When film critic Nathan Lee signed on at The Village Voice in October 2006, he said, in reaction to the staff cuts and other problems then plaguing the paper (even as it was patting itself on the back on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary): "I came into this at a point where the Voice had been bought," he said. "The change was done; it had happened. I'm coming into it afterwards and my sense is, 'What is still valuable here; what can we still do? How can the Voice continue to have a strong, lively, influential and really smart sense of film coverage?' That's what I'm really invested in at this point." The paper turned out to be invested in other things, and now, eighteen months after claiming his first-ever regular staff position ("I've never had health benefits in my entire adult life"), Lee has been let go, from the Voice. Lee's own announcement of the unhappy news reads as follows: "In great Village Voice tradition, I was abruptly laid off today for 'economic reasons.' My employment at the paper ends immediately: someone else, alas, will be tasked with specifying the precise shade of periwinkle frosting atop the cupcakes in My Blueberry Nights. And so I am, as they say, 'looking for work,' though presumably not as a staff film critic as such jobs no longer appear to exist."

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