Job #16 The Village Voice, Part II, 1977–1978

 A brief history of Village Voice ownership

                   The Voice was started in 1955 by Dan Wolf, a writer; Ed Fancher, a psychotherapist; and novelist Norman Mailer. It was a small paper, a writer’s paper, where Dan Wolf, the editor, had a keen ear and eye for how to help writers express themselves in their own voice. Into the 1960s, it provided a space for the movements of the time: civil rights, antiwar, women’s liberation, gay liberation. At the end of the ’60s Wolf and Fancher sold a majority stake in the Voice to City Councilman Carter Burden and his former campaign manager, Bartle Bull, for $3 million. They moved the Voice from Sheridan Square to University Place and 11th Street. In 1974, Burden and Bull sold the Voice to Clay Felker’s New York Magazine Co. for $5 million.

1977

Prologue: Murdoch looms

                  The week before Thanksgiving, 1976, brought news that Rupert Murdoch had bought the New York Post, where my husband, Jack, was a reporter. I had never heard of Murdoch, didn’t even know how to spell his name (in my journal I wrote “Murdock”) and what we began to hear was ominous; for one thing, a British paper he owned ran a nude or topless photo of a woman on page 3 every day.

                  At the Voice, Alexander Cockburn, a Brit who wrote the Press Clips column, knew quite a bit about Murdoch and wrote a column to bring us up to date. Now a confession. I copy edited the Press Clips column and couldn’t wait a minute to tell Jack what was likely in store. I called him at work and related what I had just read, of course telling him this was in strictest confidence: “Don’t tell anyone else. It will be in the Voice on Wednesday.” Naturally, he told a friend at the paper, also “in strictest confidence, don’t tell anyone,” and that friend told another friend at the paper, “in strictest confidence, don’t tell anyone.” Within an hour, Alex was at my desk, quite angry — and rightfully so. I was embarrassed, and I think he never quite trusted me after that.

                  To squelch rumors that New York Magazine was for sale, Felker “authoritatively and unequivocally” stated that no such sale was in the works. Nobody at the Voice believed this. By December 31, Murdoch was the last bidder standing.

                  The next days, weeks, and months were full of rumor, meetings, action, and more meetings. And we still managed to put out a paper every week. The copy department at the beginning of the year consisted of M. Mark, copy chief; me; Linda Perney (who will have a big effect on my life); and Dorothy Smith. By March Ron Plotkin had joined us.

                  Other names to keep in mind: Marianne Partridge, the editor-in-chief; Alan Weitz, managing editor; Alexander Cockburn, columnist for Press Clips; Jack Newfield, covers political and other city news; Nat Hentoff, weekly column about civil liberties and occasionally jazz

The Murdoch takeover

                  The first week in January there’s a meeting of both Voice and New York magazine  editors and writers at the home of Marianne Partridge, editor-in-chief of the Voice; they send a telegram to Carter Burden at the New York Magazine Co. requesting/demanding that no sale go through without assurances of “editorial integrity” of the publications.

                  At the Voice on Monday people gather in small groups on the editorial floor trying to decipher what happened and how it had happened. Meanwhile, M., the copy chief, and Marianne scurry around, reminding us it’s closing day and we have an issue to get out. When TV crews arrive late in the day, I ignore them. I have work to do.

                  I work at the plant in Westchester County for production close on Tuesday, which is exhausting. At the end of the day, it’s clear that Murdoch had bought us all, but unclear what the final shape of things will be.

                  Wednesday is super-intense. It’s editorial meeting day, but many extra people, including reporters and some from New York magazine, are at the Voice. Clay Felker appears, on top of a desk, to address us at great length, rambling and stammering. He talks about deals being made and editorial integrity. Some of what he’s saying is true, some is wishful thinking, and some is pure lie, and I wonder how he feels as he lies — does he feel any different or is it all the same to him?

                  The next day New York mag staff all go to lunch together and don’t return; is this a walkout to protest Murdoch as new owner? At the Voice, only the production department clearly supports a walkout in solidarity. In editorial, our knees jerk to walk out, but our heads hold us firmly in place. I vote to let Marianne tell any reporters who ask that we’re meeting on the following Sunday to follow our own democratic process.

                  It’s New York mag crisis all day Friday. By the end of the day, Marianne announces the final deal is done. Murdoch owns us all. Marianne and the managing editors of New York and New West have two-year contracts with “sole editorial responsibility.”

The first firing of the Voice editor-in-chief

                  While Murdoch promised Marianne a two-year contract as editor-in-chief and sole editorial control on Friday, two days later he hires Michael Kramer (editor of (More), a journalism review that takes a critical look at objectivity) as editor-in-chief and Alan Weitz (then also at (More), but he’d had been at the Voice since the mid-’60s, starting in the mailroom and eventually news editor) as managing editor. The next day Murdoch meets with Bill Ryan (formerly v-p, finance, and soon to be president) and Marianne at the Voice as though everything is normal. (He also sees Alexander Cockburn, to whom he says, “I suppose you’re going to test me.”)

                  The following evening, Tuesday, he comes to the Voice to tell Marianne she’s out and ask what financial settlement she will take. She keeps saying, “What about your agreement with Clay last week?” and he keeps not answering. She goes home and calls Newfield, who calls Cockburn and James Weschler, editorial editor at Murdoch’s New York Post. Kramer has already called Newfield to offer him the title of head political editor, and Newfield heaps so much abuse on him, Kramer thinks maybe he doesn’t want this job after all. He goes to Marianne’s to say, never mind, I won’t take your job. At the same time Weschler and Cockburn call Murdoch and lean on him hard enough that he decides he’s made a mistake. So everything is back where it was.

                  The next day Murdoch meets with the senior editors, Howard Smith (who does the Scenes column), and Alexander Cockburn, and apologizes. Murdoch admits he made a big mistake, doesn’t want to control policy or editorial, just wants to contribute his ideas and thoughts. Howard points out that Clay Felker said exactly the same thing when he first bought the Voice, and didn’t abide by that. Murdoch says he wants more old-fashioned muckraking, which is understood by the editors to mean less personal journalism, and the personal journalism is what sells issues. Karen Durbin tells Murdoch that crises like last night are bad for the paper because they destroy morale and keep people from working.

                  From my journal: “The situation as of tonight is a very nervous, hostile staff.... [One editor] is his usual insecure self, wondering whether Murdoch liked him. [Another] is feeling left out because he wasn’t called last night. M. is preparing to quit if these incidents continue. I am feeling nervous and unsure of everyone — the place I loved to work at no longer exists, the only question is what will the new arrangement be. The only good thing to come of all this is the union.”

Union, union, union

                  There had been a couple of attempts to organize the Voice with the Newspaper Guild before I was there, but they foundered because many Voice writers preferred the freedom of freelancer-dom to the hierarchy of standard news organizations. The Guild doesn’t represent freelancers, and its organizers can’t understand why writers wouldn’t want to be on staff with benefits—but the Voice already has a unique system: freelancers who write a specific number of stories in a six-month period are eligible for health insurance.

                  As soon as it becomes clear that Murdoch is likely to be our next owner, talk about a union begins, again. For the next several months “my work” consists not only of copy editing for the paper but also discussing, meeting, and organizing for the union.

                  After Felker rambled at us that first week, we split up by department, and the editorial staff elected me and Karen Durbin as representatives to an employees’ committee. The department sections come together in the evening, and I’m chair. Other than editorial and writers, union sentiment is neutral at best, although those who were at the Voice at earlier union attempts say solidarity and pro-union sentiment is stronger now.

                  I go to dinner with a few editors and writers, where we all divulge how much we earn. The copy chief makes $13,000; Karen Durbin makes $18,000, which is $3,000 less than any other senior editor, who are all men. (In today’s money, the men are making $105,000.)

We sign up with District 65

                  At the end of this week a group of us meet with union lawyers to get answers to some questions, the biggest being: who’s an employee? This question is important considering the multiple ways writers are paid, including that even some writers on staff are not salaried, but on contract. And what’s the line between employee and management—for instance, if editors assign articles, does that make them management? 

                  That Sunday meeting Marianne was to tell reporters about is at the union hall of District 65, nearby in the East Village. (District 65 has been known as a “catch-all" union, not focusing on any particular industry, but organizing workers ignored by other unions. By the 1970s, it had begun organizing in publishing and other arts jobs.)<https://jacobin.com/2016/08/unions-low-wage-service-sector-new-york-labor/> The hall is a cavernous room, with tall windows overlooking Astor Place, and several rows of folding chairs.

                  We have a lot of choices to consider: (1) everyone, staff and freelancers, can join one Village Voice association and/or (2) affiliate with (a) District 65, (b) the Newspaper Guild, (c) a house union. We can also decide what sort of shop we want: (1) a union shop, where everyone must join the union, (2) an agency shop, where everyone pays dues whether or not they join the union, (3) an open shop, where those who don’t join the union don’t have to pay dues, but all employees are covered by the contract. It’s important to us that District 65 will accept freelancers as members, and the union can pressure management in favor of union members who aren’t in the bargaining unit. I am excited about organizing; though my parents had professional jobs, my grandfather had been an organizer for the Fur & Leather Workers Union and I had grown up learning that crossing a picket line was the worst thing you could do.

                  We vote unanimously that we want to organize and we want the authority and power of District 65. Cards to join the union are collected, and within a couple of days, cards are either in or in the mail from 121 staff and 31 freelancers, 90% of masthead. I can’t believe it’s actually happened. I’ve been so afraid that people would think we were steamrollering it through, and I’m amazed at how quickly this organizing has been. Is this the fastest union organizing in the history of organizing?

