Schneps Media publisher: "We're not a political newspaper" but Amazon was a "disaster" because of "a few people who were very negative and left-wing about giving Amazon incentives"

Now that Brooklyn Paper owner Schneps Media, recent buyer of amNewYork (now downsized), has bought (and apparently closed) the other free daily, Metro, it's worth a look at the recent podcast interview, Schneps Media Publisher on Dominating Media Online and Offline.

(Update 1/6/20: The Post reports that "A merged paper will be reflagged as amNewYork Metro" starting today.)
Schneps has become the local news conglomerate in New York, and subject to considerable criticism, as in this article from Gothamist. I've seen them produce some useful local news, as well as essentially advertiser content, such as a Best of Brooklyn supplement.

In the podcast, Publisher Victoria Schneps is interviewed by Brian Walker of AE Marketing Group, a brand, customer experience, and co-creation company.

Talking journalism, and Amazon

At 8:19 of the interview, Walker asks, "What do you look for in terms of like a quality of a writer or a story?"

Schneps responds:

The first thing is we always look for people who get it about community news. So we have editors. For every single one of our papers has their own editor, so that they are the voice of the community. We don’t homogenize news and we use our team of reporters to cover each part. Let’s say in Queens, we’ll have the editor-in-chief, but then we’ll have reporters covering the northwest, the northeast, the western, the southern parts, so that we are able to get the stories and make sure we have reporters who get it about the importance of the community, the business community, because I believe that without a strong business community like we have on Bayside on Bell Boulevard. 

When you don’t have any empty stores, that means that’s a good neighborhood, because that neighborhood is supporting the businesses. So I’m a big believer in supporting local businesses and then being able to know that we have them understand that you’ve gotta go to the community board meetings, and it’s not what’s on the agenda, it’s the people in the audience. 

So we really train our reporters to be as grassroots as we are, in terms of reaching out and getting stories, being exclusive with the story, being able to develop relationships with some of the political leaders that need to have their story told. 

We’re not a political newspaper, but we get it that we have to cover the politics of our borough. We just went through a crisis with Amazon in Queens, and the disaster of a few people who were very negative and left-wing about giving Amazon incentives, and that was a big story for us because it was local but yet it was also international and national.

(Emphasis added)

About Amazon

Wait a second.

While it is true that most of the Amazon incentives were off-the-shelf, there were significant questions as to whether they were justified. Moreover, there was a discretionary grant of half a billion dollars from the state, plus a seemingly generous land deal. (Plus, as we just learned from the Wall Street Journal, an initial offer that was more generous.)

That's supposed to generate journalism. Schneps is more likely to gush about Hudson Yards (in what seems to be a freebie hotel visit).

Her 2/17/19 Victoria's Secrets column amplified her general take (and linked to an article from a Schneps publication that stressed the voices of those supporting Amazon, though it didn't ignore the critics):

Amazon challenge: my take 

With shock and terrible disappointment, I see that the Amazon deal in Long Island City has been cancelled, after political forces worked to stop the best thing that could have happened to our borough. It seemed so clear — an opportunity for our borough to become the leaders of the tech revolution and see the creation of thousands of jobs.
Just a few weeks ago, I ventured over a short bridge from Astoria to Roosevelt Island to experience a new world created at our footstep: Cornell Tech, a collaboration of Cornell University and Israel’s Technion. With the massive financial help of our former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s philanthropy and former Cornell graduate Jamsetji Tata, owner of Tata Motors. 

We were on our way to becoming the East Coast’s Silicon Valley — but better because we are a great diverse borough with endless possibilities and one of the reasons why Amazon wanted to be here. Amazon’s presence would have made us all more successful on many levels. Over the next few years, the impact of the “trickle-down effect” from creating high-paying jobs would have lifted everyone.