Tom Robbins On Why He Quit the Voice, And Journalism's Plight

Yesterday was a sad day for the once-illustrious Village Voice, which lost two of its legendary muckraking reporters, Wayne Barrett and Tom Robbins. Barrett, who has been with the paper since the Koch administration, says he was let go for budgetary reasons; he'll move on to become a fellow at The Nation Institute, a liberal nonprofit media group. And this morning Robbins, a dogged and indispensable political reporter who first started at the Voice in '80s, tells us why he resigned.

It was initially reported you quit in protest, that the case? I don't know why everyone's hung up on this thing. Look: If Wayne Barrett was still at the Voice I would be too. I never would have thought of heading out the door if he was there. I wish the paper well, I hope it succeeds, but the decision that they could do without the greatest digger of investigative journalism says a lot about the direction they want to go in.

Barrett reportedly made six figures. Is it realistic for journalists to expect that much given the harsh realities of today's print media landscape? Abso-fucking-lutely. Don't you value your work? The biggest hole reporters are digging themselves into this day and age is working for nothing or close to nothing. TV guys make a lot more money that that. It's crazy that people are willing to work for nothing or next to nothing. It's almost back the way it was before Heywood Broun founded the newspaper guild in the 1930s during Depression. That was a great union; now it's just a shell of itself.

What's next for you? I don't know! I'm a New Yorker. I'll keep writing about New York.

Were you happy with [Village Voice Editor-in-Chief Tony] Ortega's stewardship? I'm a Yankee fan who always hated Steinbrenner. I consider it a point of pride to be mad at the boss. I have had fights with all of them over the years, Tony included.

Barrett seemed to hint at the deleterious impact of blogs on print media and journalism. What do you think of the increasing number of blogs that assimilate other publications' reportage? I don't know who's to blame. We are turning into an echo chamber in which stories of small value get bounced around over and over, as opposed to a story with meat on its bones. I found it startling that the web version of some snarky item about the Ground Zero mosque could be so popular. I wrote about the mosque too; it was the only column I wrote that praised Mike Bloomberg. But if you look at the 20 most-read stories of the year, one of them was just a map of where the mosque is, with a bunch of fuck yous. I just don't see that as journalism. I'm not blaming the writers, but the matrix of advertising seems to be shifting toward that, and snark is winning the day. Don't get me wrong; there's lots of good stuff on the blogs. But a lot of it is not journalism.

With the loss of investigative reporters like you and Barrett, do you think other publications will fill the void to cover stories you two may have broken, or will the public simply be less informed? One of the things that's happening in the dailies is that the news hole in the newspapers is so small that they ignore each others' big stories. If they can't make the story their own, they don't pick it up. The CityTime scandal is a perfect example. Juan Gonazalez started beating the drum on this a year ago and it was ignored. I know from experience when I've had exclusives that the dailies just don't pick up on it. They say, that's Robbins's story, that's Gonzalez's story. They don't do anything with it until there are arrests. We used to write the stories that got the arrests. But now everyone is turning their back on the big stories and talking about the trivial ones and what goes on in media and this and that. Case in point: Look how many people are writing about two old-timers leaving the Voice, compared to how many were actually writing about the muck that we were raking!

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in News on January 5, 2011 10:40 AM

Comments [rss]

Matthew Smith

Gothamist is an excellent source of news - both summaries of others' work and original work. I read it every day in addition to reading old-line print journalism (yes I receive a print version of the NY Times every day except snowpocalypse days).

I also really enjoy the excellent writing, especially the snark. JDS, in particular, often composes passages that reach high levels of hilarity.

Additionally, Gothamist has a genuine editorial stance that is not pure snark. In particular, its aggressive reporting on transportation issues, for example, fills a serious gap in the mainline media. The trolls may not realize this, but there are very few city-wide media sources that actually report on transportation.

The fact that Gothamist is pro-bicycle is something else I endorse. Whatever the troglodytes say, the US and NYC in particular, are automobile crazy. The fact that a significant media source has an editorial policy that allows, if not promotes, actually interrogation of our reliance on automobiles is politically meaningful.

Gothamist deserves a lot of credit for this sort of thing.

As far as the angsty cries of these baby boomers at the Voice go: cry me a river, you wankers. Mainstream media has been ignoring progressive journalism since either existed. Celebrities dominated the news back then too! I, for one, am glad to see these whining baby boomers fade away. There are plenty of hungry, non-whining young journalists ready to take their spots in a variety of different venues (like, e..g, pro-publica).

Anyway, keep it up Gothamist. You guys do an excellent job. (And no I've never met a single one of the people who work there.)

Rod

hey! wayne and tom should create a slimmed down website of their own where they report all the scandals no one else will, with a bit of advertising and they keep all the $!

i'd read that every week. more than I read gothamist!

