I started the Cape Cod Voice in 2001, a great little newsmagazine that printed for most of the first decade of the century.
A year in, sitting at my desk, long before phone calls went to voicemail, I answered one to hear the following:
“Is this Seth Rolbein, editor and publisher of something called The Cape Cod Voice?”
“That would be me.”
“This is Greg Goff, Executive Vice President of Village Voice Media. I’m letting you know that you must cease and desist publication, or change your name. You have no right to use the word ‘Voice.’ It violates important trademarks associated with the owner and publisher of The Village Voice in New York City.”
“This is some kind of joke, right?”
“Far from it.”
“Mr. Goff, have you ever heard of something called the First Amendment? You can’t stop me from using the word ‘Voice.’”
“Well Seth, you may or may not be a good journalist but clearly you’re not a competent trademark attorney.”
“Put it in writing,” I said, and hung up.
Sure enough, a registered letter showed up a few days later talking about treble damages, an accounting for profits, attorneys’ fees, on and on.
I figured I needed to marshal some resources. That led me to the door of a handsome brick home in Provincetown, my heart pounding as it always did when I knew I’d be seeing Norman Mailer.
He gestured for me to come in, and I remembered that though I thought of him as huge, he was a short burly guy, mischievous blue eyes glittering. He padded into the living room overlooking Cape Cod Bay, thick, short legs exposed under baggy briefs, reminding me of his interest in boxing.
“So what the f- is this now?” he asked as we settled down.
He heard my account, ran stubby fingers through his curly gray mop.
“I was one of the founders of that newspaper,” he growled. “but I figured you probably knew that. It’s a good name, original or not.” And there were the blue eyes, just to be sure I caught the little dig.
“So,” he asked, “have you decided what your new name will be?”
Then we burst into laughter.
“My hunch,” he mused, “is that they have some ambulance chaser on a cheap retainer to single out publications that are young and vulnerable, pick them off like hyenas at the edge of a herd. They might be in for a surprise this time though.”
A few days later I got a letter that I re-printed as fast as print deadlines allowed back then:
Dear Seth,
In 1955, Ed Fancher, Don Wolf and myself were the founding fathers of The Village Voice. I also came up with the name --- not a bad name for a small independent newspaper.
So I read of your troubles with woe. The notion that you must change the title of the Cape Cod Voice because the corporate legal and editorial types who now own the Village Voice feel that your presence might conceivably come to a possible loss of future profit for them is enough to make one retch. It’s monstrous. It violates everything that The Village Voice stood for over the decades. But you can’t stop a young corporate type who’s never been embarrassed by himself.
Yours in outrage,
Norman Mailer
The phone rang again, this time a Washington Post reporter wanting to do a story on the “amazing irony” that the Village Voice would try to “strong-arm” another independent newspaper while “stomping all over the First Amendment.”
“How’d you hear about me?” I asked, though I knew.
“We have a mutual acquaintance,” he said. “A famous mutual acquaintance.”
Then came phone calls from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and National Public Radio.
But for the seven years that the Cape Cod Voice printed, the phone never rang again from the Village Voice.