                  At a union meeting a week later, we all agree to come to work wearing District 65 buttons. And we have to be prepared to counter the argument that “unions killed all those New York dailies.” In 1960, there were eight daily newspapers in the city: the New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Herald Tribune,  Daily Mirror, World-Telegram, and Journal-American (the last two merging two others in the 1930s). It’s true four of those papers had closed by 1967 after an almost four-month newspaper strike in 1963. But did the unions kill the papers, or was it automation and the newspaper owners effort to kill the unions that led to those papers death? Maybe it’s a chicken and egg question.

How do we get management to accept the union?

                  Our third weekly union meeting, with at least 100 people, maybe more. The major issue; how to get management to negotiate with us. Will a walkout or a strike be more effective?  Some, in Classified and editorial, for example, are against any walkout, because, they say, if management doesn’t want to negotiate, they won’t whether we walk or we don’t. Newfield and Cockburn say Murdoch only understands power, and we show it by walking out. Ross Wetzsteon, who was management the last time there was a union organizing attempt, says that management didn’t care at all if there was a strike, but no one asks him what management did worry about. The union rep is very good, calming a semihysterical copyeditor who rants that the union has nothing to lose with a strike, but we have the paper to lose.

                  We vote on a motion that we want an agreement in one week on the bargaining unit, and if the agreement isn’t one we can accept, we strike. During the vote count, people’s hands waver, going up, then down, the up again, so we have to count at least four times. I feel some sympathy with Bob Christgau, who explains his vote against, favoring a brief action immediately, but give management a bit more time to respond.  We also agree on an informational picket line outside the Voice, with flyer and signs, if there doesn’t seem to be any movement.

                  This all feels very scary to me. Voting to strike is the only thing we could do, but I don’t feel happy about it. I’m swayed by Newfield and Cockburn’s claim that Murdoch is only affected by power, but I don’t understand the thinking of people like that, so I don’t know how to figure out what such people will do.

                  The day after this meeting, a union subcommittee meets with Ryan; he’s been told by Murdoch that it’s his ballgame, but he doesn’t trust Murdoch’s lawyers. The union group also feels pressure to come back to everyone with an acceptable agreement.

                  M., now copy chief, has been told by a labor lawyer there’s no way she isn’t management, so we can no longer talk about union matters in her presence, and she has to give us back all her pro-union buttons.

                  Four weeks after we’ve started our unionizing effort, I’m at a New York Post farewell party for Clyde Haberman and Anna Quindlan (both going to the New York Times) and get into conversation with Joy Cook, a Guild representative at the Post. She grills me over why the Voice has gone with District 65 rather than the Newspaper Guild, and I personally wish there had been a meeting with reps from both unions so we could question them together to compare and contrast. Then she thinks we’re going about things backwards; most people at the paper, including freelancers, have joined the union, but we haven’t yet had an election. Joy says, first you determine who can vote—you have to go through the National Labor Relations Board because there are legal requirements, and legally freelancers can’t vote—then you have the election and determine who can join and be in the bargaining unit. I reply that District 65 will allow freelancers to join the union, and after we’ve had the union election, we’ll bargain on behalf of union members who weren’t in the bargaining unit, i.e., freelancers. Joy seems to think that won’t be allowed—but by whom? the NLRB?

Bosses never learn

                  Our Monday informational picket line in front of the Voice runs from noon to 1:30, but no media show up. The only word about a meeting with Ryan is for after the date we voted to strike. Everyone is confused about whether to walk out (we said we would, so we need to preserve our credibility) or not (there will be a meeting, just later than we’d have liked). I’m feeling scared, but not helpless—it’s not neurotic fear, but based in a reality I know I can handle.

                  The next day the production manager and a display ad manager have separate talks with Ryan, which seem to have a calming effect, and Ryan is going to see a lawyer of his own. A couple of days later, Ryan meets with the staff, against the advice of his Murdoch-appointed lawyers. He’s opposed to a union personally, but he’s committed to work with the employees. Very little work is being done in anticipation of possibly having to strike the next day, and we don’t want stories ready to go into the paper by management.

                  In the evening, there’s a general meeting at District 65, where we learn District 65’s lawyer, David Livingston, has been having secret negotiations with one of Murdoch’s lawyers who happens to be an old friend, which started because our Monday action showed our strength. They agree to a meeting on Friday at the NLRB with all the parties. Livingston lets our steering committee know that we’ve made labor history: management has agreed to (1) bargaining-unit freelancers being voting members and (2) will accept negotiating on rates for freelancers and their eligibility for health benefits, regardless of what the NLRB says.

                  We can act like a union starting immediately, electing shop stewards, handling grievances, even collecting dues—NLRB hearings will determine the status of perhaps 13 people. We vote to defer our strike, and everyone feels very energetic and excited. We all agree to limit how long meetings will last, and form committees, including to set up an alternate paper in case of a strike, to be called “The Voice of the Voice.” We get names and phone numbers for everyone who’s joined the union and set up a telephone tree, which is how people organized before the internet (each person has three people to call, who call three people, etc., until the membership is all contacted. It really works). I sign up for the organizing committee, since I’ve proposed the telephone tree, and also for the alternate paper.

                  At end of week we are busily handling all the copy that was held up in case we had a strike, so everyone is overloaded with work. The steering committee returns from the meeting at the NLRB with bad news. Management’s lawyer comes from a firm called Borris & Moss (which we take to calling Borris and Morris), and he is doing nothing but obstruct. Both sides were supposed to present their opening positions, but Borris (or Morris) claims not to be familiar with the case, can’t make a statement on several issues, and can’t meet the following Monday. This lawyer is so obnoxious and rude he’s made the NLRB agents very angry.

                  There’s some thought that Murdoch’s lawyers are trying to provoke us into striking, but Karen Durbin says we shouldn’t think about that; it doesn’t matter what they want us to do, it’s what we are prepared to do that’s important.

                  Bosses never learn. We’ve all been through the ’60s. We’ve all argued with authorities. We know how to play the power game our way, not their way. We’re smart, and they never understand that. And on top of all that, they’re stupid!

I’m elected shop steward

                  I go to a three-year-old’s birthday party on Sunday and talk up the idea of the alternate paper. The mostly newspaper people think it’s a great idea, either as a tactic, or even a strategic move, since the current Voice seems too much a Felker creation, while a new Voice could be a return to the old Voice. Would Murdoch prefer to have all of us out as competition, or would he rather settle?

                  The editorial department meets at the Cedar Tavern next door and elects me shop steward and Gayle Wood the money collector. Soon after we return to the Voice, Bob Christgau discovers that Marianne has taken his typewriter, and angrily he takes it back. Everyone begins yelling, “Grievance! Grievance!” I introduce myself to Alan Weitz, the managing editor since mid-January (before that he was an associate editor), as the new shop steward and tell him to tell Marianne not to take any editor’s typewriter.

I visit an NLRB hearing

                  The NLRB hearing is not like a trial, the hearing officer is like a reporter getting information. Ours seems sympathetic, bright, and alert. The first order of business is to determine who is management (someone who supervises others and also makes financial decision.  The production manager is the first witness, and he makes the first employee he discusses seem very supervisory. The employee then describes his job more modestly, and it’s agreed that he doesn’t make decisions about when other staff’s shifts are over. He may be what’s called a lead person, seeing that routine work is done efficiently, but he would still be an employee.

                  Our organizer says it’s important to have union members at the hearings to show we are visibly active, so I go to one, which happens to be focused on Bob Christgau, editor of the music section. Most of his testimony centers on assigning and setting fees. Bob says his only authority over writers is to “cajole, wheedle, beg, enthuse,” though some have to be babied, while others, like Gary Giddins and Tom Johnson, choose what they want to review, i.e., self-assign. Some writers, like James Wolcott and David Tipmore, have refused assignments, sometimes for months. Geoffrey Stokes’s political assignments take priority over music ones. The hearing officer explains the distinction between “request” and “direct,” and if writers have a “right of refusal,” then the editor can only request—but while all the writers have a right to refuse on paper, they also may have contractual obligations.

                  Alan Weitz also testified. He seems to be trying to figure out what each question to him is supposed to be trying to get at so he won’t say the wrong thing, and that leads him to take a long time with each answer.

                  NLRB hearings end two weeks later. They include such issues as whether the managing editor’s walls go all the way to the ceiling, or don’t. Is this to determine how private his meetings with staff are?

NLRB decision comes down

                  Doug White (freelancer Jane Lazarre’s husband, who works for the NLRB) calls Paul Cowan, a writer, who calls Geoff Stokes, who tells everyone else. The union wins on 15 of 20 of the contested people and all the part-time people. M., the copy chief, is management, but all the senior editors are accepted as employees. 

Awaiting the official union vote

                  We still have to have a formal election, which is scheduled for June 30. Everyone who works at the Voice will be represented by the union, and the more people who vote, the stronger the union will be. Vote will be based on a majority of those who actually vote, not those eligible to vote. Our union organizer says it’s unusual that there’s been no antiunion campaign yet, but we shouldn’t be surprised if there’s something before the vote.

                  So far, the only antiunion activity has been to promote pro-union people into management.

Union election day, June 30

                  We’re not allowed to wear union pins in the voting location. The vote count is pure ritual. The NLRB agent gives a little speech about how he will open the box and he is the only person who can touch the ballots, even if some fall on the floor. Not only do we win, turnout is also good: out of 141 eligible voters, there are 86 yes votes, 21 no votes , 5 still under challenge, and 2 challenged and accepted. So 80% of eligible voters voted, and 75% of those who voted, voted yes. Among the challenged votes, at least three we know are yes votes, and possibly all five.