Rod

to be fair, though I love much of robbin's work, he's written some total garbage.

go back and look at his column hailing bloomtard for the Mosque.

That's not journalism. that's ignorant hagiographizing.

robbins didn't even check any facts. he just trusted that a politician would never lie. and then raved like a childish groupie.

other real journalists showed that bloomberg lp memos were shooting to double their terminal leasing in dubai etc, and real journalists know that the only part of bloomberg lp that turns a profit is the terminals. the company just announced this again last week.

robbins should apologize for his part in covering up a giant scandal by the mayor.

Guest

i had a bad classical piano teacher once. i must have been 8 or 9. and boy did she suck shit. but she kept on telling me, "a real pianist doesn't do that, so don't do this. don't do that. this is the only way, blah blah blah... stop it!" eventually i'd completely lost my interest and it took me years to like playing the piano again. i play frequently now. i really like playing the piano.

and looking back as a 32 year old, did she not only suck as a teacher, but she sucked as a pianist. all she did was teaching because she herself didn't become successful. no one knew who she was, and i doubt that she even teaches now. thinking back, i even think she really hated teaching; she only did it for the money.

having a good outlook is important. and so is appraising one another. the more one criticizes another, the deeper the person criticizing digs, while trying to bring down others with him. it's funny a commenter mentions having "thin skin"; it reminds me of a friend who started doing yoga not too long ago and weirdly enough, he's also writing better -- he says that he's not getting the same bodily responses which he used to get, such as the nervousness that he used to feel around his stomach area.

hah, and you have just wasted your time reading this shit because i'm a nobody.

...or maybe you didn't. everyone can learn something good from even some trivial shit such as this non-writing material bullshit.

Tim Donnelly

HA! I'm a Robbins fan of course, but as a journalist who has been forced to choose between writing for free (or next to nothing) versus not writing at all, I'd love to know where Tom thinks the money to pay for six-figure salaries is going to come from. My last newspaper job was down to rolling furloughs and cutting back on pens, paper and office supplies to save money. Maybe the celeb-status journos can demand a big paycheck, but the only people in the field who think six-figure salaries are a realistic goal are the ones who have been binging on Four Loko for trend story pieces. I hear this a lot from the older generation of journos: "your work is valuable, so you should hold out for money." I agree with that entire statement, but there's no money to wait for because no one has a reliable revenue model. So my choice is between writing for free or not writing at all, I choose writing.

Rod

are you crazy? did Tony Ortega and New Times' top goons take a PAY CUT because of the "recession"?

no. everyone knew when New Times bought the Voice what they intended to do and every prediction came true. now. every week they're giving cultural picks to KNICKS GAMES at Madison Sq Garden and other events at all the big arenas.

that was new times intent all along. their profit margin has never been larger than today. you fire all the old timers and hire newbies for 1/10th the pay. cut their benefits out too. you mix editorial with advertising departments to get more ads and scratch each others kickbacks.

Rod

didn't you see this are the same slimey stunts bloomtard is using?

he wants to be able to lay off all the experienced teachers to hire newbies because the only thing the mayor cares about is money. putting more into his pocket and his pals like Cathie Black.

JarekAF

" But now everyone is turning their back on the big stories and talking about the trivial [stories] and what goes on in media and this and that. Case in point: Look [at] how many people are writing about two old-timers leaving the Voice, compared to how many were actually writing about the muck that we were raking!."

I'd have to agree with this point.

It's much easier to report on trivial stuff because it's easier to comprehend. The complicated stuff, which usually is the most important stuff, just doesn't get covered.

Case in point: what's your position on regulating derivatives? Which gets a "huh?"

gothamist

My position is that we need strong regulation of any financial company trading in derivatives- when Warren Buffett (who owned a good chunk of Goldman Sachs) says they're "financial weapons of mass destruction" that's probably not something that should just be allowed to run unfettered.

But that's not really local news, is it? I mean, Gothamist has done plenty of stories on the rapaciousness of Wall Street banks- but Washington political process stories are a little far afield for us. We'll probably cover it when the regulators sort out exactly what's going to happen with the new rules- and it starts to get clearer what the effects on local banks will be. -Jake

Rod

Well what is Gothamist doing about electoral reform both in NYC and the USA?

You've already "moved on" from Bush V Gore and the supercorruption of the ELectoral College of political hacks. You're now writing about SCALIA'S OPINION OF PIZZA.

Rod

And does Gothamist truly believe the mayor and city council should be able to change any laws they want any time to enrich themselves, including simply overriding voter referendums?

Hey, I enjoy Gothamist, but it's b/c you're the Sarah Palin of blogs: fun.

I'd like you even more if you had more substance.

You could quadruple your readership if you wrote stories that no one else would touch.

