Interning at the Village Voice

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By Daniel J. House
SBU J-School Reporter

Monday, Wednesday, Friday

I wrote my first story, a mystery story, in fifth grade. At the time, I read a lot of Mickey Spillane, and his style pulled me into his hard-boiled noir-ish world. I wanted to make a world like that, and I wanted to bring readers in the way that Spillane brought me in. I typed the story on my typewriter and drew a cover illustration on comic-book backboard, and my parents saw it, read it and insisted that I bring it to Mrs. Schmidt, my constantly re-marrying teacher.

With the authority of the oracle of Delphi, she told me that I would become a writer.

No matter how much I wanted to draw comics, no matter how good I got at saxophone, I was condemned to struggle with the right words, to stress over the right beginnings and to read the masters with jealousy and awe. To this day, no matter what I do, my inexplicable and uncontrollable passion for writing tastes in my food, floats in my drinks and comes back up as burning indigestion.

With no real love for the craft, following in the footsteps of my literary heroes and enemies, I took to journalism. I remember Eastman School of Music suggesting I apply; I recall the words of encouragement from my art teachers and grandfather, who was a graphics designer for GE, and I hate that the one thing I cannot abandon is the one thing I’m no good at.

The Persian Empire started its war with Sparta Friday morning at about 4 a.m., and I finished Frank Miller’s “300” by the time my alarm sounded at 5:30. I put the coffee on, tore the tags off my V-neck sweater, packed my bag with the amphetamine prose of Hunter S. Thompson and read “Songs of the Doomed” on the 7:07 train from Stony Brook to Manhattan.

Keach got me from the lobby of the Village Voice, which is in an old building on the west side of Cooper Square. He brought me to the third floor and led me through the maze of cubicles until we ended up in a cramped office. Four-foot-tall filing cabinets stood against the walls; piles of manila folders and newspapers lay stacked on the floor. Good thing the fire marshal didn’t come in today..

Two interviewees were already there, along with two interns who were already working for the man I’d come to see, Wayne Barrett, the Voice’s longtime investigative reporter.

“Have a seat, Dan. This is Adam.” Keach pointed at a slickly dressed Ivy Leaguer outfitted in pinstripes. He was reading “Grand Illusion,” one of Wayne’s many muckrakings on the corrupt life and career of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the politician Wayne has committed his life to ruining.

Adam had come in last Friday, he explained, thinking his interview was a week earlier than scheduled. A girl to my right was talking with Keach about her experience at NYU, and David made phone calls. I sat down in the broken chair and quickly stood up before the chair could drop me on my ass. I was still shivering from the outside, but I was sweaty from nerves.

Enter: Wayne.

Wayne has a long, narrow bridge that opens to permanently flared nostrils. He has bushy eyebrows and a glistening bald head with gray hair wreathed around the back, just like a monk.

“Who’s next?” His voice sounds like Robert DeNiro, but gruff. Soar from yelling, probably. I stood up and shook his hand, and we went to the conference room.

I gave him the usual bullshit protocol standard for interviews and cover letters and resumes before he could ask a question.

“I didn’t realize that Stony Brook even had a journalism program,” he said.

“You know, Mr. Barrett, I can’t say much good about the university, but the journalism department is pretty impressive. We’re the first SUNY school to offer a journalism major, and we’ve got great faculty.” I name-dropped Schneider, Greene and Selvin, and Wayne was sold on the solid staff.

“I see that you’re majoring in English and philosophy. So tell me, why is it that you pick the same majors that my son did?” We both laughed.

I told him that I love reading and that working at a newspaper that had published Allen Ginsberg would be a great honor.

“So you want to be a writer, huh?”

“Well, no, not really,” I laughed. “I want to be a reporter. I’m not thinking about writing beyond journalism right now, but all the great writers were journalists first.”

He leaned back. “You want to be a writer.” Was it the elbow patches? We stood up. He shook my hand and told me to call him with when I could start.

I would see Wayne in person three more times before leaving The Village Voice.

Virgil-abandoned, I was lost in the cubicle-maze for 15 minutes until I eventually found the elevator. Once I hit the outdoors, I called everybody: girlfriend, journalism department, parents. Yeah, that’s my everybody. I took shelter from the winter cold in the Barnes & Noble around the corner and had a long talk with my father about what this internship would do to the House family fiscal plan. I’d have to drop my job at the university’s Telefund, and over the course of the next three months, I would need, from him or another loan, about $3,000 for transportation and groceries. He didn’t care. Finally, his son did something to make him proud. I have great parents, but I’m not the world’s greatest son. We hung up and I left the bookstore.

On my way out, I looked up at the towers of Babel, laughed at the Starbuckses next door to one another, figured out how the hell to get back to Penn Station and rode the train back to Stony Brook. This is where I belong. I love this city.