                  Contract negotiations begin, but there won’t be a contract vote until the fall.

Meanwhile, life in the copy department goes on

                  Several times I get stoned on Monday nights. Sometimes the dope is the art director’s, sometimes from a writer. I’ll walk up to the boards, large sheets of paper on the wall where all the stories for the issue are listed along with their status in the process. I stare at the list, forget why I’m there, wander back to my desk, remember, back to the boards, forget again. Eventually, I realize this is no way to do my job. I’ll smoke dope after we close on Tuesdays.

                  One of the art directors is at the boards on Monday, looking for info about whether art is available for a story he has to design. While I am married, I’ve mentioned our somewhat open marriage, and this art director is extremely cute.  I come up behind him and squeeze his waist; he makes no move to show he’s noticed. I decide I’ve been rebuffed and never do that again. Years later I wonder, was that sexual harassment? Of course it was.

                  Here’s what a bad day is like in February. It’s Thursday, there are no stories for us to work on, and the copy chief and editor-in-chief are late. When they do appear, editor-in-chief Marianne starts screaming about all the editors being at hearings and not doing any work. I scream back that copy is due from Marianne and Alan, not editors who are at hearings. Marianne replies, “Timothy Crouse’s feature was on my desk all morning.” I reply, “How were we to know that?” Then there’s a hassle at a department heads meeting (with Murdoch present) where the production manager claimed that the copy chief had to hire a free-lancer to cover for a copyeditor on the steering committee who was at hearings. As shop steward, I ask Marianne about this, and she says she replied that Teri had been hired because we need more copyeditors, but I’m not sure she made the case forcefully enough that the copy department is understaffed. The rest of the day deteriorates as copy comes in late, all has to be ready for the 8 p.m. messenger to the typesetter, Timothy Crouse’s feature never gets fact-checked, and, work is interrupted by two parties: Jack Newfield’s birthday, and Marianne’s assistant Charlie’s farewell.

                  The copy department has been fairly chaotic and overworked. Sometimes we work 10 or 12 hours on closing day (Monday), partly because there aren’t enough of us. Editors don’t meet their deadlines, so sometimes we sit around doing nothing, then have too much to do at the last minute. And some writers are allowed to file on Sunday, so someone has to be available on the weekend, and we never know what time. Fact-checking is too difficult because writers don’t bring us their research materials.

                  A couple of weeks after that bad day in February, we all meet with Marianne, editor-in-chief. In discussing our proposed shifts, she wonders why anyone would want a 10 a.m.–6 p.m. shift on Monday, then go to the plant Tuesday to start work at 5 a.m. Linda has already volunteered for this shift, and Dorothy says, “I’d do it.” Under my breath, I mutter, “I wouldn’t.” Marianne stares at me and says, “Of course, you’re the only healthy one here.” I can’t tell whether that’s good or bad in her eyes. Several months later, when M. is made an editor and I have lunch with Marianne to tell her I don’t want M.’s job because I’m not a workaholic, she says that’s a perfectly valid thing, for me. It sounds almost like she’s absolving me for not being a workaholic! But does this mean I have to be a workaholic to get what I want at the Voice?

                  We all agree to have regular meetings with copyeditors, editor-in-chief, and managing editor so there won’t be misunderstandings. Dorothy Smith worries that the copyeditors might not feel free to speak candidly, but I see the ambiguity of Alan’s and Marianne’s situation. I can believe they see themselves as workers in relation to Murdoch, but in relation to us they are bosses, an identity they feel uncomfortable with. But they can’t renounce the authority they have — it just has to be dealt.

My pay

                  In early April, I see Alan about some stories for the paper, including one about the book Pink Collar Workers revealing that the gap between men’s and women’s salaries is widening. “Speaking of money,” I say, casually, as this feels the perfect opening to ask for a raise. We haggle about how much, especially when his offer is less than the pace of inflation (which is more than double what it is now, and on its way to being triple in 1978). But he agrees I should get a raise. This will bring my salary up to almost $13,000 a year (almost $66,000 today).

                  Two months later I talk to Alan about my “promised” raise, which has not yet happened. The only reason I feel able to bring it up is that Alan is younger than I am.

Almost a typical Tuesday, closing day at the plant

                  It’s late August and I go to Mt. Kisco after finishing work at the office at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, arriving at the Holiday Inn over an hour later and staying up to talk to Teri, Linda, and Alan until 3:15. (Another time I take the train to Mt. Kisco at 6 in the morning, getting on at 125th Street, which feels a bit creepy as there are very few people at the station and most of them are men.) I sleep for a couple of hours, pick up Linda and Teri, and we have breakfast at a diner. We get to the plant by 7, are finished by 12:30, and I’m home by 2:15.

                  Take a nap until 5, then pick up five-year-old Christie from daycare while Jack goes off to his night shift. Maybe this is the day I read Christie one of her favorite books, which I find very boring, about what lives in the ocean. On the last page, the text lists all the creatures who live in the sea. I fall asleep while reading the list, but keep on speaking, and say “pineapple.” Christie says, “Where does it say pineapple?” which wakes me up. What? Did I say pineapple? Christie insists I read the list again and again and again, and each time I have to say that “pineapple” lives in the sea.

                  Another day at the plant. I don’t like the lead piece, about mentally ill patients released from state hospital to the Upper West Side, without enough support systems. I think it’s thin and the editor is hyping the most sensational part of it. The editor insists it’s ironic and I’m taking it too seriously. I give up arguing about it.

                  Here’s an editorial meeting. For some time, editors have been feeling that editorial meetings are merely rubber-stamping decisions already made by a small group of people. I had mentioned this at an editorial meeting months ago and was told, not in so many words, that I was being paranoid. At today’s meeting, one editor declares that a piece on Liza Minnelli is “the worst piece of shit he’d ever seen in the paper.” Some people think his criticism is excessive, but I say that I’d copyedited it, and it was totally boring and dull. But it was 5 p.m. on Monday, so I thought it was too late to say anything.

                  The discussion then follows three tracks. Some editors delve into whether  the editor’s “lack of manners” were a personal attack or an editorial opinion. Others wonder why the Voice does personality pieces at all, one pointing out that the Voice has an interview with a star the week the star’s newest movie opens. The assigning editor gets very defensive since he feels his judgment is being impugned. I say the main point isn’t the principle of what kind of pieces the Voice runs, but why is the Voice forced to run a bad feature that comes in late on closing day? There’s no resolution to any of these issues, but later Nat Hentoff says he agrees completely with what I said.

Life as a shop steward

                  Maybe our first labor/management problem that I’m called in for as shop steward occurs shortly before NLRB hearings begin, and it’s over a writer’s contributor bio that says she’s a member of District 65. The editor never mentions this to the higher-ups and on closing day, Alan, the managing editor, sees the bio and becomes quite upset. I try to mediate, mostly by trying to find a rationale for the bio, but Alan is insistent that it can’t run. One editor says he’s lost his sense of humor and I suggest that he’s taking this personally, both of which he denies, but I suspect are true.

                  A regular freelance photography reviewer is told by Marianne in June she’s being replaced, even though Alan told her he was considering hiring her as a staff editor. She calls Kitty, our rep at the union, and tells her that back in March Alan said he’d been told he couldn’t hire anyone that would increase the size of the bargaining unit. Kitty says that’s an unfair labor practice and she can make a complaint. But the reviewer wants to work at the Voice and needs a job to pay the rent, so she’s not ready to make a complaint.

                  As shop steward, I meet with Marianne about this situation. I point out that the reviewer had built a photography section in the Voice, even though as a freelancer she didn’t have that authority. From what Marianne says, I think there are misperceptions on both sides, and maybe I don’t have to take sides.

                  The next day photography reviewer tells me she had a good talk with Marianne and says I helped in our conversation the night before. So I’m thankful things are working out and try to focus on what I did to help.

Back to the union

                  Are contract negotiations at an impasse? It’s late October, and we’ve suggested a mediator; management can’t decide whether they want one, and Murdoch will have to approve one in any case. Management still thinks we’re a lot of hotheads and naïve young people who think a strike is romantic. Why don’t they understand we just want grownup salaries?

                  At a union meeting with almost 110 people present, we take a strike vote. There are only three “no” votes, and I can’t tell if there are any abstentions. When I go back to the Voice, there’s a crowd outside; a guard is letting some in, but not others. Classified management are behind the receptionist desk, like they’re withstanding the barbarians, and the personnel manager looks very unhappy. She says she has no orders about editorial, and we all troop to the elevator. It seems like another irrational attempt to scare us, which only makes us angry.

                  On November 10, we meet at District 65 to discuss and vote on the final contract. A Teamster organizer is sitting in, maybe to lend solidarity if we need it. He alerts us that management’s law firm is known for its vicious strike-breaking tactics.

                  I’m really upset that the contract specifies the minimum wage for copyeditors at $2 a hour less than anyone currently working is making. This is going backward. Anyone hired after us will have to work for five years just to earn what the three of us get now. I make an impassioned speech: “I’m not saying we should reject the contract because of this one item. But it’s not right.” One of the negotiators says this is just a minimum, if you’re hiring an experienced person you can always pay more. I’m dubious about this, and in a couple of years, I will find my skepticism well-founded.

                  Later I learn that the copyeditor representative on the union negotiating team didn’t lobby for specific issues the copyeditors want, like a night differential. She did speak up strongly about copy department pay inequities, but in a way that suggested not that her pay should be raised but that the highest paid person’s pay should be cut. “She gets paid so much more than I do” means something different than “I get paid so much less than she does.”

