Phoenix names new editor

The Boston Phoenix has named a new editor. Here’s the press release, hot off the wire:

Lance Gould, a journalist with 20 years’ experience at leading New York-based newspapers and magazines, will become the next Editor of the Boston Phoenix.

Gould will report to Peter Kadzis, who as Executive Editor of the Phoenix Media/Communications Group oversees the editorial operations of the Boston Phoenix, the Providence Phoenix, and the Portland Phoenix as well as Stuff@Night magazine.

Gould will assume his duties in late April.

As Deputy Managing Editor at New York’s Daily News, Gould was responsible for all entertainment and lifestyle coverage in the nation’s fifth-largest daily newspaper. While at the News, he also did a fair amount of writing, reporting on a range of topics from the TV cult-mega-hit show Survivor in Kenya to the tragic events of 9/11.

Most recently, he was a contributing editor on the relaunch of Radar. He helped launch the New York edition of the London-based Time Out and served as Executive Editor of both Spy and Men’s Fitness.

The many publications Gould has written for include Details, Spin, Maxim, Stuff, the New York Times Book Review, USA Today, Outside, New York magazine, the Boston Globe, Marie Claire, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chicago Tribune, Salon, the Guardian (UK), Arena (UK), FHM (UK).

Educated at the Pingry School in Bernardsville, New Jersey, Gould received his BA in English and American Literature with honors from Brandeis in 1987. He took his MS in Journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 1993.

“I couldn’t be more excited about editing the Boston Phoenix,” he says. “The challenge of working in a new city and leading a paper as venerable as the Phoenix is a genuine thrill, and I can’t wait to get started.”

Gould, 41, will be moving to Boston from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where he currently resides with his wife, Michele Orecklin, a former staff writer for Time magazine, and their daughter, Samantha, age 1.

“Lance has a varied and diverse background that will serve Phoenix readers well,” says Kadzis. “His recent work at Radar, where a premium was placed on the interdependence of print and online, will serve him particularly well at the Phoenix as we continue to work toward maximizing the convergence of our print, online, and radio content.”

Kadzis adds: “Lance’s former colleagues speak highly of his ability to bring out the very best in his co-workers, and make special mention of his ability to help young talents realize their full potential. Those are qualities that will be appreciated at the Phoenix.”

Founded in 1966 as a four-page arts-and-entertainment weekly, the Boston Phoenix is the flagship property of the Phoenix Media/Communications Group, which in addition to the Phoenix weekly newspapers in Rhode Island and Maine and Stuff@Night comprises the FNX Radio Network; Phoenix Interactive (thephoenix.com, fnxradio.com, stuffatnight.com); Phoenix Ventures (the sports and magazine group that publishes the official year books for the Boston Bruins, the Boston Celtics, and the Boston Marathon, in addition to program guides for the Tweeter Center and the Bank of America Pavilion summer music series); people2people group (voice and Internet personals for the publishing industry); g8wave (marketing and content using SMS and other mobile technologies); and Mass Web Printing (four-color offset printing).

Readership exodus

Not that we didn’t all know this, but check out the latest from the General Social Survey, reported in today’s New York Times.

In the accompanying slide show, you’ll see that only two measurements have changed drastically since the early 1970s: attitudes toward women in politics (for the better) and daily newspaper readership (for the worse).

The percentage of Americans who say they read a newspaper every day has dropped from nearly 70 percent to just over 30 percent.