Newfield, Jack

Investigative journalist, Jack Newfield (1938-2004), made a career out of exposing abuses of power in his native New York City. Born in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesent, Newfield lived most of his adult life in Greenwich Village, New York. After graduating from Boys’ High School, he attended Hunter College, earning a degree in journalism in 1961. Newfield, a supporter of and participant in the civil rights movement, spent two nights in a Mississippi jail in 1963 after his arrest at a sit-in.

The next year, Newfield joined the Village Voice and worked there as a columnist, reporter, and editor for twenty-four years. While at the Voice, he helped define the idea of the alternative press through his investigative articles and unwavering defense of New York’s dispossessed. He became popular in part for his periodic “10 Worst Judges” and “10 Worst Landlords” pieces, as well as for his Thanksgiving neighborhood heroes columns and other recognitions of local activism. In 1988, after twenty-four years, Newfield left the Village Voice due to a dispute over the direction of the paper.

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