                  The final vote: 75 accept, 7 reject, 10 abstentions, which include me, Bob Christgau, Judy Coburn, Helena Hacker, and Ross Wetzsteon.

                  On a lighter note, the negotiating committee planned to give two Village Voice posters, autographed by the Voice negotiators, to Kitty and Zeke, but they had to be kept out of the room while the signing was going on. Later, they learn that Kitty and Zeke were afraid the Voice people were voting to disaffiliate from District 65.

My Voice future

                  Throughout the year, as M., the copy chief, does more and more editing, I go back and forth whether I want to be copy chief if she’s promoted. In April I have dinner with Alan, where he tells me Marianne says it was a mistake to make M. copy chief without clearly defining how her job and the managing editor job were distinct. (Finally, they’ve noticed.) I’ve thought it would be better to make M. a senior editor, since then she’d be able to join the union and she clearly enjoys editing. But if that happens I’m in a fix: I don’t want to be the head copyeditor if it means I have to go to the plant every week, unless I get paid $20,000 a year minimum (and I don’t think that could happen; M. only makes $13,000, which seems not at all enough), but I also don’t want anyone else to be the head copyeditor. I’ve gotten on very well with M. and with Helena before her. Will I get on as well with a new person?

                  In mid-August, Linda says she won’t go to the plant anymore, because she and I are getting the same salary, but doing vastly different jobs. Marianne says she wants to train Linda to be a floor editor at the plant, and I be trained to be the proof editor. I immediately say I will need a raise because going to the plant every week is disruptive and I can’t work on Linda’s schedule, which essentially is working 28 hours straight. Marianne says there’s no money, but when she learns I can drive, she says, “You can have a car and drive up the next morning.”

                  Then I talk with M., who tells me Marianne has said she might be made an editor in maybe six months. M. says she put in a plug for me as copy chief “on my own terms,” which means not becoming management.  Jack says if I become copy chief, he’ll ask to work a three-day week. He thinks the Post will fold in a year — it’s becoming such a rag under Murdoch, looking more and more like the National Enquirer.

                  Is it only money and union status that’s the sticking point about the copy chief job? It would be a real challenge to have that authority and responsibility, and historically that’s been the position from which a copy editor becomes an editor. But the negatives may be too much. The job is more than full-time, at least 50 hours a week, and I’d lose that day off in the middle of the week that I now have. It also requires a totally anal-compulsive approach, and I could end up feeling personally responsible for every typo and mistake, and there are always some. I would probably enjoy doing it for a couple of months, then become bored, then crazy. (Remember this, reader, when you get to the Village Voice, part III!)

                  I am definitely getting tired of what I am doing now, though. If I don’t become copy chief, I can focus more on writing, which has the advantage of being more flexible in terms of time. And if I want to become an editor, I can find people to write stories I can edit about subjects I’m interested in, like SRO buildings (one is across the street from where I live), the Old Reliable (a Lower East Side bar we used to go to in the ’60s—now closed—with neighborhood Ukrainians at the bar and young people dancing to Motown in the backroom from a jukebox that still plays three songs for a quarter), the whole Lower East Side, which a friend says is looking almost rural with all the burned-out buildings.

On the writing front

                  A conversation with Karen Durbin about Ayn Rand leads to her idea that we should try to get an interview with her about her thoughts on women’s liberation and feminism. I had read Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as a teenager and was tremendously impressed by her heroines, who at the time I read the books were the closest thing to feminist heroines I’d yet read, but their romances still involved male domination. Her books helped me appreciate the beauty of technology and reinforced the value of work. Liking Rand’s work was also my adolescent rebellion against my Marxist parents; I’d been raised to think my intelligence didn’t make me better than other people, and Rand offered a justification for admiring and admitting to individual strength and intelligence.

                  Karen thinks I would be the best person to interview Rand since I was such a fan when I first read the books. Now I’m rethinking my adolescent thoughts. If every woman’s desire is to love the best man, isn’t every woman except one doomed to disappointment? What happens to each person’s sense of self-esteem (one of Rand’s high values) when they cannot achieve or reach something they aspire to? Doesn’t her philosophy lead to a hierarchical society? I’m rereading Ayn Rand, teetering on the edge of being swept away again.

                  I have lunch with Richard Goldstein to talk about what I could write about. When I say that I love movies, he suggests I focus on documentaries because very few people are paying attention to them. I take notes, but documentaries don’t appeal to me at this moment. I haven’t seen many yet, so don’t know what writing about them might be like. (Another missed chance. What if I had started reviewing nonfiction movies then?)

                  Freelancer Jan Prindle has voluminous notes on the negotiations, and I have my voluminous notes on the first month of organizing. Thinking we might combine our efforts, I have the grandiose fantasy of a book, but Jan thinks that’s way too ambitious. However, she does develop a structure: two chess games, one being organizing up to election, the next being negotiations up to contract. First, we have to decide who our audience is: other media people? media journals? a general readership? Then there’s POV: will it be personal, participant accounts, or objective journalistic accounts? Jan also notes that we should include the union’s perspective, as there had been conflict within the union over whether it was good or bad to have the Voice in the union. Those opposed want District 65 to get back into the AFL-CIO and that the Voice is too iconoclastic to fit that established labor framework. Those in support want 65 to maintain its strong independent position.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

                  In early fall major personnel changes at the Voice force me to make a choice. M. becomes an editor, I say I want to spend more time writing, and editing, Marianne offers Linda the job of copy chief, and she accepts.  Linda was one of the most involved people on the union negotiating committee, so I suggest she could ask for either more money or to remain in the union. But she’s afraid they’ll fire her if she makes any demands.

                  I am happy about how things are working out. I know I’ve made the right decision, and I don’t feel passed over. No regrets!

Confrontation with Linda, or

The Benefits of a Grievance Process

                  This account now gets very personal. Linda becoming copy chief changes the power dynamic in the copy department, but all I notice is she’s not as friendly and talks to me less. While we were colleagues, we often argued over how to handle a situation. After she becomes my boss, I continue to argue. It never occurs to me that arguing with a colleague is a different dynamic than arguing with my boss.

                  One thing that makes me nervous is that she doesn’t intend to replace herself, which will make the copy department a person short. (Is she already thinking like management and saving money?) One day Linda and I fight over the Monday/Tuesday schedule, when all the copy was done and out by 6:30, but we didn’t leave the office until 11 p.m. This didn’t make any sense.

                   In October, I suggest we have lunch to try to talk out what problems she has with me so I can know how to de-escalate. She says there are no problems, which is clearly not true. I have tried to make clear that I’m not jealous that she got promoted, but maybe she doesn’t believe me because I can’t help disagreeing with her suggestions if I think they’re not good. An editor suggests she might feel insecure because she didn’t go to college. But I know she’s well-read and smart. Perhaps she senses that I don’t think she’s someone to seriously have an effect on my life, our values are so different, almost antithetical. She’s not a feminist, for instance.

                  Everything starts coming to a head when two episodes provoke me to make two basic mistakes: (1) I shouldn’t have volunteered information when someone asked, “What went wrong?” and (2) I shouldn’t have said anything that Linda would think put her in a bad light.

                  Episode 1: I’ve been editing Jill Johnston while her editor is on leave, and her feature for the November 21 issue is on Findhorn, in Scotland, where a New Age community has gathered based on reputed gigantic vegetables that grow there. Late on Monday, I’m told I have to cut six inches from the story. I’m astonished and furious; this is awfully late to be telling me this, especially with as sensitive a writer as Jill is. I can’t reach Jill, but I find 42 lines that can be cut, and when we get to the plant at 1:30 a.m., I send the marked-up galley to production, telling them to save the cuts because they’re not yet approved. But they are not saved.

                  Tuesday morning I call Jill at 8 a.m. Of course, she’s furious. “Don’t run it,” she says. I call Marianne, who says, run something else. Then Linda is on the phone with Marianne, and somehow Jill’s story gets squeezed in, but with no art; it doesn’t look bad, but doesn’t look good either. Linda says I should have forced Jill to accept the cuts, and when Marianne sees the paper, she says anything would have been better than what was done.

                  Episode 2: The American Film Institute is saluting the top 10 American movies, so our film editor thinks it would be nice to have the Voice film critics choose their top 10. The critics bring their top 10 lists on Friday, but because the film editor is out sick that day, no one seems to be in charge of the film section for the issue. I’d told Alan and Linda about the top 10 lists, for a box (but not Marianne; won’t one of those two tell her?), and sent them through to production.

                  On Monday closing day, I suggest to Linda that someone should be in charge of all the pieces in the film section. Linda says Teri can do it, even though it seems to me that Teri is already swamped. Since I’ve decided not to argue with Linda, I don’t say anything further, and when I see no mention of the top 10 films box on the map, I think it must not have fit.

                  At Wednesday’s editorial meeting, Tom Allen says it’s too bad the top 10 lists didn’t get in, and Marianne has no idea what he’s talking about. When it’s explained, she says, “We blew it. What happened?” I pipe up: “Well, the film editor was sick and no one was really in charge.” Linda glares at me, waves me silent, and says, “I’ll find out.” Soon after Linda proceeds to lecture me in Alan’s office: “Never say no one was in charge.” She describes the copy editor’s job in a way that it has not existed , but I can’t say that, because then she’ll accuse me of not knowing what my job is. She doesn’t want me to edit Jill Johnston because it’s too complicated—which is fine with me, since I’ve been editing for free—and she takes away another section I’ve been in charge of copy editing. Am I being reprimanded? I don’t ask because I don’t want to give her any ideas.

