"The Voice has always been an alternative paper. They have always understood that that was part of their role"
About this Quote
“Alternative” is doing double duty here: it’s a genre label and a moral alibi. When Sydney Schanberg praises The Village Voice for “always” being an alternative paper, he’s not just describing a scrappy newsroom aesthetic. He’s defending a civic function that mainstream journalism routinely fumbles: making space for stories the establishment would rather keep fringe, inconvenient, or simply too weird to monetize.
The repetition of “always” is strategic. It turns what could be dismissed as a dated counterculture brand into a continuity claim - a kind of institutional muscle memory. Schanberg is arguing that the Voice’s value wasn’t accidental or fashion-driven; it was baked into its self-conception. That second sentence, “They have always understood that that was part of their role,” carries the real subtext: most outlets don’t. Or they understand it only when it flatters them.
Coming from Schanberg - a reporter associated with hard-edged accountability journalism and the costs of telling unwelcome truths - the line reads as a quiet rebuke of press timidity. “Alternative” here isn’t code for ideology; it’s code for permission. Permission to cover subcultures before they become trends, to dig into corruption without waiting for permission from power, to treat the city as something more than a real estate brochure.
The context is also elegiac. By the time people start insisting an outlet “has always been” a certain way, they’re often mourning a media ecosystem that’s forgetting why those institutions mattered in the first place.
The repetition of “always” is strategic. It turns what could be dismissed as a dated counterculture brand into a continuity claim - a kind of institutional muscle memory. Schanberg is arguing that the Voice’s value wasn’t accidental or fashion-driven; it was baked into its self-conception. That second sentence, “They have always understood that that was part of their role,” carries the real subtext: most outlets don’t. Or they understand it only when it flatters them.
Coming from Schanberg - a reporter associated with hard-edged accountability journalism and the costs of telling unwelcome truths - the line reads as a quiet rebuke of press timidity. “Alternative” here isn’t code for ideology; it’s code for permission. Permission to cover subcultures before they become trends, to dig into corruption without waiting for permission from power, to treat the city as something more than a real estate brochure.
The context is also elegiac. By the time people start insisting an outlet “has always been” a certain way, they’re often mourning a media ecosystem that’s forgetting why those institutions mattered in the first place.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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