Tom Finkel will take the reins of struggling alt-weekly the Village Voice, the Voice Media Group said Monday.
Finkel comes to the New York publication from the company's St. Louis paper, the Riverfront Times. He was also the managing editor at Miami New Times for eight years and edited City Pages in Minneapolis for five years.
He joins a paper that has been hard-hit by the downturn in print advertising and battered by high-profile layoffs.
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In May, Voice editor Will Bourne and deputy editor Jessica Lustig resigned after being ordered to lay off staff. A week later, the paper jettisoned long-time gossip columnist Michael Musto, food critic Robert Sietsema and theater critic Michael Feingold.
Food critic Tejal Rao and staff writer Nick Pinto resigned in protest over the blood-letting.
Voice Media Group expressed confidence in Finkel's ability to change the paper's course.
“Tom understands our media business at a high level,” Christine Brennan, Voice Media Group executive editor, said in a statement. “He has been one of our most progressive editors in balancing print and web journalism. I know I can entrust the Voice to him, and that he’ll do great work there.”
In addition to Finkel's appointment, the Voice bolstered its writing staff earlier this month. It hired Tessa Stuara, a former staff writer at Santa Cruz Weekly; Anna Merlan, formerly of the Dallas Observer; and Albert Samaha, who previously worked at SF Weekly in San Francisco.