                  A week later, Linda is home sick. I copy edit a ton of stories and leave her my time sheet, which includes a lot of overtime. I fantasize that Linda will reject my time sheet. Who told you to do all that work? she’d say. I was doing you a favor, I’d say. Who asked you to do me a favor? It’s my work and I don’t get overtime, she’d say. And would she have been angry at me if all that work hadn’t been done while she was home sick?

                  This is the first time since I’ve become assertive that I’m working for someone who feels threatened by my assertiveness. M. didn’t mind my taking charge of certain things, being independent, filling in for her, or arguing with her. Linda feels all of that is an attack on her. In some ways, I probably am hard to work with: I am opinionated, I don’t like change unless it’s obviously better, I like to argue, and if I think I’m right, I don’t hide it. (Just like my father! OMG.) And perhaps I sounded patronizing when I told her to ask for more money for the copy chief job.

                  Jack suggests that all my job troubles stem from my doing more than I have to. I have never understood this criticism. I’ve always thought the way one gets to do more, gets a better job, gets promoted is to do more than is required. I see Jack following the course he advises, which is to do only the absolute minimum—but he’s not very happy.

A warning letter?

                  Early December, I get a vaguely worded, somewhat formal letter from Linda. It contains the word “warn” twice and ends: “I hope to see a marked improvement in the next month.” I am both furious and afraid. My first thought is, Go ahead, fire me, let’s just take this to arbitration, I’ll get my job back and all that back pay. I’m a shop steward, which makes it look antiunion, but it really isn’t, it’s too personal. I go to an office where I can talk privately and call Jack. He’s speechless, then gives me the response I need to hear: I am right; I am being unjustly attacked. He asks if I’ve talked to Kitty, our union rep, and I say, that’s the second call I plan to make.

                  Kitty wants to see the note, so I walk the few blocks to the union office. She thinks this isn’t a formal warning and we should give Linda the chance to say it isn’t a formal warning, just communicating a problem. She calls Linda to make an appointment for the following week, says the note doesn’t read like a formal warning. Oh, it is a real warning, Linda says. Kitty replies, in that case, the warning has to include certain criteria, like specifics, time limits, etc., and Kitty needs to get a copy as well. Shortly after Kitty hangs up, Linda calls her back to make sure she hasn’t done anything wrong, and can she bring someone for her side? Kitty says, no, at this point, it’s best to keep everything simple. I wonder whether my going to Kitty has made Linda freak out, but Kitty says I’ve done the right thing. I am extremely grateful for the union, a neutral place with neutral observers.

                  Back at the office, Linda seems more friendly and less surly than usual, which seems odd, but also fine. As if scripted for comic relief, the Gay Activists Alliance soon storms into the office threatening to burn us out over the “Coast Is Queer” hed in the Letters section. This helps me regain my equilibrium.

                  After work, I talk to Geoff Stokes, who says there are two questions: Do I want to stay at the Voice after all of this, and if I do, what’s my strategy? Do I want to continue to work for Linda, is my real question. Since I really want to edit, I need to talk to Marianne, and soon, since Linda is her protégé. Since Karen Durbin is coming back from leave and wants to write, not edit, I might be the solution to that problem. .

                  The following week, Kitty meets with me and Linda at the Cedar Tavern, next door to the Voice. The first surprise is that Alan, the managing editor, arrives with Linda and wants to sit in. He and Kitty argue back and forth over who should be at this meeting and what level it is until Kitty asks me what I think, and I say I don’t think this will need to go to a second step, so why act as though it will.

                  Kitty asks Linda to explain each point in the letter, the first one being “not assuming the responsibility [she] expects of all copy editors.” This turns out to mean that I haven’t volunteered to work on Sundays when other copy editors do. I explain to Kitty the history of the Sunday desk, which too many writers take advantage of. Linda gets very impassioned about how even she often works on Sunday. I am equally impassioned: “To be honest, Linda, I think you are being exploited and you are allowing yourself to be exploited, and I’m not going to allow myself to be exploited.”

                  Linda also wants me to ask editors when their copy will be ready. I say I hadn’t done that because I didn’t want to be doing something I thought was her job. Linda is exasperated by everything I say. Kitty points out that it shouldn’t be required for people to volunteer for extra work; it should be clear what’s required as part of the job. Linda says her standard for what’s part of the job is what she does herself, and Kitty says she can’t make the standard be someone who routinely does extra work.

                  Kitty suggests that we consider Linda’s letter no longer in effect, that there be a copy department meeting to work out new procedures, and if I don’t do a good job, Linda can reword the warning with specifics. Linda says she’ll think about it.

                  Throughout the meeting I have been very nervous, but I’ve noticed Linda is just as nervous. Plus, we’ve been sitting by the door, and every time someone comes into the Cedar, they come with a blast of cold air.

                  A couple of days later, we have a copy department meeting to divide up the rest of the issue, stories due Friday, Sunday, and Monday. As stories are assigned, Linda doesn’t give me much to do and wants Teri to do a lot. Whatever I volunteer to do, Linda keeps for herself or gives to someone else. The conflict continues in a low key into the new year. But that’s the end of the threat to fire me.

In the real world, Christie starts school...

                 In June Christie turns five, so kindergarten looms. In our neighborhood are three schools: a public school four blocks away, and two private schools, one Episcopalian two blocks away, and one progressive, right next door.

                  At that time children are required to go to their neighborhood public school, though parents often give friends’ addresses as their own to get their kids into public schools with better reputations. Our neighborhood school is not one of those, and I don’t want her going to a school where we as parents will have to work a lot to help the school be better (I’m too invested in working—and we don’t know Murdoch will lay off half the newsroom, including Jack, in a year), so that’s out. Jack doesn’t want Christie to have to lie about where she lives, so the option of getting her into the public school 16 blocks away is out. The Episcopalian school’s teachers are nuns in habits, and when I hear that there’s chapel every Friday, I say no way. The idea of her being taught anything about religion, which I would then feel bound to argue against is out of bounds for me. Plus, the students all wear uniforms—which offends my sense of individuality. (Years later, after I learn more about the Episcopal church and that school, I rather regret my decision.)

                  That leaves Bank Street, which has the advantage of being so close. What we learn about the school also appeals to me: it doesn’t have standard grades; every class has two age groups, like 4-5s, 7-8s, etc. Its program is based on a social studies model, and every fall we’ve seen children going with their class to Broadway and making a list of all the stores on two or three blocks. Later in the fall, they go to an orchard in New Jersey to see where food in the stores comes from. They learn math by going to the wholesale market in the Bronx, buying fruits and vegetables, then selling them in a pop-up shop after determining prices based on what they’ve paid. After selling all the food, they vote on where to donate their profit.

                  In early February we start the process of applying Christie to Bank Street. First, her interview consists of her going into a small room with two other children. The boy’s mother stays the whole time, the girl’s mother stays for several minutes, while Jack and I leave almost immediately because Christie goes right over to a table where there are blocks to put together like a puzzle, and has no anxiety about our not being there. The next week, Jack and I are interviewed by the school’s director, who reads us the notes from Christie’s interviewer, which are all very positive. The only negative is what the interviewer thinks might be a speech problem, but I’m sure is only that sometimes her thoughts are coming so fast that she doesn’t get all the words out clearly. It’s recommended that she be admitted to a 4-5s class, but since there are no openings in that group, she starts in September in a 5-6s class.

It’s Christmas and party season starts

                  The Voice party is on a Friday, at Feathers, and since I’m working until 8, Linda is unaccountably friendly, inviting me to her apartment to change. At the party, at One Fifth, I see Anna Mayo with Ted Weiss (in his first year in Congress) and Bella Abzug in a magnificent fur cape and one of her signature big hats. I dance with several Voice men (all of whom I asked to dance), then lust after someone who looks familiar and turns out to be a local TV reporter. Saturday night is a party at the home of the parents of one of Christie’s daycare friends, very nice and terrific food. Because I was out too late the night before, I miss a party later that evening. And Sunday, Jack can’t find the invite to Joe Mancini’s party, so we miss that, and I go off to a chili-off, where there’s bad, too loud punk music, and too many bad punk haircuts.

The blackout of 1977 and the beginnings of CARASA

                  I’m at a feminist meeting in Washington Square Village on Wednesday, July 13, prepping for an abortion coalition meeting scheduled for the next evening. (Was this the meeting where Ellen Willis came up with the name No More Nice Girls, which became our feminist guerrilla theater group in the 1980s?) About 9:30 the lights dim, brighten, dim, brighten, then gradually fade to totally off. Someone thinks the building’s power has gone off. Someone else looks out the window and says, “It’s the whole city!”

                  I grope for the wall phone to call Franny, our babysitter, to tell her where the candles are, but give up the phone to two women whose kids are home alone. When I reach Franny, she says Jack had already called, because at the Post they knew the lights were going out from north to south, and told her where the flashlight was. I go out to the terrace where Judy Coburn is, and she says this reminds her of Vietnam, with lights off and strange sounds.

                  Some people want to continue the meeting, though no one can find candles, and Alix Shulman offers her home on Washington Square. Others want to get off the 11th floor. I ask Karen, “Are you nervous?” and she says, “Yes, I’m afraid of the dark.” Was I more scared of the dark in a strange apartment or of walking down 11 flights of stairs in the dark? We all form a chain, with one pocket flashlight and lighters (people still smoked). It’s pitch-dark in the stairwells and feels more scary than where we’d been. At one point we have to stop and let lighters cool off. I put my hand on the shoulder of the woman in front of me just for a human connection.

