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Matt Katz: This is All Of It. I'm Matt Katz sitting in for Alison Stewart. A new book about The Village Voice by my next guest, Tricia Romano, chronicles a paper that itself chronicled New York City for over half a century through the words and memories of its staff. The first issue of The Village Voice launched in 1955 as one of the country's first alternative news weekly's, and it would soon become its most important.

Over the following several decades, it would be an essential source of local news, arts, coverage, criticism, and commentary. Many careers will be launched on its pages and many legacies cemented among its editorial staff earning three Pulitzer Prizes and countless other recognitions. The Village Voice ceased publication in 2018 was bought by new owners, and now exists mainly online in somewhat sporadic articles.

The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture is an oral history of the paper from its beginnings to the present day, featuring quotes from editors, writers, cartoonists, artists, and politicians. New York Times book critic, Dwight Garner writes, "The Freaks Come Out to Write may be the best history of a journalistic enterprise I’ve ever read, in that its garrulous tone so mirrors the institution’s own." Tricia Romano, Welcome to All Of It.

Tricia Romano: Hi, I'm so happy to be here.

Matt Katz: We're happy to have you, and we're hoping listeners can get involved in this conversation. Help us add to this oral history, listeners. Were you a loyal Village Voice reader? Did you write for the paper, maybe? Call in, share your memories and experiences. 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. You can also message us on social media at All Of It WNYC.

Okay. Tricia, to give a little context here, you worked at The Village Voice for eight years starting as an intern. What did you do there and what did it represent to you when you were starting out in your career?

Tricia Romano: Well, I was first an intern for Frank Owen, who was a nightlife reporter. That was what I was doing for The Stranger and Seattle Weekly in Seattle. I got to be an understudy to him, and he is the one who wrote the Michael Alig. He didn't break it, I'm sorry. He proved the Michael Alig murder cover story. Because I was much later to The Voice than most people, '90s, so for me, it was just this beacon of alternative culture, underground culture, which at that time was starting to become more mainstream.

Lollapalooza was happening and Nirvana and all that stuff. That's the stuff that The Voice used to have a handle on almost exclusively. It just represented cool, I guess. Everything that came with that culture. When I finally went on staff, I was a nightlife columnist. I had two columns called Clip Call and Fly Life.

Matt Katz: What did you learn there? Just from a journalism perspective about how to capture people's attention, how to play it straight, how to play it not so straight, what did you learn about journalism working at The Voice?

Tricia Romano: Oh, I learned that we were very different from other places because we didn't play it straight. We were allowed to merge our personal interests and our personal passions with what we wrote about. That is what made us different from other media. I also think one of the things that The Voice allowed its writers and editors to do is to cross subject matters. We were not siloed in certain departments, like a books writer could write for the film section, could write a news story if they had one, and vice versa. That is something that's also not seen in more mainstream publications even today, I feel like. It's just not as fluid. You're there, you stay in that corner.

As a nightlife writer, that was freeing for me to be able to break out of that and to also write about nightlife in a way that was more newsy and more reported rather than just like sceney. Although I certainly did that too, but there are stories about clubs that were going on then. The cabaret law was being enforced and I was somebody that was just beating the drum to replace that for the entire time that I was there.

Matt Katz: These are stories that just weren't really available to be read elsewhere. Is that why there was such reverence for the paper in its heyday? Readers had a deep attachment to it?

Tricia Romano: Yes. It's very personal for them. Especially free 1990s. I would say, for music and culture writing, CBGBs is a perfect example of that. That scene was being covered very closely by James Wolcott and the music section at The Village Voice. That means that television and Patti Smith and Blondie and all those bands that came out of CBGB were getting star treatment, and people that read that paper from very far away were getting an inside look at something that was going to blow up before it really did.

That's one reason I think that The Voice was so important, but also its political coverage was taking chances where others were not doing. Jack Newfield did his 10 Worst Landlords and 10 Worst Judges way back in the '60s and '70s. That was just not done in a place like Wall Street Journal or New York Times. He just went after him.

Matt Katz: Those were annual lists, right?

Tricia Romano: Yes. Pretty much. It changed over the years, I think. They carried on that tradition after he left and after he died. He died, I can't remember when, but when he went to The Daily News, I think he took it with him there, but after he died, I think they also continued doing that list, that idea, pursuing that. The Voice was also the first place to do an investigation on Donald Trump in 1978 or '79, I believe, by Wayne Barrett, and it was a two-part cover series and many, many thousands of word long because that's how Wayne wrote. The template of what you see Donald Trump doing now, it was all laid out in those articles, and he took Trump seriously and was absolutely aghast when nobody did in 2016.

