• by Ray Schultz , January 20, 2025

David Schneiderman, former editor in chief and chief executive of The Village Voice, has died at age 77. 

The cause was pneumonia caused by lymphocytic leukemia, according to The New York Times. 

Schneiderman, an editor at The New York Times Op-Ed page, joined the Voice in 1978 when it was owned by Rupert Murdoch. 

At first distrusted by the staff, he is credited with professionalizing the counter-culture weekly, and with hiring journalists like Wayne Barrett, who did early investigative pieces on real estate developer Donald J. Trump, and Teresa Carpenter, a crime reporter who garnered for The Voice its first Pulitzer Prize.

He also appointed Karen Durbin as the second female editor at the Voice in 1994. 

Schneiderman steered the Voice through tumultuous events, including several changes of ownership and removal of the newsstand price so that it became a free paper in 1996. He finally resigned in 2006 when he felt like “a potted plant” in meetings, the Times reports.  

The Voice said it was halting content production in 2018, one year after shuttering its print edition, but it is again posting new stories on its website.

Schneiderman is survived by a daughter, Kate Schneiderman, two stepchildren, four grandchildren and his brother Stuart.