Sad news about a new friend: Village Voice Press Clips columnist Keach Hagey is no longer in that, or any, position at the paper. It seems that her trial period has expired, and Editor Tony Ortega has decided that the inexperienced young ones that his equally inexperienced predecessor put into positions for which they were unprepared (call it empathy) are going to have to enjoy the opportunity to learn their craft elsewhere. (Peter Braunstein would not approve.) We're sort of sorry to see Keach go—since we've stopped grading her a few weeks ago, we haven't had to read Press Clips at all. Good thing she's got the band to fall back on.

Last week we shocked ourselves—and others—by actually enjoying Keach Hagey's Village Voice Press Clips column. Would this bonhomie survive another week? You can probably guess, but you might as well click through anyway for the full report.

Remember last week, when Keach Hagey's Press Clips column sort of put us into a state of incoherence? Well, we've been properly medicated and we're ready to give it another shot. Column the sixth comes in at 560 words, signifying a possible rising trend. And how is it? Well, it's actually... kinda good!

While grading Keach Hagey's Village Voice Press Clips column each week hasn't gotten any easier, at least now it takes less time. From a first column of 1,306 words, Keach's output was reduced to 899 in her second installment. The third column came in at an economical 495, and last week saw a nearly-identical count of 525 words. This week yields the lowest number yet, with a slim and trim 473 words. We had Balk, who has been bitching about this feature since its inception, parse all 473.

Last week we noted some improvement in Voice Press Clips columnist Keach Hagey's third column. We've been waiting patiently since then to see what Week Four would bring. It just came in over the RSS wire, so let's take a look!

Three weeks have passed and—like some tiny tortoise emerging from its egg and making its way to the water it so desperately needs to survive [Note: We are not exactly sure if this is a tortoise, it could be some other animal, like probably a turtle?]—Keach Hagey's Press Clips column continues to, if not exactly thrive, survive. Once again, we'll take a close look at the column and offer our critique.

We're not sure how much longer we'll have Keach Hagey's Press Clips to kick around, but there it is in the front of this week's Voice, nestled amidst the comforting, hairy bosoms of Michael Musto and Nat Hentoff, and a mere eleven pages away from that Ultragrrrl-burned-at-the-stake cover. As is the custom around these parts, let's take a close look. Has she settled in? Will we stay awake through the whole thing?

In the week before David Blum was 86'd from the Village Voice, he'd largely completed a remake of the poor alt weekly. Since Tony Ortega stepped into the editor's office on Friday, he's already begun tweaking with the layout of the paper himself, including the front of book, even while making the rounds and saying hello to each staff member. According to one source, in Ortega's early rejiggerings, the Press Clips column was killed—and that Keach Hagey will still cover media, but not in that classic form. Other staffers said they'd been told this wasn't true, and a Voice spokesperson agreed with them: "No, that's not at all what's happening." The paper closes late Monday nights, and Press Clips was online before noon last week, but has yet to make an appearance as of 1:50 p.m. today. Well, as near as we can tell on that website, which is only two steps up from that new abomination that the Daily News barfed onto the Internets the other day.

We've been waiting for weeks! Keach Hagey's debut as the Village Voice media critic has finally arrived. It's been perhaps overshadowed by some other events at the Voice recently, but even someone with a G.E.D. can recognize that this is an important event. The post-feminist electroclash-loving young lady has got some big, and often old, shoes to fill: Press Clips has previously been home to such folks as Syd Schanberg, Cynthia Cotts, and James Ledbetter. Let's grade her first column together!

Say there are two young reporters, working their way into the glamorous, ugly world of Manhattan reporterdom. One has a website—the other wants a website. And so the latter ganks the former's.

The Village Voice has, after "touching base" with pretty much every media reporter in town over the last few months, just yesterday anointed a media columnist: Keach Hagey.