff that the alternative weekly will be shutting down, reports Gothamist. Barbey purchased the 63-year-old New York City paper three years ago, and in a statement cited the "increasingly harsh economic realities facing those creating journalism and written media."
USA Today notes the Voice went online-only a year ago in an effort to survive. Half the staff, which numbered between 15 and 20, will stay on to "wind things down" and assist with an online archive; the rest were let go Friday. The HuffPost rounds up people's "best memories" of the Voice—which was founded by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, and Norman Mailer in 1955—here. (More Village Voice stories.)