I came in almost an hour early my first day and waited for somebody to open up for me. It wasn’t a busy day. We begin the morning by calling Wayne at about 10:30. We’ve never been able to get hold of him earlier than that, and usually we have to keep trying him until 11. We put him on speakerphone and he dictates our tasks for the day. On average, our tasks will fill about three typed pages, or nearly six hand-written pages. And eight hours is not enough time to accomplish these tasks—especially because a lot of it is trying to track down phone numbers for interviews. We Nexis like madmen. The new editor, Tony, actually took away some of our Nexising privileges because we racked up a big bill. The task list is like a prodigious ice block that we’re expected to chip away at before it melts. It’s impossible, but every day Wayne acts shocked that we don’t finish everything.

We were working on two stories at once: a global-warming story and another story about the Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club. Although awareness about the unpredictable weather is growing, many New Yorkers seem surprised that a hurricane will hit New York someday soon and that it will be devastating.

Wayne divided us into teams. Originally, I was on the Jefferson Club story. All political clubs are supposed to file tax returns, something the Jefferson Club had not done for about 20 years. This was especially troubling because the Jefferson Club receives generous contributions in the ten-thousands range from politicians. The Jefferson Club has been particularly instrumental in seating judges on surrogate courts, which are notorious for appointing politically well-connected lawyers to manage lucrative estates.

One of Wayne’s sources in the FBI, “Bullet,” was part of the team investigating the Jefferson Club. We were looking for some court documents related to the case, so I hurried down to the Brooklyn Supreme Court records room one day in winter. It was freezing cold, the snow was up to my ankles, and my socks were soaking wet. For hours I walked around, lost, trying to find this place. I finally got to where I needed to be, at around 3, and—go figure—it closed at 3.

Not my finest hour. I came back empty-handed.

As I recall, this was Mark’s last day. Mark started when I did, but he thought Wayne was an asshole and decided to quit. I frequently thought about quitting. Transportation was expensive, and I was pretty sure I would be fired anyway. The first e-mail I ever got from the Village Voice account read in the subject line, “you’re fired.” It was a prank, but it played on my already formidable fears.

As of this writing, in May 2007, the Voice has yet to publish anything regarding the Jefferson Club, which is a shame because I believe this was our best story idea. Other things were published instead, mostly for their timeliness. For instance, the global-warming piece saw print because the mayor would, in a few months, be revealing his sustainability plan for New York City. We followed that with a story about David Kelley, a former district attorney, who was, despite his excellent career and outstanding record, fired for being a Democrat.

Let me interject here. One day, around the time I started, not more than a month into the internship, Wayne called us and told us to do a comprehensive Nexis on—I can’t remember—some guy. He told us to call him with the results in 15 minutes.

“Is there anything you’re specifically looking for?”

“I don’t have time to explain myself again, Dan!”

He slammed the phone down, and I stared at my brothers and sisters in arms, asking if I’d missed something. Nobody knew what he was talking about. Fifteen minutes later, Wayne accused us of looking up the wrong thing. He yelled at us for doing the wrong thing, for not following directions. When we told him that none of us were sure what he was talking about, he told us to ask questions like reporters. He said we should have asked for specifics.

“You want to have a managerial discussion, okay, let’s have a managerial discussion,” he said.

We all thought it might be a good idea, so we took the bait.

The full-time interns were the first to speak up.

“It’s hard to balance the administrative tasks and the actual reporting without knowing which to prioritize. If we do one, you yell at us for it. We can’t win. If something’s a priority, let us know and we’ll get it done first.”

I don’t remember what he said. I probably couldn’t understand it. Wayne’s a yeller. He’s a fighter. He’s a jerk. He’s a great reporter, but the devil. As you might imagine, there were no more managerial discussions after that.

The great nor’easter of 2007 was about to slam into Manhattan. The Long Island Rail Road Web site posted ominous warnings about train delays. Accuweather.com described the storm in bold red ink, and the storm was expected to get worse later in the evening and night. So the next morning I woke up at 5:30 a.m., walked outside in my boxers, slippers and jacket to smoke my cigarette. I wonder if I have to go into work if the rapture happens. It looked like the end of the world, the weather that day. Hail came hurtling down from a gray sky, I couldn’t see two feet in front of my face, the snow was halfway to my knees but slicked over with a sheet of ice. I flicked the cigarette and went inside to get ready.

The LIRR was delayed, of course, and the subways lurched forward, accelerated to about 20 mph for less than 10 seconds, before slowing back down and finally breaking to a halt. I managed to make it through the doors by 11 a.m. Wayne called us almost immediately after I put my jacket up to drip dry. Just to reiterate what I had written to Wayne in my e-mail the night before, I told him that I had come in late and that I might need to leave a tad early to make sure that I got back to school before the serious delays kicked in. Wayne huffed.

