Who's the Boss?

Man, alive! You turn your head away from the media empire for one second and what happens? They start running the bath and plugging in every toaster in the house. By now all you vigilant media hounds have had four early afternoon highballs in response to the news that space enthusiast and UFO believer Tony Ortega is the new Editor In Chief of that most venerable rag at 58 Cooper Square, the Village Voice. We want to add our voices to -- how do you say? -- the bienvenidos and say we're relieved to see that a person of color replaced that despicable racist Blum. Hopefully Ortega will return the Voice to the high journalistic standard that brought us "Ask a Mexican" and the recent claymation tribute to James Byrd Jr.

To help Mara Altman flourish in the Ortega system, we've culled some recon:
-- Mr. Ortega is an amateur astronomer.
-- A careful newshound, he's known to keep one eye trained on a television in his office, choosing to do most of his editorial critiques after a writer's story runs, via email.
-- Though the New Times Village Voice Media press release made mention of his bygone mohawk days, he's still on the bleeding edge. Just check out this hot story about him making "a leap of faith" and riding the train to work.

Some selected reading to help get acquainted with the new guy:

"There is no doubt that something real passed over Phoenix on the night of March 13. Hundreds of people reported what they saw passing slowly in the sky. Two New Times writers were among those witnesses."

--From The Great UFO Cover-Up in the New Times Village Voice Media mothership (get it?), Phoenix New Times.


"Yes, I'm a cardholding member of the Evil Empire, a New Times hack who's been at it for ten years, the boogeyman every Birkenstock-wearing hippie burnout still clinging to a paycheck at alt-weeklies sees in his sleep, coming to take his job and turn his paper into a soulless corporate moneymaker. Have keyboard, will travel. My corporate cookie-cutting overmasters have parachuted me into four of their newspapers in five different stints (Phoenix, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Kansas City, and now Fort Lauderdale) like the merciless mercenary that I am...Kansas City was a tough case. I think of it as my Fallujah."

--From a letter to the editor, posted at Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.

Related links:
-- The Media Mob.
-- Ortega's shocking series on edgy sex from New Times Broward Palm Beach, which informs us that "sex has come a long way since it was about a man climbing on top of his wife once a week." (Got that, Mara?) Part two.
-- UFO Maps.