Erik Wemple of the CityPaper is moving to New York to become the new editor of The Village Voice. An article from today’s NY Times shows skepticsm about Wemple who has never lived or worked in New York. He is also not necessarily going to follow the left wing tradition of the paper:

My ideology and the whole New Times ideology preaches loyalty to the great story. I really don’t care if a story begins with leftist sympathies, and I really don’t care if a story begins from a more conservative set of sympathies. If it’s a great story, we’re going to report it out.

City Desk, the staff blog at CityPaper makes no mention (as of 6:30 a.m.) of Wemple’s move.

Over at The Post, seventy staffers are taking early retirement packages (up to 2 years pay, not bad non-work if you can get it) including “political writer Thomas B. Edsall, science writer Guy Gugliotta, foreign correspondent Daniel Williams, Metro reporter (and panda chronicler) D’Vera Cohn, and business columnists Jerry Knight and Leslie Walker.” Longtime columnists Tom Shales and Cortland Milloy are also taking the package, but are contracted to keep writing. The ongoing industry-wide decline in circulation is sited as the catalyst for the cuts.