If you’re expecting to see some glorious moment of triumph, some light at the end of the tunnel, stop reading now. You’ll be disappointed by the ending. The work is not glamorous, and I just did research. It got to the point where I stopped actually trying to piece together what tasks I was given. See, Wayne won’t tell you what the story’s about. He’ll expect that you’ll have the time and stamina to work through and figure it out for yourself. I stopped caring. I’m happy this is my last week. I can’t wait to get it over with. I sat at a computer for 40 hours a week and got yelled at over the phone because some guy didn’t think I was worth the effort of actually coming in to yell at. Life’s a lot less complicated than people make it out to be: Wake up, go to work, come home to eat, shit and sleep. Eternally recurring moments without absorbing the principle: If these were the moments that I had to live over and over, would I love my fate?

Wayne came in around 1 my first day. He had a lunch interview he needed to go to, so he stopped by. I did some Nexising on the Jefferson Club. Looking back, I know it wasn’t what he was looking for, but I think I found some general articles containing some of the more obvious information that Wayne would already have. I hadn’t yet learned that Wayne is never specific about tasks. A phone call came through on my desk while Keach, who was just finishing up her last day, was outside talking with Wayne. It was some reporter from Spain who wanted to talk to Wayne. I told him that he was in luck because Wayne was around. I told Wayne there was a phone call for him. This was my first mistake. Wayne never takes these phone calls because he’s never in the office.

Hannah’s first day followed mine, so I saw her on Friday. I should speak briefly about my work schedule. Wayne and I reached an agreement that required me to come in for two full days, Wednesday and Friday, and work a half-day from home on Monday. I’ll also add that every day that we had nice or bad weather this semester was a day that I worked. I’m not suggesting that God actually orchestrated this astonishing coincidence, but, well, I’m just saying.

Beginning Monday through Friday, I called the office and did searches for them. This continued for about two months. Days that I was not working, I helped them out because Wayne usually assigned a lot of tasks. Usually—in fact, almost always—my tasks on my days off would require only light Nexising and hardly ever a phone interview. So it was not especially taxing on my time, but I started noticing that my work schedule was not conducive to maintaining my previously respectable GPA.

You might imagine that because I was always touching base with the office, Wayne was pleased with my performance. Instead of getting the agreed-upon two and a half days of free labor from me, he was getting what averaged four or five days. I won’t give specific Nexis searches because that would bore both of us to death. However, using Nexis is the same as learning Nexis. It’s a tremendous search engine that, if you learn its intricacies, can work for you. But Wayne was not happy with my performance.

As previously mentioned, the great nor’easter of 2007 was about to hit in February, and I decided to go in. I came in about an hour late. The fact that I had to make my way through snow—lots of it—and that the train was running behind, not to mention the subways were slower, and that Wayne generally asks we come in around 10:30—but above all, because I alerted him ahead of time—immediately when I learned of the impending blizzard and what effects it might have on my punctuality—I actually believed he’d be impressed by my go-get-it-iveness. So I strolled in. My colleagues were shocked. They told me I shouldn’t have come in. Then Wayne got on the phone. I told him that I had come in a tad late and reiterated what I had already asked in my e-mail to him: Was it okay that I leave a little early because, as Accuweather reported, the real blizzard was supposed to hit later that night. I remember he huffed. That was a Wednesday. That Friday I came in about 10 minutes late because I was in the bathroom sick that morning, as is so very often the case with me. Some people seem to take great issue with my stomach problem, thinking that it’s somehow convenient and lucky of me. Wayne accused me of something similar that day.

The phone rang. Nobody was around, so I picked up.

“Wayne Barrett’s office. This is Dan speaking. How may I help you?”

“Dan.”

“Hey, Wayne, how are you?”

“Dan.”

“Yeah.”

“How is this working out, do you think?”

“Great. I’m really learning a lot.”

“No, it’s not great, Dan. You haven’t been on time since you started and you have the nerve to ask if you can leave early Wednesday, and then you come in late today!?”

“Wayne, I’m sorry, I missed the train because I was sick. I have a—“

“Next time you’re going to be late, don’t bother coming in at all. If it happens again, it’s your last week.”

“Okay, fine. Did you get that 40-page memo I wrote up?” I was hoping to remind him that I do good work for him. And I had been on time every day except for the blizzard and that Friday. Wayne was livid that I would defend myself.

“I’m not questioning your ability to work, I’m questioning your reliability! Are we clear?”

“Yeah, Wayne.”

“Okay, put Hannah on the phone.”

