WhatвЂ™s often missed is that it also had two, or maybe three, critical practical values for New Yorkers. While The Voice tended to be more earnest than droll, it gave space to a dark visual humorist like Jules Feiffer. If it wasnвЂ™t always the first to spot a future trend, like rap, it gave artists in music, dance, theater, film, art and other creative areas the respectful and thoughtful discussion they deserved, whether or not they were hot commercial properties. That said, The Voice at its best covered not only major socio-economic issues, but a wide-ranging corner of arts and culture at a depth no other city publication could match. There were articles, reviews and columns that seemed directed at a tiny group of inside persons, leaving the civilian reader peering in through the window. If you think Twitter wars can get tedious, dig up some of those exchanges. Yes, Voice columnists could argue with other Voice columnists until readers begged for mercy. Yes, The Voice sometimes let its contributors keep writing long after their copy screamed for an editor. The Voice also held a high regard for writers, not surprising in a paper cofounded in 1955 by the late Norman Mailer. The Voice just very often did it well, in part because it famously provided as much space as necessary to spell it all out. ItвЂ™s called investigative journalism, and The Voice is hardly the only newspaper that did it, or still does it. While itвЂ™s an American sport to complain about greedy landlords or rapacious real estate developers or corrupt politicians or oily judges, The Voice sent out reporters who dug in unwelcoming places until they found out whether we were right. Named for and loosely rooted in New YorkвЂ™s Greenwich Village, The Voice covered New York politics and select New York issues. Its closure this week was still a harsh, depressing, serious loss at a time when we badly need the things the Village Voice did well.

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