Matt Katz: He was prescient in so many ways, Wayne Barrett, in his writings. Incredible. This is a big book. Why did you decide to tell it as an oral history? Why do it that way? Your voice is hardly present.

Tricia Romano: I'm a firm believer in oral histories not having interludes or whatnot because I think it detracts. Especially if the writing is good, you want to start reading the narrative writing. I wanted to stay with the voices. I think the voices of the people that worked at The Voice are just so unique and so built. They're all characters. They're like larger-than-life characters. Every single one of them. You could not make them up. They all have very particular ways of speaking and thinking and they're great storytellers because they're writers.

They're also great at analyzing and looking at things and thinking outside of the usual norms. It was great to get their comments and their perspectives and their humor and their insight. I just think it makes it more lively. I read a couple of other voice books and one of them was more omniscient narrator. I just thought it was boring. Even though it was very useful as a point of research, it was very dry to me. If I'm bored about The Village Voice, then that's bad. I just wanted it to be, also, I feel like in oral history is very engaging with people who are not inside the building.

Matt Katz: It's not just the people inside the building that you talk to. The books cast of characters, the people you spoke to, people who come up in stories, include other non-Voice staff. Some of the names mentioned, Andy Warhol, Spike Lee, [unintelligible 00:09:24], Chuck Schumer. What's interesting to you about the types of people and the stories that came up in your research in terms of what it reflects about The Voice?

Tricia Romano: I find that all of the living people that I spoke to, obviously, Andy Warhol is from archival material and whatnot, but I spoke to Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie and Bob Costas and Max Weinberg of the Bruce Springsteen E Street Band, and they all have that same fondness that you were talking about that your readers have. It's very personal to them.

They all saw it as this beacon, this thing that you're called out to them, you don't have to have the white picket fence and two-car garage and live in some suburb. You can come to the city and do things differently. It called out to them in the same way, and they respected it that way. The politicians who talked about Wayne Barrett at his eulogy, they respected him even though he was often beating up on them in the pages of The Voice.

Matt Katz: There's a quote. I think Andrew Cuomo says the first time he heard his father Mario curse was on the phone with The Village Voice after an article.

Tricia Romano: Then he later goes on to be that person too.

Matt Katz: Right. Sure.

Tricia Romano: [laughs]

Matt Katz: What happens? Did Time pass The Village Voice by? It had a website in 1995, but it seems like the way it was making money that those times have passed.

Tricia Romano: Yes. A couple of factors happened. First, the internet arrives and then secondly, Craigslist arrives. The Voice's advertising section, the listings in the back for apartment ads, as anybody who grew up in New York knows this, that was the most coveted thing you could get on a Tuesday night, Wednesday morning. That people would stand outside Astor Place, the newsstand there by the Starbucks, well, not Starbucks then, and wait to get it so they could get their hands on the apartment listings before anybody else.

They'll have another site not only putting those things up for free, but just instantly, constantly every day, all hours of the day without any-- it's frictionless. No barrier. You don't have to call in and place it or anything. It just immediately supped a lot of the power and money from all the alternative weekly's that relied on that part of the advertising. By that time, The Voice had gone free, it stopped charging and had left the subscription model.

I wonder sometimes, at the time doing that, let them go farther and get bigger and have thicker papers because they had more advertising in general and had a higher circulation, but if they had not done that, maybe they would've survived longer, but they would've just been more niche and smaller. It's hard to say how that would've played out. Also, 9/11 happened and the financial crash happened.

What has happened to what you're still seeing play out in median now, like Vice Magazine shutting down, that happened to The Voice 10, 15 years ago. Part of it is also The Voice's grip on culture and has been superseded by the internet. You could find out about anything, anywhere instantly on your phone.

Matt Katz: Sure. Then for the record, The Village Voice is still around. It has a website, but it is, what is it? A skeleton staff? What's the situation?

Tricia Romano: R. C. Baker, he's doing his best. He has some money for freelance and whatnot. The owner also owns the LA Weekly, which was a sister publication back then. They cross-post movie and music reviews and such, and they do run some features and news stories, but it's not anywhere the juggernaut that it was. That would require, I think, more of an investment in the staff and also a bigger social media sense, a bigger presence in the city.

Matt Katz: To read about the juggernaut that it was, The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture is the new book out now by Tricia Romano. Tricia, thanks so much for all this research and for coming on the show.

Tricia Romano: Thank you so much for having me.