                  On the street, some of us set off toward Sixth Avenue, where we intend to get on an uptown bus. We pass a car with its radio on, and that’s how we learn that lightning had struck a power station in Westchester, causing overloads throughout Westchester and most of New York City. Three young men walk by, muttering loud enough for us to hear, “Anybody wanna be fucked into the ground?” That panics and enrages me.

                  At Sixth Avenue, some of us catch a Checker cab. The driver is erratic, going too fast, but in fits and starts, because there are no street lights and no traffic lights. At 102nd Street, a car is on the sidewalk in front of a five & dime, and the store’s metal gates have been torn down. There’s no apparent looting yet, but looks like there might be.

                  Christie looks so brave, and so nervous at the same time, when I walk in the door, and she tells me about the lights going on and off three times, and as soon as Franny put her hand on the flashlight, the lights went off totally. Instead of being relieved to get home, I’m even more nervous. Now I have to be the responsible adult, when I want to be scared, like Christie

                  In the morning, the lights are on at home. I call the Voice, and there are a few people there, but they’re officially closed and still have no power. Christie’s daycare center is also closed, no water and not enough staff. The Village and Yorkville are the last areas to get power late that night.

                  I write a story comparing my experience of two blackouts, 1965 and 1977. Blackout coverage in the Voice includes news stories on the looting and on court-processing of all those arrested, on Con Ed, and lots of photos. Then there will be anecdotes, by me, Arthur Bell, and a peculiar coincidence from Ali Anderson: she had gone to a show at Tramp’s, and its first number was a remembrance of the 1965 blackout, so when the lights went out, everyone thought it was part of the act. I’m afraid my piece will be cut to shreds to fit.

                  All day yesterday and today I have been conscious of the lights being on — some corner of my brain is preoccupied by fear that the lights could go out again at any minute.

                  On closing day, my piece is too long for the vignettes section. But a year later, Jack Newfield writes an update on Con Ed after the blackout, and I propose my story from the blackout year. It runs, with the hed “When Lightning Struck Twice.”

                  That abortion rights group that was meeting the night of the blackout? We’ve been privately calling it the Blackout group, and there’s another meeting in mid-August. Now we call it the Feminist Emergency Action group (really? FEAG?), which eventually becomes part of CARASA, the Coalition for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse. CARASA plans an abortion teach-in, which becomes an abortion speakout, for mid-September and at a planning meeting I ask whether anyone is organizing childcare for the event. Since no one is, I end up being that person and get one volunteer. I imagine I will write a funny piece about this and sell it to Redbook, but that never happens.

                  I do write about the speakout. Abortion speakouts had been a major way to publicize the stories of actual women who’d had illegal abortions before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision just four years earlier. With the recent passage of the Hyde Amendment, which strictly limits federal payments for abortions, we feel like we’re starting over. I write my story of the event and show it to Jack, who says it reads like a pro-abortion pamphlet. When I show it to my editor, she says the same thing. She goes through the story, listing the points that need to be covered and what information is still needed. Then she looks me in the eye and says, “How fast can you write?” I feel fairly confident I can do it, since my editor has basically given me the outline.

                  Christie has just started kindergarten, but I’ve had to bring her to the office on Monday, the day I hand in the story. So I go down to the writers’ floor, entrust Christie to Jan, who’s in charge of the Voice’s City Desk, and I rewrite the story in two hours, in time to be ready to revert to my copy editor role at 3 p.m. And my story runs in the paper.

                  [Twenty-three years later that story is anthologized in Dear Sisters, a collection subtitled “Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement.” And 23 years after that, following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, what I wrote in 1977 is just as important and timely now.]

                  Afterward, the Feminist Emergency Action Group meets to talk about possible analyses of the issue, and Ellen Willis seems the only one who has a more feminist than leftist orientation. Most of the other women have come to feminism out of a left group and see abortion in class and race terms, while Ellen wants to include abortion as a women’s rights issue.

                  In an emotional, inarticulate way I am a feminist leftist, but with no clear left perspective. I have a weird amalgam of family-mythology-leftism, which has become in many ways a watered-down left-liberalism. I don’t have a strong gut class consciousness—that’s all learned, intellectual. All of my grandparents were Bolshevik sympathizers and one grandfather was an organizer for the Fur & Leather Workers Union (and a Communist). Both my parents were college graduates.  When Christie asks me what a feminist is, I say, “a woman who works with other women to get equal rights, to get treated fairly,” but I don’t say anything about men and power. Am I afraid of where that leads, personally?

Feminist life

                  In winter 1977 the New York feminist newspaper Majority Report publishes a list of 169 names mentioned in FBI files on the women’s movement—the FBI had released the names to the L.A. Times—and I’m on the list because I was on the editorial committee for Media Women, which put out two issues of a newsletter titled Women’s Monthly in the fall of 1969. My first reaction is pride: I do have an FBI file. After the Majority Report story, I write in my journal: “It feels like this certifies that I am a radical, someone the government considered dangerous. In fact, I’m not dangerous, but I’m not not dangerous either.”

Personal observations

                  Jack is jealous of my job, which he explained to Christie means he wished I didn’t spend so much time with my job and, at the same time, wished he liked his job as much as I like mine.

                  I note that vacations from work disturb the rhythms of one’s life, both for good and bad. The good: you refresh your mind, rest, see different places and things. The bad: your routines and relationships are disturbed; other people’s lives go on without you for days or weeks, and it’s hard to fit back in, especially when changes occur while you were gone.

                  Jack’s drinking is beginning to bother me enough that I start going to Al-Anon meetings in the spring. There’s too much talk about God and a lot of slogans. But a couple resonate. “Take what you like and leave the rest” makes a lot of sense — see what works and forget the God talk. And I grasp like a lifeline the concept that I am not responsible for his drinking. I do not control his drinking; only he controls it. It will take nine years before I’m ready to do anything about this.

1978

Going to the plant for production

                  I’ve gone to the plant where the Voice is pasted up erratically the first few years. But now I’m going more regularly and will describe this mid-20th century, now obsolete, production process.

                  Writers wrote their stories on typewriters. (With one exception that I know of, which happened when I was copy chief.) They were copyedited on paper, and talked over with writers face to face. Paper manuscripts were sent by messenger to the typesetter (in sequence when I was there, Patent Trader in Mt. Kisco, Unitron in Manhattan, and Colormasters in Hackensack) on a regular schedule, and the typesetter sent us paper galleys. On closing day (Tuesday), a crew of production, art, and proofreaders, along with the managing editor, would go to the typesetter early in the morning; for a while the crew went to Mt. Kisco the night before and slept at a motel, sometimes for only four or five hours; later, at Hackensack, they drove early Tuesday morning in rented cars. There, type came out in long strips, was waxed on the back and pasted up on "boards," one for each page, laid out on long tables. 

                  Art and production pulled page proofs, which proofreaders, managing editor, and copy chief read, marked up, and sent back for corrections. Ideally, corrections could be made with an Exacto knife by a production person, but there were always glitches. Sometimes we wouldn't get clearance from the lawyer for a late news story until Tuesday morning; then we had to call the writer and might have to reset a few lines or a whole graf. Or a story would be too long, and an art director would try to fit it into whatever space might be available — this could lead to a story jumping three, four, even five times.

                  At least once that I know of, a story by Ellen Willis got hopelessly mangled during the jump process and had to be entirely reprinted in the next issue, with paragraphs and lines in the correct order. In another case, the theater section had three reviews that started on the opening page of the section and jumped to a second page. The jump page was very neatly laid out (an art person pronounced it "Beautiful!"), but the opening was a mess, with the head of one review at the bottom of a column, and you couldn't tell where on the next column the review continued. 

                  Once pages got their final approval, negatives were produced and driven to the printer, either in Connecticut or, later, in New Jersey, I think.

                  Writers generally knew how many words they could type on a page and how that number of words translated into inches of type. But some writers could not keep that information in their heads. Wayne Barrett regularly had to have his stories cut at the plant because he wrote too long. When we told him he could write two pages, he would write on two sheets of paper, but with half-inch margins right, left, top and bottom. So I devised a form page that showed how far writers could type to the right margin if they had pica type or elite type, and showed how many lines were one inch. Wayne still tried to game the system, but at least we could catch him before his copy went to the typesetter.

                  Early one morning before I go to the plant, I have a dream that all the writers at the publication I work for are certifiably insane, i.e., each piece has to be coaxed out of the writer before she or he is sent back to the loony bin. I wake up feeling depressed because I work for all these crazy people.

A blizzard, editorial cliques, and publication style

                  A blizzard is forecast in early February, and snow begins in the afternoon. It’s decided that I and others from production and art should go up to Mt. Kisco early. We get to Grand Central around 4 p.m., and get on the train at 4:25. Half an hour later, the train is still sitting in the station. When we arrive at Mt. Kisco, there are no taxis and police are picking up passengers who don’t have anyone meeting them. So I get taken to the motel in the back of a police car. There’s a plastic barrier between the front and back seat; is this how it feels to be arrested?

                  Next day, we have enough staff to paste up and produce negatives. But then we learn "Connecticut is closed" — it’s impossible to drive into the state. The production manager makes some frantic phone calls, finds a printer in New Jersey that’s open and available, and then hires a helicopter to get the negatives to them. And the paper comes out.

