Tom Robbins and the Slow Death of Common Civic Culture

Every time a great reporter like Tom Robbins dies, we hear woe-is-us rounds of “they don’t make them like that anymore.” As Robbins — who deeply valued his work at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and who left THE CITY when budget cuts threatened the livelihoods of younger reporters — knew well, the nostalgia is misplaced. As I type, future Robbins (and Wayne Barretts and Jimmy Breslins and more) are still being made. 

There are hundreds of journalists in New York City laboring to shine a light on those in power. Young reporters are smart, hungry, idealistic and probably better trained to mine deeper repositories of information than ever before. 

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the marketplace for this kind of work is shrinking. Despite an abundance of journalistic talent in the urban wild, the news ecosystem in which they ply their trade is no longer conducive to building long careers. This reality is typically framed as a problem of technology, as the internet has destroyed the business model that traditionally supported workaday journalism. That’s not wrong, but the problem runs deeper. There are worrying signs that civic engagement is fraying, producing an electorate in which ever smaller fractions of the population seem to care that much about what is happening in their city, including in the corridors of power. 

New York’s mayoral election turnout hit historic lows in recent elections. Newspaper staffs have shrunk markedly in the last two decades. These aren’t unrelated facts.

How we got here is a complicated story with interwoven economic and cultural strands. Newspaper revenue streams and staffs have been decimated by classified ads shifting first to Craigslist and then elsewhere; display ads moving online and free headlines and news abstracts popping up in Google and on Facebook; and cold, calculating owners intent on squeezing every dime out of every operation.

You see it everywhere you go. Even in this historically newspaper-friendly city, the cellphone has replaced the paper. Glancing at your seatmate’s paper on the subway was a way to stay informed. Glancing at your seatmate’s cellphone is a way to look like a creep.  

All this begets a palpable loss of local community. 

To be clear, civic engagement has many dimensions beyond the realm of news and political engagement. New Yorkers still care plenty about their neighborhoods. Many people  volunteer at their schools or churches. But it all feels like less than it once was, particularly when it comes to getting citizens engaged in necessarily political questions about how their government can serve them better. 

Signs of diminished civic engagement are all around us. The New York Times is a journalistic colossus that has emerged from the convulsions of recent years in fighting trim. But the behemoth’s Metro section has gotten out of the rhythm of daily coverage, and its 200-person-strong opinion section has stopped (paused?) endorsing local candidates, deeming those tasks too small or too labor-intensive to be worth their while. Reporters at the Daily News, the Post and other outlets do yeoman’s work, but nobody can deny that those papers are shadows of their former selves.

Some terrific startups — THE CITY, New York Focus, Documented, Hell Gate and others — have nobly stepped up to fill some of the gaps, but for too many journalists, the daily m.o. remains chasing stories that get clicks and engagement, or, even more enervating, freelance pitching and hustling. It’s harder to become the next Tom Robbins when you’re worried about paying for your family’s health care.

The highest praise an old newspaper boss of mine could give about prospective hires was that he or she “gives a shit.” Lots of people in this business still give a shit, but it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the people who consume our content give a lot less of a shit than they used to.

Where do we go from here?

Stopping the downward spiral so that ordinary people start caring more about politics and public policy in their city is a complicated task. It might well be Sisyphean. The economy can’t be magically remade so that fully staffed, printed papers become profitable again; the entire advertising model that sustained newspapers for over a century has collapsed.

But local politics still matters even if many people don’t realize it. If people who care about the city can figure out how to help them appreciate it, the tide might start to turn, at least in small ways. 

One answer, necessary but insufficient, is better civic education in schools. Teaching how a bill becomes a law and the like sounds goo-goo to many people, but it needn’t be. My daughter has a fifth-grade teacher who brings the wider world into the classroom daily. She often comes home knowing more about what Donald Trump or Eric Adams did that day than I do. In real time, I’m seeing the creation of an engaged citizen thanks in large part to the work of a public school. 

And we need more student newspapers, not only to get more kids learning how to do the essential work of keeping their fellow citizens informed but to plant the seeds of informed engagement more broadly.

At the same time, we should look for other ways to bring news back into public space. Gorgeous screens on our subways and LinkNYC kiosks get filled with ads for dating apps, injury lawyers and HR platforms, along with the occasional fun fact about the city or community listing. What about putting some real news underground and on our streetscape?

Simultaneously, we need to make some smart systemic reforms to bring public policy and politics, which now feel like they’re just for the professionals, closer to the people. That should start with opening mayoral primaries to all comers and moving mayoral elections to heavy turnout years. That’ll breed more attention and more turnout, and candidates who play less to the factions that today determine the outcome. Mobile voting — letting people use their phones, those instruments of distraction and disengagement, to register democratic preferences — is also an exciting idea.

Journalists have a burden too. They have to work even harder to tell more stories about the way power works in their city. The many reporters who lament Tom Robbins’ passing and aim to follow in his footsteps have the opportunity to help reconnect our civic culture. They just need a little help.