It was the break that made the book possible. They were in file cabinets under the 79th Street Boat Basin, which was run by the Parks Department, where she worked as a public relations aide. I know where they are, and I’ve got a key.’” I hear you can’t get his papers.’ She said: ‘You know what he forgot about? Carbon copies. “She said: ‘I hear no one’s talking to you. “This was a low point in my research,” Mr. Caro had been stymied in his research on “The Power Broker.” Years later, when she had left the paper for city government, she learned that Mr. In 1959, four years after the first Voice editorial opposing the highway, the city board of estimate voted not to build it, and to close the park even to the traffic that was then allowed. Suddenly the paper had a cause and an identity. Moses and his allies dismissed the neighborhood opposition as an “awful bunch of artists.” The Voice championed “the revolt of the urbs,” giving a name to a new constituency whose passions were those of the paper.Īs Moses pushed on, The Voice became the house organ for the growing neighborhood opposition, which came to include Jane Jacobs, in her first of many battles with Moses. But people are no longer getting hard-hitting local journalism where they find their apartments or discover the next cool band. Some of the investigative reporting still endures in neighborhood weeklies or on WNYC, or on nonprofit websites like City Limits and Gotham Gazette. “Norman trained as a boxer, so he was not someone to be trifled with.”įor most of its 63 years, neither was The Voice. “I’d be in my kitchen, giving someone a towel for a bloody nose,” Mr. Fancher, 95, still holds a soft spot for the feuds, especially around holiday time, when Norman Mailer, the paper’s third founder, tended to settle scores. And the offenses were so complex that not only did it require a journalist who was investigating for years, but it couldn’t be described briefly. Half the investigations were about zoning. “It was like an education in the structure of local government,” said Steve Coll, dean of the Columbia Journalism School. The Voice drew attention for its internecine feuds, waged in the office or in the paper itself, but it was also an unmatched training ground, where young reporters learned about power in New York from investigative reporters like Wayne Barrett or Jack Newfield. Now, even if somebody has a scoop, it’s like a tree falling in the forest, because there’s no one to follow up on it. “Someone would get a story, then the mayor would be asked about it at a press conference, then everyone would do a story. “It means stories don’t play out the same way,” said Tom Robbins, who did two stints as an investigative reporter at The Voice, ending in 2011.
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