                  A new copy editor in early January tells me she feels all the editors condescend to us, think we can’t write or have ideas, that we’re second-class editorial citizens. I don’t feel this, probably because some editors and writers have become friends, but what I sense are sometimes overlapping cliques. There’s the Linda-Helena Hacker-Jill Goldstein (film editor) alliance; the Helena-Ross Wetzsteon-Richard Goldstein-Alan Weitz-Marianne-George Delmerico cover conference group; the M.-Bob Christgau-Geoffrey Stokes-Richard Goldstein-Eliot Fremont-Smith “outsiders” nexus.; the Jill-Gil Eisner supplement team; the Alan-Marianne-Michael Daly-Mark Jacobson-Jack Newfield-Geoffrey-Alex Cockburn writers’ lunch group. I am most closely connected to the outsiders’ group, have a fairly solid connection with Alan, hardly any with Marianne.

                  The copy department has a style meeting, with Nat Hentoff the only writer present, as he’s the only writer who has strong feelings about publication style. He wants to capitalize all personal titles because, even though he admits it’s sexist, he can’t think of someone called “the secretary” as someone in charge of a department. I just shake my head and say, “Oh, Nat.”

Transition to Unitron

                  The Voice begins to work with a new typesetter in Manhattan. The transition to Unitron seems more complex than it needs to be. If I were in charge, I’d want to know everything there is to know about a new situation so I can work things out ahead of time. Linda waits for the new thing to happen, then deals with each situation as it arises. She prepares a four-page memo describing the new system and gives it to editors and editorial staff to start the new process on Monday. But Monday is our closing day, and everyone is focused on getting out the current issue and not learning a new procedure.

                  Once I get home I spew out to Jack all my anger at Linda. He’s been after me to apply for a job at the New York Times, though he thinks they might not hire me because I don’t have experience on a daily paper. Our friend Cheryl says I could probably get a job at the Bergen (N.J.) Record, work there for a year, then apply to the Times. But why should I work for a year at a place I don’t want to work at so I could, maybe, work someplace else I don’t particularly want to work at?

                  In March, Teri gets the same letter I did last year, and for about as much reason. A general reason is she works too hard—but is that a reason to put someone on warning? The immediate problems: she was given a piece to patch together, but made mistakes because she wasn’t given enough information—but why is that Teri’s fault? Linda doesn’t want anyone else to fuck up at all because she thinks she’ll be blamed.

                  As shop steward, I have to meet with Linda along with Teri and Marianne as department head. But am I the right person, since Linda already doesn’t like me? It’s also not clear to me whether my role as steward is as mediator or as advocate for Teri.

                  At the meeting with Teri, Linda, and Marianne, they rather bully Teri. At lunch with Marianne later, she claims that arguing or even discussing with one’s boss the way work is organized is insubordination. I fail to push back on that idea and also fail to note that the only change in my behavior concerning my Linda problem is that now I always defer to her.

                  At the lunch with Marianne, she says I’m doing such a good job in the copy department and “developing leadership qualities.” I get compliments from her and Linda and Alan about how professionally I handled the plant the day before. In fact, I’d been cranky and snapped at everyone. Is that what one has to do to get a reputation for doing a good job? “Reputation” is the key word here, I’m getting the “reputation” for ability. I’ve always had the ability.

The second firing of Marianne Partridge

                  At the New York Post, Murdoch posts a list of 145 people, about half the newsroom, offering full severance and other sweeteners. Jack is on the list and agonizing over what to do. A financial columnist says Murdoch is obsessed with getting rid of everyone on the hit list. At the same time, he seems to be influenced by whoever spoke to him last. Unstable and irrational—a dangerous situation.

                  On a Monday in early May Jack officially quits the Post. People started quitting in droves when management began harassing them. Jack was told to cover Westchester, but not only do we not have a car, Jack doesn’t have a driver’s license, so they couldn’t force him to rent a car. So I’m about to become the sole support of the family. While the walkouts when we were organizing the union made me feel, for the first time, like a grownup, now I really am a grownup. And I’m a bit worried about Jack’s drinking if he doesn’t get his own job soon.

                  Two days later, at the Voice, Marianne is fired, again, and her replacement has already been hired: David Schneiderman, an assistant editor at the New York Times op-ed page. Everyone is shocked. Bill Ryan, the publisher under Murdoch, had told Marianne to be out of the building by end of day, and a crowd of people ask him WHY? His reasons make no sense, and he seems to be making them up off the top of his head.

                  We are all back in constant meeting mode. Marianne insists she wasn’t fired because she can’t be—the two-year contract she was promised the first time she was fired back in January 1977 will be up the end of January 1979—and her lawyer is talking to Murdoch’s lawyer. The “big boys” (Nat Hentoff, Jack Newfield, Tim Crouse, Alexander Cockburn, and Howard Smith) go off to meet Schneiderman to alert him that the Voice building might be empty were he to show up for his purported first day, June 19. Meanwhile, there’s a previously scheduled union meeting, where our union reps say they will help us in whatever job action or walkout we agree on—it’s creative unionism.

                  Most departments support a walkout in protest, but the display ad department is critical. They’ve sold an ad for a loft expo, but shortly before it was scheduled to appear, Jack Newfield and new hire Joe Conason had published big pieces critical of loft owners, and the ad department feels conspired against. Joe explains he’s been working on his piece since the beginning of the year, so there’s no conspiracy.

                  The next day about 50 Voice employees, including writers, editors, and some from other departments, escort Marianne into the Voice building—it makes the evening news. Another meeting in the evening discusses strategy. The managing editor, as management, keeps warning us of what we can and can’t talk about while management people are in the room. A petition circulates that the undersigned will walk out if Marianne can’t stay. Much discussion of whether this is a strike or a job action, and whether signing the petition could get one fired. We agree that if anyone is fired for signing the petition, we strike. About 45 sign the petition tonight.

                  I’m in a state of panic and shock: I’m usually the first person to say, we must have dramatic action to make our position known. But now I’m the sole support, no longer free to follow my principles, and I’m afraid my colleagues will think I’m a coward. But many know my new situation and are understanding.

                  And I can’t be with those escorting Marianne to work in the morning because of something that otherwise would be momentous. Our landlord is trying to evict us. Jack and I have to appear at small claims court with documentation to show the landlord’s lawyer that we’ve been overcharged the legal rent  (we moved into our apartment two months before the rent control law was replaced by rent stabilization, in 1970). The landlord’s lawyer looks at our papers, says, “I guess you’re right.”

                  I’m part of the escort for Marianne the next day. There’s much discussion among staff about who will and who won’t sign the petition of protest; one of the ad salespeople says she has to ask Ryan for a salary advance, but once she’s done that and gotten the money in the bank, she’ll sign. By afternoon 64 have signed.

                  Ryan has put a note in the elevator saying he’s aware of how concerned people are, and we should feel free to talk with him. I put my name on the list, and when I go down, he’s talking with Karen Durbin. It seems to me that what bothered him most was that Marianne didn’t listen to him, didn’t give him the attention she should have to the president and publisher of the Voice. At a higher level, it’s the same problem I had with Linda: insecurity and insufficient acknowledgment of respect.

                  When Ryan talks about the number of people who’ve worked at the Voice for many, many years and he certainly doesn’t want to see that destroyed, I take that as my cue. I say how I love my job at the Voice, it’s the first job I’ve ever had that I love, and the Voice is such a unique place, I’d hate to feel that I can’t work there anymore.

                  We’ve decided not to walk out today, which means an issue has to be worked on and closed on Monday. So work gets done between continuous meetings of small groups. When I’m finished around 8, I go smoke a joint with the other copyeditors. And before we leave we hear that Bill Ryan spoke to the art director and reported that things are going well and a solution could be found.

                  I bring Christie, who’s six, to a weekend meeting and Erika Munk’s there with her daughter, a year younger than Christie, but each kid sticks with her mother.

The crisis continues for another week

                  Ryan is still talking to staff. A copyeditor and an editor meet with him separately and each returns depressed; Ryan seems inflexible and only wants to talk about his problems with Marianne. Small groups gather, attracting more people, wanting to hear if there’s news. Some think we’re being put off just to get us to put out the issue.

                  George asks Marianne to give us a pep talk—so we can get back to work—and she makes the excellent point that Ryan can’t tell us what the solution will be until it’s all been agreed to by the lawyers. People have been trying to get in touch with Schneiderman, but he’s incommunicado—that may be because in whatever dealings he’ll have with Murdoch, he can’t appear to be too close to the Voice staff at this moment.

                  I talk with Jack about what my choices would be if there’s a walkout. I could never cross a picket line, but Jack thinks it would be tacky if there was a picket line. I’ve been assuming there would be a picket line, since “we” are trying to prevent the paper from coming out. Now I’m having trouble with pronouns, because “we” will be those walking out, but I won’t be walking out, so will “I” become “them”? And what if I’m offered the copy chief job, since Linda might walk out? Jack does acknowledge that I’m in a tough position, and I’m glad our perceptions of reality coincide. At the same time, he thinks we’re all a bit crazy; why doesn’t Marianne just take her money and go?

                  Another delegation of different people met with Schneiderman and reports that he said, “I have no intention of presiding over the flaming corpse of the Village Voice.” Pegi, in the art department, suggests we walk out on Thursday at 5 p.m. to show that we are really serious, and discussion begins over planning for this walkout. When someone suggests a picket line, Karen says a picket line is not a good idea since there are people who can’t walk out because of financial responsibilities, and they shouldn’t have to face a picket line of their peers. (Jack was right!)

