The story of Leonard Stern sounds like something out of Capitalist Times. Son of the founder of Hartz Mountain Industries, Stern, 47, is the chairman of the world's largest purveyor of pet products. Intense and blunt-spoken, he may be worth as much as $1 billion, but only his accountant knows for sure: Stern's company is privately owned and he rarely talks to reporters. Now he will have trouble avoiding them. Last week Stern bought the Village Voice, the crusading, leftish weekly whose brand of political and cultural journalism shaped a generation of underground newspapers.
Stern paid slightly more than $55 million...
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