Chris Smith of New York Magazine, who wrote the August cover story (The Battle for the Soul of Brooklyn) on Atlantic Yards, takes aim on the magazine's blog (The ‘Times’ Screwed Up) at the failure of the New York Times, despite some episodically good coverage, to thoroughly look into the AY issue.
He writes: But the Times, collectively, has never demonstrated the will or interest to examine Atlantic Yards in anything close to the proportion demanded by one of the biggest real-estate schemes in the history of the city. Maybe it's because Ratner is the Times' partner in building the paper's new Eighth Avenue headquarters. Maybe it's because Times editors think Atlantic Yards is an objectively good idea. Maybe it's because the Times, along with the rest of the city's mainstream media, does a lousy job of covering anything outside our midtown backyard. Whatever the reasons, the effect has been an abdication of the Times' civic and journalistic responsibility.
His prime example is the newspaper's unwillingness to explore the question of the developer's profit. He could just as easily have cited the distorted coverage of the six to eight percent "cut" or the Times's curious editorial silence as a vote approached this week.
He writes: But the Times, collectively, has never demonstrated the will or interest to examine Atlantic Yards in anything close to the proportion demanded by one of the biggest real-estate schemes in the history of the city. Maybe it's because Ratner is the Times' partner in building the paper's new Eighth Avenue headquarters. Maybe it's because Times editors think Atlantic Yards is an objectively good idea. Maybe it's because the Times, along with the rest of the city's mainstream media, does a lousy job of covering anything outside our midtown backyard. Whatever the reasons, the effect has been an abdication of the Times' civic and journalistic responsibility.
His prime example is the newspaper's unwillingness to explore the question of the developer's profit. He could just as easily have cited the distorted coverage of the six to eight percent "cut" or the Times's curious editorial silence as a vote approached this week.
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