In Memoriam: Tom Robbins (1949-2025)

On Wednesday, May 28, Tom Robbins, journalist extraordinaire, left this world.

For the past forty years, Tom Robbins wrote about New York, with stints as reporter and columnist at the Village Voice (he was one of the core group of writers who built the Voice), the Daily News, New York Observer and City Limits. At the time of his death he was the Investigative Journalist in Residence at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

Tom also wrote freelance pieces for The NewYorker.com, the New York Times, Time Magazine and others. He started out as a cab driver at the old Dover Garage on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village and worked for a community organization on the Lower East Side.

Tom wrote mostly stories of New York: tales of scoundrels, of heroes, and of those like the rest of us who are somewhere in between. Some stories helped convict people, some helped others win their freedom, which is far more satisfying. All told, a gallery of forty-plus years of trying to keep tabs on the city and its people for dailies, weeklies, monthlies, and publications now retired to the sweet bye and bye.

Tom taught his CUNY students a few basics: cynicism is a form of ignorance; skepticism, an enlightened strategy. Showing up is ninety percent of the job. Listening closely covers much of the rest.

He will be missed. A lot.

More next month.

—Arthur Schwartz