Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

A new Federal Communications Commission study, The Information Needs of Communities concludes (as summarized by the Times) that “the independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism — going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy — is in some cases at risk at the local level.” Among the recommendations, as summarized by Jim Romenesko: have journalism students to more in-the-field reporting; steer more government advertising money toward local media, and encourage donations to nonprofit media organizations. What about Brooklyn? There's barely a mention of what was once called the country's bloggiest place: The most frequent criticism of the teaching hospital model is that student journalists are a source of cheap labor and actually end up displacing their professional counterparts. The students are willing to work for “free,” earning course credit at a time when professional newsrooms are eliminating staff to cut costs. One former ...

I missed the sixth annual Brooklyn Blogfest Thursday night, but the few reports I've seen suggest it was a congenial and less fraught scene than last year's Absolut kerfuffle . The keynote speaker was blog maven Jeff Jarvis. (Here's a report from the Brooklyn Eagle.) Brit in Brooklyn photoblogger Adrian Kinloch has posted his video tribute to Brooklyn photobloggers, shown at the event. A few AY mentions Though Atlantic Yards, a focus of the relatively limited Brooklyn blogging in the early years of the Blogfest, has receded in relative prominence, I feel compelled to point to two Atlantic Yards photos that made the montage, from which I took screenshots. At :08, the very first photo in the video, Jonathan Barkey shot State Sen. Marty Golden, developer Bruce Ratner, Borough President Marty Markowitz, at the MetroTech tree lighting last December: At :54, Tracy Collins captured Markowitz last October looking skeptically at some information proffered by yours truly regar...

The nature of the local new media is changing and, for Brooklyn, there may be some promise in Patch , the AOL-funded enterprise that's hiring do-it-all editors (without offices) in communities around the country--800 so far, with a goal of 1000. The editors are assisted by freelancers and other contributors and, in Brooklyn at least, form a bit of a network. Right now there's a Prospect Heights Patch , Park Slope Patch , Fort Greene/Clinton Hill Patch , Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill Patch , and Bed-Stuy Patch . What, no Brooklyn Heights or Williamsburg? Maybe those communities were seen as already "taken" by the Brooklyn Heights Blog and culture blogs like Free Williamsburg . (Disclosure: I've done one freelance piece for Patch.) Not just news Patch, self-described as "your local source for news, events, business listings, and discussion," got some semi-skeptical treatment in a New York Times article January 17--an article that ignored Patch in New...

A New York Times Week in Review article headlined Now in Blogs, Product Placement draws on this week's Brooklyn Blogfest: When a marketer representing Absolut Vodka first offered to sponsor her annual blog festival, Louise Crawford guessed how the other bloggers might react. “Some of them are going to call me a sellout,” Ms. Crawford remembered thinking. Nevertheless, Ms. Crawford, who writes Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, accepted the deal, and the festival promoted a “Brooklyn” vodka. Spike Lee, the filmmaker, also spoke at Brooklyn Blogfest 2010, since he, too, was a sponsor. Absolut also offered gifts, including a bottle of the new vodka and a small digital video camera, to bloggers in exchange for coverage. Nine accepted the vodka and eight got cameras, said an Absolut spokeswoman. Mentions of Absolut started popping up on Brooklyn blogs — mysteriously so for many readers, since not all of the bloggers disclosed their relationship with the sponsor. Ms. Crawford...

Update June 13: Here's my analysis ( Absolut and authenticity ) of what Absolut was aiming at, why Blogfest organizers should've provided some leadership, and why bloggers should recognize that, even if they don't think of themselves as journalists, they may have some ethical responsibilities. Here's my analysis of the coverage in the New York Times's Week in Review. So, it's taken only five years for the Brooklyn Blogfest to go from a seat-of-the-pants indie event, organized by Louise Crawford of Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn with the help of fellow bloggers, to a sponsored event in which the sponsor got some low-key mentions, to a sponsored event in which the sponsor was Absolut-ly dominant. Consider that the guest of honor last night at the Brooklyn Lyceum was beloved Brooklyn-reared film director and advertising entrepreneur Spike Lee, who, in collaboration with Absolut, chose the Blogfest as the place to kick off the new Absolut Brooklyn brand. When Lee ...

Oh, here's how Absolut recruited bloggers . Here's an report on the actual event. As with the borough, the Brooklyn Blogfest sure has changed. There's a lot of shilling for Absolut Brooklyn before the Fifth Annual Brooklyn Blogfest , which is sponsored by Absolut. And surely there will be more, thanks to Absolut's Brooklyn Stoop Life campaign, where "Bloggers Share Their Love for Brooklyn." Absolut has generated sponsored blog posts as well as other posts that sure look like they're sponsored , since the bloggers have "been chosen to collaborate with Absolut Vodka, to celebrate Absolut Brooklyn." Renaming Brooklyn So let me suggest an update of John Pinamonti's classic Atlantic Yards elegy/fight song, "The Burrow." Original version: "It makes me mad/and it's such a pity/they're trying to rename Brooklyn/Forest City" My update: "It makes me mad/and for so little loot/they're trying to rename Brookly...