You'd be surprised how many NYorkers want to read about bloombucks scandals, city council crimes, big biz crimes, and so on.

gothamist

From an economic point of view, I don't think this is a situation where stronger unions would help. And I say that coming from a very pro-union family, and as a life-long Democrat. Stronger unions help when management is exploiting the workers- either by treating them badly (ie. dangerous working conditions) or unfairly claiming too much profit (at the expense of labor.)

But here, it's the revenue that's vanishing- it's not the split that has changed. Forming stronger unions might temporarily keep salaries and benefits higher than they would be otherwise- but the vanishing revenue would just force the newspapers to fire more people. Sure, there are situations where management is taking too much money (for instance, when Sulzberger got paid millions last year at the Times)- but it doesn't sound like Tony Ortega or the management of the Voice are getting paid like that.

One thing that would help is radically lowering the cost structure at the paper- moving the office to cheaper space in Brooklyn (like Gothamist did two years ago!), finding a way to print cheaper or eliminate the print publication in favor of the website, reducing management overhead at the corporate parent, etc. -Jake

Rod

did you not see Tony Ortega say they were coming off a "GREAT YEAR"?

it's like when bloomtard says the city is tight on cash and then spends $10 million to move the washington sq fountain over 16 feet.

Rod

and how much debt did New Times take on when they bought the Voice

you can't act like this was a death by natural causes!

most mergers are money losers from the get-go, by stupid men in suits who have no grasp of reality.

gothamist

I think Tony kind of has to say how well they're doing- he's the editor-in-chief. But I don't think you fire your best reporter for budget reasons if you're doing that well- that's just common sense.

Rod

I disagree. 1, wayne rarely wrote articles b/c he spent so much time researching them. almost no voice customer will notice him gone, and it's a free rag so people will continue to pick it up which his ALL they care about: circulation to scam advertisers. 2, I've never seen a bizman with common sense in my life. (New coke. Leno vs Conan. the new myspace. Time/Warner , and a zillion others) --- bizman care only about robbing their customers. shortsightedness is the RULE in all business, despite the hype and myths.

Nothing clouds thinking like GREED does.

Guest

The biggest hole reporters are digging themselves into this day and age is working for nothing or close to nothing.

well... y'know, the ever-increasing lack of self-esteem... and on top of that there're faceless demonoids who do nothing more than to occasionally spew their filth at reporters ("your writing sucks!") thanks to the days of anonymous commenting.

but yeah, every writer should learn to appraise their own work highly. it's a weird world we live in.

ktinnyc

and snark is winning the day. Don't get me wrong; there's lots of good stuff on the blogs. But a lot of it is not journalism.

I see Tom Robbins is familiar with your work, John.

John_Del_Signore

Ha. It's true that while I have committed journalism on Gothamist, much of what I do here is simply "blogging." There is a lot of this "blogging" out there; you'll find it on the Village Voice website, and pretty much every major news site these days has a blog, or several blogs. Blogging assimilates the work of traditionally "objective" journalism, aggregates news from diverse sources, and adds context, editorial perspective, a personal tone, and sometimes -- SOMETIMES -- even moves the story forward. People seem to enjoy consuming their news this way! In fact, you're familiar enough with this very blog to make that comment.

Rod

I like you john!

at least you write about issues of substance unlike most bloggers AND "journalists"!

ktinnyc

"In fact, you're familiar enough with this very blog to make that comment."

It's absolutely true that I'm very familiar with this blog and your work. I visit the site often. If I have a critique it's not that Gothamist doesn't do journalism, I actually don't expect you to do that but it's that Gothamist isn't even really a blog. It's an aggregator. Liz Benjamin is a bloggoer, EVGrieve is a blogger, Gothamist is an aggregator

esquared

hear, hear. you go girl/guy.

also, interview maybe original, but journalism it is not.

JarekAF

Why all the hate?

What's journalism to you?

Just TV News and Newspapers?

Do you consider People Magazine to be Journalism? They do break stuff now and then? What about the faux trend pieces on the NYT.
***

I like gothamist because on most local news stories, they cite what the major dailies report, which often have discrepencies (daily news reported X, but, the Post added Y, X), they connect the dots, link to the background.

I find that this allows me to better understand breaking news and provides me with a more fulfilling newsreading experience, then if I were to just read an individual newspaper.

And no, I'm not affiliated with gothamist or the jounalism industry in any way. I just appreciate gothamist's work. And I don't appeciate attempts to delegitimze gothamist's work because they're not affiliated with the old line MSM. And if anything, gothamist is more willing to call the kettle black whereas the MSM bendsover backwards in trying to portray a "neutral, objective" stance, when sometimes, they're just afraid to call it like they see it out of fear of Angry Post readers with pitchforks etc . . . .

