 However, the experience was invaluable background for writing pop music reviews in "Vanity Fair" (during the magazine's early, unpopular incarnation as "the "New York Review of Books" with pictures").After working as a senior editor at the "Village Voice", editing the paper's political and news coverage and writing a cover story exposing the corrupt politics behind the proposed redevelopment of Times Square, his enthusiasm for lost causes led him to "New York Newsday", where he wrote a weekly media column and covered the 1988 presidential campaign.His reporting on the 1990 Happy Land Social Club fire in the Bronx won a Page One award from the New York Newspaper Guild and his investigative reporting on New York City's ineffectual fire code was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.