New York lost a towering figure in the world of journalism with the death Tuesday of investigative reporter Tom Robbins, who exposed corruption and abuse in both the local government and the private sector.

Best known for his columns and reporting at the Village Voice and at the New York Daily News, Robbins started out as a community organizer on the Lower East Side.

“It was a time of landlords were abandoning houses, some of them were setting fire to them,” he said in a 2021 interview on CUNY TV. “And I just saw such amazing and appalling things going on, I said, ‘I’ve got to write about this somehow.’”

In 1980, Robbins landed an editing job at City Limits, the urban policy-focused magazine. Nearly always focused on the five boroughs, his writing would eventually make its way to outlets, including the New York Times and the New Yorker.

“I always say, it beats working for a living,” he said in that same interview. “You get paid to tell stories, talk to people, you don’t have to sell them anything.”

“Tom was basically the heart and soul of investigative journalism in New York for years,” said celebrated New York journalist Juan Gonzalez, a longtime colleague and friend of Robbins. “He had a lyrical command of storytelling and of writing, especially his later pieces with the Village Voice. They were enormously powerful — not only stories, but really essays.”

Robbins took on labor issues, New York politics and, in his later years, the prison system.

“I’ve met some of the best people I know in prison waiting rooms. There’s no question about it,” he said in a 2023 interview. “People change.”

One of those people was Judith Clark, who was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison for her role in the notorious, deadly Brinks robbery in Rockland County in 1981. Robbins began visiting her in prison.

His 2012 profile in the New York Times Magazine helped lead, eventually, to her release.

“As much as he felt I had a unique story, he knew that every single person inside serving long sentences also had a unique story,” Clark said in an interview Wednesday. “And that there’s many trajectories toward redemption.”

Robbins was closely linked to his friend and fellow muckraker, the late Wayne Barrett. When Barrett was let go by the Village Voice in late 2010, Robbins left in a show of solidarity.

He continued writing while also teaching at the CUNY journalism graduate school — and continued to share analysis and reflections on outlets like NY1 and CUNY TV.

“The story that goes untold someplace else is the one that attracts me the most — the one that is not getting attention, the wrongdoing which is not being redressed,” he said in a 2011 interview. “These are the great things that you get to do in our job.”

Tom Robbins was 76.