                  Marianne’s lawyer reports there will be a meeting the next day with Murdoch’s lawyer, Ryan, Marianne, and a staff delegation. We choose 10 people, and I feel a bit uneasy with so many going to this meeting. Maybe hidden diplomacy and secret negotiations have their point—the fewer people around to see your ego bend, the more likely you’ll let it bend.

                  I go to work feeling fatalistic, since I can’t do anything. The delegation of Voice staffers return and report that Marianne will definitely be gone in January, and we’ll have David Schneiderman as our new editor. Murdoch’s lawyer wanted a guarantee this wouldn’t happen again when Marianne has to go, and an editor says that when Schneiderman comes, we’ll find out whether he’s a decent editor or a shmuck, and then we’ll decide. Finally, Murdoch calls Marianne to say that what he’d told senior editors the previous year could be understood to mean that she’s got her job until January.

                  We’ve won.

Stories written, and not written

                  I write something about this latest Voice crisis from my perspective: a woman in a traditional male position (sole support of family) faced with the choice of doing something bold for a principle or protecting her job, how it made me feel as a political person who acts on her beliefs in a situation where she can’t. I never finish it.

                  At the beginning of the year, I try to write two articles, one on the vacant lot at 96th and Broadway—where there used to be an Alexander’s department store, and before that two movie theaters, and now has a large vegetable garden—and one about a court case involving an antiabortion demonstration. When I ask Jack a question about the court case, his response is, “Don’t try to do too much,” and we have an argument. And I never write those articles.

                  In July I write a story about taking Christie to the ERA march in Washington that month. After showing it to Karen, she says it’s good, but out of order. Once I hear that, I can see immediately what’s wrong; moving the grafs around reveals the missing piece. Later in my writing life, I realize I am a cut and paste writer, having to get all the words down on paper, and later computer screen, and keep moving them around until they say what I want them to.

                  During the summer I notice small garden patches around Manhattan and start looking into how these started. With Sylvia Plachy, staff photographer, we drive through Manhattan and the Bronx for pictures. The full-page feature runs in the September 25 issue; alas, there is no caption for the unnamed woman holding a bunch of collard greens, the first time I’ve ever seen this vegetable growing. Because my usual editor is away, I ask Linda to edit me, thinking I’m disarming her by showing I trust her editorial ability. She does a good edit, makes a sound structural suggestion, and likes my ending with a quote. Maybe this is a boost to both our egos. To top off everything, the story is what’s called “the flag,” a line of text at the top of the cover, “How to Start a City Garden.”

                  I also do a short piece on the opening of Eeyore’s, the first bookstore in Manhattan exclusively for children.

                  Then there are a couple of short book reviews, called Short Circuits at this time. One’s of Phyllis Chesler’s About Men. Her Women and Madness was one of the first books addressing how male-dominated psychiatry had mistreated women, but I thought this book was not very good. (Several months later, at some feminist event, my editor noticed I was standing next to Chesler and introduced us. Chesler, of course, was not happy to meet me—she evidently felt I’d done a hatchet job on her book—and I felt quite embarrassed and wondered what my editor was thinking of.) The other review is of Emma Tennant’s novel The Bad Sister. Tennant is Alex Cockburn’s ex-wife, and he reports to me that she’s told him my review was quite good and the most intelligent comment so far.

                  While I’m off in Vermont for vacation at the beginning of August, all three daily newspapers go on strike. This is a windfall for the Voice in advertising income. The Voice starts a feature called Cold Type to report on news. In the October 9 issue, I write a short piece about states or localities that are enacting restrictions on abortion after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision; a very restrictive bill was just introduced in New Jersey. And in the October 30 issue, I report on a new NYPD policy directing police to treat battered women like any other assault victim (first of its kind in the country), though officers are given no specific training on this, and after a few weeks there’s no notable increase in assault arrests.

                  After the strike’s over, Linda gives everyone in the copy department a little gift for stepping up and handling all the extra copy we had. From the standard 96 or 120 pages, the paper ballooned to 176, sometimes to 192, and stays high through the end of the year. I’m given a hollowed out ceramic snail, and I still have it to hold paperclips.

                  Around this time, I have dinner with Jane Alpert, who tells me she said to a friend she was having dinner with me—and he said, “Is that Sonia Jaffe Robbins?” and that he’d read my stuff and thought it was humanistic. And I meet someone at a birthday party who says my name is familiar, and when I say I write occasionally for the Voice, she says, “Oh, Sonia Jaffe Robbins.” Is this what Andy Warhol meant when he said everyone would be famous for 15 minutes?

Linda plans a long vacation in the fall

                  Linda’s taking a month-long vacation in India with her Indian boyfriend. How will she arrange things while she is gone? Maybe M. could come to the plant to fill in for Linda? But I say, she doesn’t know the Unitron system. Why not just have me do what Linda does, Lin do what I do, and hire a freelance proofreader? Linda looks vague—maybe she doesn’t want any direct comparison between her work and mine? She never tells me directly, but I hear her tell an intern I’ll be in charge when she’s gone.

                  Linda leaves for her vacation at the beginning of November, I am in charge, and on my first Tuesday at the plant, I get two unsolicited compliments on how much easier I am to work for than Linda. Though I’ve been thinking writing is more where I want to go rather than copy chief, I can’t help being the copy chief I would be if it were my job.

                  I’m beginning to hope Linda won’t come back; it will be hard to revert to the semiservile position required to work with her. After all the months of thinking about what I would do if..., I’m getting my chance, and I seem to be energized. I don’t have to defer. I can make a decision, and if it doesn’t work out, the blame falls directly on me, and no one else is there to pounce on me as well.

                  At the end of the month there’s some kind of tension going on between Marianne and Alan. Is it because she’s leaving and he’s staying? One day he calls me, tells me he is “legitimately sick” (as opposed to when he’s said he’s sick before and really wasn’t?), will work at home—and very indirectly asks me to pass on the message to Marianne. I’m feeling uncomfortable being put in the middle, so he asks me direction as a favor to call Marianne. Now I feel I’m being manipulated, and somehow I find the strength to say, I’d rather not. He says, yes, you’re right, and he’ll call Marianne himself. I am so relieved; it was my own energy that kept me from going over the edge—nobody threw me a rope.

                  Lin, one of the proofreaders, is upset that others don’t pay attention to her the way they do me. But she’s also uncomfortable telling others what to do. I know what she means, but I also know being assertive is part of the job, and how do you learn to do it? It’s like the “click” of feminism: until you get it, you don’t understand, but how do you get it? Practice? Experience? Psychological readiness? Once I didn’t have it, and now I do. Some people seem to have always had it. Other, older, people seem never to have got it.

                  At an editorial meeting, Marianne announces how well I’ve been doing, and says, “I didn’t miss Linda.” Now I’m worried that Linda will hear this and freak out. But M. assures me that Linda’s response to power is to give in to it, and now she will see me as a person with power. I worry then that Linda will take out her insecurity on the rest of the copy department, so I’d better start telling others besides lame-duck Marianne how well everyone else has been doing.

                  Linda doesn’t come back when she was supposed to; she’s still in India and too sick to travel. Marianne tells me Alan is on indefinite medical leave, and he can come back whenever he wants, but not as managing editor—so Schneiderman will have to hire a managing editor. I’m rethinking yet again the copy chief job.

Interlude: Voice Christmas Party

                  Originally planned for a new disco called the Electric Circus (not to be confused with the St. Mark’s Place Electric Circus from the 1960s), its problems with the community and inability to get a liquor license means it won’t open on time. So we end up at the Flamingo, usually a gay disco. White Cadillacs circa 1968 are rented to ferry those who didn’t learn of the new location in time. I wear that floor-length backless maroon dress again and dance with several people. Saturday Night Fever, released just the year before, completely converted me to disco, pure dance music. After the Voice’s private party time elapses, the Flamingo opens up to its usual clientele. A really good dancer named Chris dances with me for a while, but when he twirls me first to the right, I feel I should then twist to the left and slam my nose into his arm, stunning myself with pain. I stumble off the dance floor. Fortunately, there’s no blood, but that’s the end of my dancing for the night.

David Schneiderman on the horizon

                   I am definitely the right person in the right place at the right time. Schneiderman needs to know how the paper comes out and was waiting until Linda was back. Now he hears she’s still in India, and he calls to make an appointment with me. There are substantive points I want to tell him about the copy department: we need a research department, more professional keeping to deadlines, our strengths, and that I’m shop steward — as well as my editorial and writing aspirations.

                  When I arrive at his temporary office in mid-December, there’s news—Marianne’s going to announce that this is her last issue, and Schneiderman will be starting next week. He’s already hired a new managing editor, Susan Lyne, from New Times, and she’s also at the meeting. They have to get up to speed immediately about how everything works, and I fill them in on the details.

                  What to do about Linda, who I think will freak out at this precipitous action? Susan thinks perhaps Linda should walk her through the managing editor job and I continue what I’ve been doing as acting copy chief. Poor Linda. I’m sure this will make her feel like she’s superfluous, and without warning she’s losing her big backer, Marianne. Perhaps Linda does have to fear for her job: not because I’m angling for it, but just because everything is changing.

                  Transition day a week later, Linda is back, and she and I meet with David and Susan in the morning. At the editorial meeting, David starts with a joke: “I want to thank everyone here for my six-month vacation. I was going to come in and ask for another six months, but I thought you’d probably give them to me.” That eases whatever tension existed. Then he introduces Susan: “She’s worked on three magazines that folded—New Times; City, in San Francisco; and Scanlon’s—so obviously Murdoch hired her to close down the Voice.”

                  It’s the end of a tumultuous two years, and I don’t yet know how much more my work life is about to change.