While the New York Times published six letters on Thursday, the day of the City Council's vote to overturn and extend voter-imposed term limits, it had not published a letter since. That's a serious lapse, after all, there were 710 comments on the Times's CityRoom blog responding to the Council's vote and 105 comments after Bloomberg defended the move on the radio.
Even if the Times eventually publishes some letters, it has partly squelched the instant voices of dissent.
Oh, and the Sunday City section surely has an article about the implications of the term limits extension, right? Nope. The lead article is about the proliferation of specialty coffee shops.
Even if the Times eventually publishes some letters, it has partly squelched the instant voices of dissent.
Oh, and the Sunday City section surely has an article about the implications of the term limits extension, right? Nope. The lead article is about the proliferation of specialty coffee shops.
Not that it should be this way, but I was surprised when the Times ran a day’s worth of letters to the editor about term limits. They are running increasingly fewer letters about local concerns. This, I think, is because they view themselves these days more as a national paper and less as a local New York paper.
ReplyDeleteNotwithstanding, I can make a good argument that there are some national aspects to the Bloomberg term limits story that the Times has not picked up upon. The Times reporters covering the City Hall beat have been writing a lot of good term limit stories but there has been so little time to cover this story that a lot of what needs to be written still hasn’t been.
One major story central to the issue that the Times still needs to cover is Bloomberg’s suitability, or lack thereof, to lead during a financial crisis.
The Times has reported in brief that officially this was a offered as the main premise for overturning term limits. Their editorial page even went out on a limb seeming to endorse that premise. The Times has not reported about whether the facts actually align with the premise. (They don’t.) The Times’ columnist Clyde Haberman has written about how the premise itself was bogus. Two of the six letters linked to in this AYR post directly challenge the notion that Mayor has special qualifications to manage the city during a financial crisis (the Mark Gleason letter and the one by Perry Weiner).
There was a Wall Street Journal op-ed that argues, in strong terms, that Bloomberg’s record does not qualify him to lead during the financial crisis. We have written two Noticing New York pieces also making this case:
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Bloomberg Qualified Financial Crisis Leader? He Can Learn Says Schumer!
http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2008/10/bloomberg-qualified-financial-crisis.html
and
Saturday, October 25, 2008
More Discredit of Bloomberg as Qualified Financial Crisis Leader
http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-discredit-of-bloomberg-as.html
(which links to the Wall Street Journal article.)
Michael D. D. White
Noticing New York
http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com