I went in the following Wednesday and was sick that following Friday. I was stressed, failed my philosophy exam (42, as I remember; my lowest grade on an exam, ever). I really made every effort, but guess what: Late I was.

I faced a dilemma. Do I go into work, late, and possibly lose my job, or call in and get honest and assertive with a very scary monster? I wrote him this e-mail.

Okay, my Crohn's disease has seen fit to act up today, I tried calling

the switchboard, dialed the extension and waited for 3 minutes and

nothing picked up. I'll leave my message this way. I am sick. Too sick

to come in right now. There is no cure for Crohn's and, as such, there

is no cure for my sickness this morning. I am prepared to work from

home, I know I'm on thin ice right now, but if I did have control over

this I would imagine I would never get sick. I took some stuff to see

if it helps. My experience has been that I usually just need to wait

it out. I will come in later, work from home, or make it up next week

with two half days (whatever circumstances, or you, dictate). Again, I

realize that I am not in the best position to be calling in sick, but

I urge you to consider that I have no control whatsoever over this. It

may make me unreliable, but it is through no will of my own. I would

appreciate an e-mail back and, for what it's worth, I call the office

every day (even on my days off). Hannah can verify this. I keep in

touch with the office five days a week and do background on Nexis

Tuesday and Thursday. I also do stuff for you on weekends. In case

you're wondering what my symptoms are, it's anything you can associate

with a sick stomach. I am sorry.

Dan House

Wayne wrote a nice e-mail back and left an extremely kind voice message. But that’s just the thing. How is it better for me to stay home and do nothing when I’m okay to just sort of wait out the worst of it and come in later? Or work from home? Ladies, gentlemen, I give you Wayne Barrett, enigma of enigmas.

After my assertive e-mail, I think Wayne saw a kindred spirit and appreciated my almost angry tone. I learned an important lesson. When they’ve got you by the balls, get ‘em back.

Although the “All Wet” piece about global warming was by no means the most influential piece I worked on at The Village Voice, I guess it was my favorite. The date that the story closed changed. I remember every week we were all so excited to be finished with the damn thing, and then we’d find out it would run the next week. I read a book on my weekends, did Nexis searches in my spare time and shirked my academic responsibilities out of fear of losing my job. Because I had invested so much of my time in the story, it ended up being my favorite.

As for the most influential piece we wrote, well, Wayne claims that the U.S. attorney scandal piece was the most influential, seeing as how there was just a judiciary committee hearing on it about a week ago. I think he’s probably right. Although the pace of the newsroom is fast, Wayne does not write many articles. His colleague and friend, Tom Robbins, is just as good a reporter and he gets at least one thing out every week.

My favorite of my responsibilities as an intern was definitely editing Wayne’s work. With each new story, Wayne sent us his drafts before anybody else got to see it. We would not only fact-check, we would edit for grammar, spelling and syntax. This leads me to believe that I have a love for the conventions of English, or at least for being in the position to explain these conventions to others. Wayne took such criticism well, and I learned that he sort of relied upon it. Maybe this reveals some kind of insecurity Wayne has with his writing. It strikes me as odd to keep an editor waiting while interns read.

While we’re discussing something of this nature, I think it might be a perfect time for me to mention some issues I take with Wayne’s, I don’t know, style. First of all, it’s confusing. The New York Times is applauded for being one of the greatest news publications in the United States, and perhaps in the world, but it’s esoteric. New readers would probably find it very confusing to read articles in the Times. The easy stuff, the news publications with the largest audience are the sensational papers (Post, Daily News, even Newsday). These paint pretty complete pictures of the world that are accessible to readers. And that is what journalism is. That’s what will get new readers! More accessible news.

Anyway, Wayne doesn’t write for the people. He writes for politicians. Wayne wants to get people fired. He has no interest in informing the public. And—my huge issue with Wayne—he rarely cites sources. He’ll use things from old newspapers and he won’t mention the name of the newspaper. This is extremely troubling because, even though I can verify that what Wayne publishes is true, if Wayne were to publish an article that was completely false, it would look identical to his true stories. There’s no transparency. These are the tools, or so I’ve been taught, that make a news story a reliable story.

Anyway, I’m almost done. I guess I have one last day to serve out before I call it quits there. And it’s still a little too close to say that it was fun and I will always look back on it with a smile, etc., etc., because it was an extremely trying time for me. Compounded, of course, by the fact that I am surrounded by people who are far more qualified than I, but struggle to find jobs (Hannah), or get fired (Keach), or are just barely making it (Matt). It’s difficult to watch, especially when I myself have no job. I’m graduating, I think, and, well, this internship was definitely something I learned from. I definitely grew as a person and improved immensely as a reporter.

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