Rod

well even "journalism" is a meaningless word. a goth mope writing in their journal is a journalist.

but very little of "journalism" today is anything of the sort. if you look more closely at the dailies, it's filled with stories that are actually just city hall press releases reworded.

look at today's DN story about Ray Kelly asking a team of ex prosecutors (ie, former co-workers of the police!) to "investigate" claims of cooking crime stats etc.

it's just a city hall press release!

personagratin

I like Gothamist. I wouldn't be reading and commenting on Gothamist if I didn't like it. But the old MSM are the ones who actually show up on the scene. Gothamist just finds an image on Google Street View.

The day-to-day operations of Gothamist are dependent on the reporting of news organizations. Gothamist follows up, but they don't lead the way.

Rod

i think gothamist is useful about 10% of the time. the rest of the time they seem desperate in trying to come up with the most vacant and sophomoric "stories" they can.

JarekAF

"Gothamist is an aggregator."

From where did Gothamist/JDS aggregate this interview?

ktinnyc

From the first page of Gothamist as I write this there 20 stories of which 4 seem to be original content.

Save The Date! Throgs Neck Bridge Turns 50 Next Week
Mark Russell, Under the Radar Festival
Tom Robbins On Why He Quit the Voice, And Journalism's Plight
First Swan Rescue of the Year at Prospect Park

So 20% of the time Gothamist goes out and "gets the story". This probably isn't representative of what goes on here but where is there journalism? Where is the blogging? Here I'll fix what I said, Gothamist is primarily a news aggregator . Happy?

jaycjay

"So 20% of the time Gothamist goes out and "gets the story."

Of course, there's no value at all in a statistic drawn from that small a sample: 20 stories out of the hundreds or thousands that are published.

But that point brings me to a constructive criticism of Gothamist today (meaning the past few months): I haven't bothered to compile stats, but it seems like the number of stories published is way up. Certainly there are new names on the staff, and I noticed a mention yesterday that there's a plan to hire two more people this year.

Well... maybe it's time to slow that down. More people and more stories doesn't necessarily mean better. A year ago, I'd read every story here. Plenty of times they weren't of interest to me, but I'd at least read every summary to make that judgment. Now, there are so many (20 today already, really? How many are published in a typical day now? I'd bet it was 20 a day a year ago) that just glance at headlines. I probably even read summaries on only 25% of the articles now.

Four stories of original content today? Great! Seriously, that is valuable regardless of the topic (and I'm accepting kitinnyc's research on this, I haven't counted).

But then, 16 stories, already, by 12:30 pm of the "aggregation" variety? Really? How many of those are of interest at all to the readership?

I'll say this: I see a lot more stories these days with "0 comments" at the bottom than I used to.

John_Del_Signore

Thanks for your feedback. No time at the moment to respond to your various points, but do note that the "0 comments" thing is a glitch with the new commenting system we're trying to fix. Lots of posts say zero in summary view, but when you actually click through you'll see the comments.

Rod

i like the staggering of the replies better now. easier to follow.

Guest

but then they get really narrow... i would like to see one word per line. (5-6 replies after this one, maybe?)

Rod

let's try it and see...

Guest

ok, you're on.

Guest

anyone else is welcome to join!

JarekAF

Looks like that Spring 2011 Gothamist intern position has got some competition!

Jen Chung

I think you're a little confused with the semantics—bloggers aren't by definition reporters (but reporters can definitely be bloggers). Many blogs aggregate interesting things as well as contribute original takes—look at Boing Boing and kottke.

Rod

what IS the definition of "blogger"? does anyone even have an actual definition?

gothamist

Seriously- I'm always amazed at how often troll commenters manage to ignore all the original stuff we do everyday. -Jake

ktinnyc

If you took my comment for trolling your skin must be pretty thin.

Rod

jake, that's not fair. ktinnyc made a valid point about gothamist being an aggregator rather than a blog. showing a bunch of pieces that are exceptions to the rule doesn't disprove the point. and neither does throwing out the t word (troll).

gothamist

Hey, don't come into my house, eat my food, and then shit on the rug. That's just rude. -Jake

Commen Terist

Yeah, but the "food" that you "serve" are either rehash, stolen or both, from other sources. Plus,i'ts not like you are serving these "food" for free. That's rude. This blog (and that's what this is, a blog) is not ad free. It's not like most of your stuff that you put in here are from your own work or research. You steals other people's written work, and used to not credit them, until someone called you out on it. You crowdsource, without properly creditng the other bloggers. So, you are just a self-rigteous and holy than thou sanctimonious arrogant doucejew, who most like other jews steal. I think there's something in your face. Nevermind it's just smugness. So, please keep your food and shit own rug.

Rod

i hope your tongue is in your cheek.

hey, don't offer a product, and then whine when your customers have complaints. THAT's just rude. And illogical. - rod