Bob Guskind, founder of the Gowanus Lounge blog, died a year ago . He's still missed, especially since the two main weekly newspaper chains in Brooklyn are now owned by Rubert Murdoch's Community Newspaper Group and renting office space from Bruce Ratner's Forest City Ratner. Robert Guskind 1958-2009 from Blue Barn Pictures, Inc. on Vimeo . (His blog, including his work and those of GL contributors, has been moved to BobGuskind.com . Also see tributes today from Phil DePaolo , CORD , and NoLandGrab's Lumi Rolley .)

The future of hyperlocal news--and the business models behind it--was the subject of a most interesting conference held today at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. (See coverage on Twitter.) One factoid, however, deserves a big footnote. Introducing the hyperlocal landscape, CUNY's Jeff Jarvis said there are "a thousand blogs in Brooklyn alone." There may well be that many, but only a handful or two or doing journalism (and many more conveying information in various forms). So, despite the apparent nation-leading concentration of blogs, Brooklyn hasn't yet produced a blog news network, nor should it be expected to do so. Brooklyn College journalism professor Paul Moses has said , "Nowhere in the country do so many people get so little local coverage." And blogs--at least in the current configuration--haven't changed the situation enough. The "bloggiest" background Jarvis's source for the factoid, I believe, was Outsi...

Following in the footsteps of, oh, Brownstoner (sort of) and the New York Times's blog The Local , a new blog, My Little O , has launched to cover (and network) the vastly ignored neighborhoods of Fort Greene & Clinton Hill. As The Local reported in August: Because he is not a journalist himself, [founder] Mr. [Michael] Locke has hired two area freelance writers, Jeca Taudte and Nicole Caldwell, whose work will be interspersed with citizen journalism that he eventually hopes will become the bulk of his site. Well, I got an announcement today that the site was now live. The latest piece of breaking news is nine days old, from October 20, headlined Car Accident at Atlantic Yards . Um, that's the Vanderbilt Yard .

Veteran alt-journalist Bill Wyman, in a piece in the web magazine Splice Today (headed by New York Press founder Russ Smith ) headlined Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing , takes aim at claims of civic virtue. He writes: The commentators most caught up in the romanticized notion of newspaper cite the potential loss of the newspapers’ “watchdog” function. Let’s be honest. Most newspapers in the U.S. aren’t watchdogs, and most of the rest don’t spend an inordinate amount of time being watchdogs. Most papers are instead lapdogs, and the metaphorical lap they sit in isn’t even that of powerful interests like their advertisers. (Though they definitely have their moments.) The real tyrant the papers served was the tender sensibilities of their readers. Did some critics write negative reviews? Of course. Did some local papers do occasional good work, embarrass a public official now and again, tell its readers things they didn’t want to hear? Yes. Did they also provide some useful he...

So the biggest discussion this past week about the role of blogs was generated not by the fourth annual Brooklyn Blogfest , held Thursday in DUMBO, but by the Senate hearing on the newspaper crisis held Wednesday in Washington. But it’s worth connecting some dots between the the above, especially since Brooklyn blogs (including this one) were invoked--not always accurately--in the national debate that followed the Senate hearing. The most contentious issue, via Gawker and the New York Times’s Opinionator blog (as noted below), concerned the claim by former Baltimore Sun reporter and “The Wire” producer David Simon that he doesn’t see bloggers covering nitty-gritty local issues like zoning board hearings. Some critics responded that bloggers, in places like Oakland and Brooklyn, in fact do that. I’ll grant that, but I think the Brooklyn contribution to watchdog journalism was overstated and, as I wrote recently, Atlantic Yards is an anomalous case. The Senate hearing: newspapers or jo...

The Brooklyn blogosphere has grown and matured significantly, as indicated last night by the large crowd at the fourth annual Brooklyn Blogfest , organized by Louise Crawford of Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn and a host of volunteers, and held at the powerHouse Arena in DUMBO. (Photo by Flatbush Gardener ) It's overdue to observe that, while the act of blogging--using a self-publishing platform as an independent writer--might once have been unusual, there's not much commonality between place bloggers and mommy bloggers and craft bloggers, to pick a few categories in the "Blogs of a Feather" get-together, which at least was a sign of the growth in blogging. (After all, staffers from magazines serving those constituencies don't compare notes much.) Some report. Some opine. Some take photos. Some keep watch on building permits. Some aggregate news. Some focus on their neighborhoods. Some have a rich set of commenters. Some post daily. Some post weekly. Some post ran...

From this week's Village Voice, previewing the fourth annual Brooklyn Blogfest tonight: No, Clinton Hill is still not the "bloggiest" neighborhood in the country. Prospect Heights is, and that's because of Atlantic Yards .

In the UK's Prospect magazine, the cover story, an epistolary debate between author (and Outside.in founder) Steven Johnson and Princeton professor of communications and public affairs Paul Starr , is headlined Will the coming age of news be better than the old? Interestingly enough, both the optimistic Johnson and pessimistic Starr cite Atlantic Yards and AYR to buttress their arguments. I think that any discussion of the media ecology around Atlantic Yards needs several explanatory footnotes, which I offer below, but I believe that the volunteer media response to Atlantic Yards is an unusual phenomenon, not easily duplicable, which places me much closer to Starr's camp. Someone has to do the work of journalism--reading documents, showing up at meetings, asking questions, making analytical connections over a period of time--and it's not easy. Background articles Johnson's piece in Prospect draws on his recent speech titled Old Growth Media and the Future of News , an...