The positive reviews of Tricia Romano's oral history of the Village Voice takes me back to the days when the newspaper arrived each week to my student apartment in Baton Rouge.
With its incandescent writers, hip photographers and cartoonist Jules Feiffer, New York City's "underground" newspaper brought a jolt of adrenaline into my mundane routine of classes, reading, listening to music and working at a downtown women's shoestore.
Romano's "The Freaks Came Out to Write" tops my current list of books to read. A former writer at the recently revived online and print newspaper, Romano looks at the publication's volatile history, intense newsroom rivalries and journalistic triumphs.
Giving a hip contrast to The New York Times, the Village produced hard-hitting investigative stories and insightful arts, film and music criticism.
Romano chronicles the Voice's vital work, such as stopping Robert Moses from building a four-lane highway through the village, joining forces with Jane Jacobs, Grace Paley and protesting Village mothers.
Norman Mailer, a Voice co-founder, wrote an early column, and the Voice produced in-depth reporting on the Stonewall rebellion, the AIDs epidemic and the city's economic decline.
Reporter Wayne Barrett wrote ground-breaking exposes of Donald Trump and Rudolph Giuliani. Film critic Andrew Sarris, jazz writer Nat Hentoff, art critic Gary Indiana, feminist essayist Jill Johnston and writer James Walcott enlightened me.
Once a gritty, inexpensive shelter for impoverished artists, writers and musicians, the Village is now too expensive for low-income residents. Thanks to gentrification, homes are worth millions.
With the online media industry crashing, and print newspapers dying, Romano's book looks back on an era when journalism mattered.
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