Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

After the Courier-Life's notorious Stephen Witt last week gave pro- AY project hecklers an implicit endorsement and wrongly stated that Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn asked a couple of black ministers for "protection," I dissected the story and quoted one of his sources saying Witt got it wrong. But one reader suggested a simpler response to Witt's misleading headline, AY opponents seek protection from the community . After all, it's Forest City Ratner that has sought protection from the community; after all, no representative of the developer was willing to face questions at a public meeting for nearly three years before MaryAnne Gilmartin appeared at an informational session on July 22. And when Gilmartin left the room, she had a couple of people clearing a path for her. DDDB's response Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn sent a letter, published in the paper this week under the headline "At Witt's end." (Click on graphics to enla...

Readers of this blog know that I have had my differences with the notorious Stephen Witt , known for his irresponsible coverage of Atlantic Yards and, perhaps, a novel based on the Atlantic Yards saga. Well, others have questioned his credibility. Consider a front-page apology March 8 from David Mark Greaves, publisher of the Bed-Stuy-based Our Time Press, where Witt now works as a Senior Editor: In last week’s issue of Our Time Press, editor Stephen Witt allowed his emotions to distort his reporting and what resulted were unfair, baseless and unwarranted attacks on the Vannguard Independent Democratic Association... To further the damage I, who had the responsibility to read the column beyond the headline, did not do my job, and as a result it went out unedited and unproofed, full of errors and rancorous opinion. The publishers have made Mr. Witt fully aware of the disaster this is... Both Mr. Witt and I deeply apologize for the complete lack of professionalism ...

I wrote a letter June 15 to the Courier-Life chain complaining about unfounded criticism of me; rather than publishing it in the first issue possible, the newspaper has waited until the fifth issue, with a similarly unfounded response from reporter Stephen Witt. The letter: Stephen Witt's article, "Daughtry slams Yards critics," giving Atlantic Yards supporter the Rev. Herbert Daughtry a platform to argue unrebutted, is sloppy, irresponsible, and unfair. While Rev. Daughtry claims elected officials like City Council Member Letitia James and State Senator Velmanette Montgomery are "captured" by a small minority of anti-Atlantic Yards constituents, he ignores the fact that his longtime ally, City Council Member Charles Barron, has long opposed the project. Witt quotes Daughtry as touting benefits from the project, including a health center and an intergenerational center. Neither acknowledge that developer Forest City Ratner has 12 years to build Phase 1, which w...

Maybe it doesn't qualify as brutally weird, but it's sure rather odd. Apparently--as the Twitter exchange at right suggests--the notorious Stephen Witt , former Courier-Life journalist and self-published author, pitched an article to the Daily News about how his Atlantic Yards roman a clef, The Street Singer , was picked up by a publishing house run by Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner's sister Ellen Ratner. The Daily News reports: In 2011, the developer emailed Witt about the book after read a Daily News story about the coming novel. “He said his sister has a publishing house,” Witt recalled. And before long his novel, which he initially planned to self-publish, was being sold in mainstream bookstores. Nice of Ratner to help out a friend/ally, I guess. Maybe he remembers the hug he got from Witt . The Daily News says Witt "wrote glowing pieces about the project for local papers" and that he has "frequently been criticized by opponents wh...

Well, you can't blame an ink-stained wretch for getting a better-paying job. That's why so many journalists hopscotch into public relations posts or get jobs in communications for a government body or institutions like a university. Or go work for a communications or lobbying consultancy. The benefits are typically better, as well. The tradeoff, in some (but not all) cases, is such jobs offer less freedom and opportunity for public service than journalism. Then again, a lot of journalism jobs, especially when working for tightfisted owners, offer less and less opportunity to do good work. That's my cue to comment on the (important!) new job for the notorious Stephen Witt , once the one-man Atlantic Yards-supporting band at the Courier-Life chain, an editor at Bed-Stuy-based Our Time Press, and then the founder of the independent (but suspiciously promotional ) Kings County Politics, and most recently the Political Editor-in-Chief of Schneps Media, the ever-growing chain t...

Last month, after waiting a month, the Courier-Life published a letter to the editor I wrote. Let's see how long they wait this time. To the editor: Courier-Life editor Kenneth Brown should be ashamed for continuing to publish articles by the notorious Stephen Witt  without requiring the most perfunctory of fact-checking. Witt's article "Paper of record accused of bias," published online August 17 and in print (as "Delia cries foul") August 21, took a shot at the New York Times blog The Local for stating that 35th Council District candidate Delia Hunley-Adossa has been unreachable; Witt described her as always "very reachable by this newspaper." However, The Local also quoted editor Gersh Kuntzman of the Brooklyn Paper, who stated, "We at The Brooklyn Paper have been astounded by the lack of response to our questions from Delia and her campaign." The Brooklyn Paper and the Courier-Life share an office in MetroTech and contribute to the ...

The notorious Stephen Witt is now writing for the Bedford-Stuyvesant-based Our Time Press, but his m.o. remains the same. In Build Atlantic Yards in Bedford-Stuyvesant (from this issue ), Witt writes: If developer Forest City Ratner (FCR) wants to prefabricate all planned 16 high-rise buildings in his $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards project that’s fine with me as long as most of the factory work stays in Brooklyn. And a good place to start looking for a site to build modules components of the skyscrapers that will be trucked and bolted together on the 22-acre site starting at the Flatbush/Atlantic avenues intersection is in Bedford- Stuyvesant. This is a version of an argument made by Crown Heights residents (and then-Daily News columnist) Errol Louis, as expressed at a forum in September 21006: "If they’re going to get a billion-dollar TIF [tax-increment financing] deal in Rensselaer County, I think where I live, in Kings County, if somebody wants to bring a billion-dollar dea...

Not surprisingly, the New York Post's Community Newspaper Group (CNG) has moved toward consolidating its two chains in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Paper and the Courier-Life. The evidence? The departure of the latter's editor and increased sharing of copy among the two chains. As can be seen by a close look at the Courier-Life mastheads from last week (below) and this week, longtime Courier-Life Editor Kenneth Brown has been replaced by Brooklyn Paper Gersh Kuntzman. Moreover, the lead article in at least one edition of the Courier-Life, my local Park Slope Courier, contains the same article on Prospect Park's "meadows of shame" that appeared on the front page of the Brooklyn Paper , written by a Brooklyn Paper reporter. Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Paper prominently features Courier-Life reporter Stephen Witt's questionable coverage of the seemingly dubious lawsuit filed by City Council Member Letitia James. (More on that below.) What does it mean? What does it all ...

The latest issue of Our Time Press contains a letter from me in response to a column by the notorious Stephen Witt . It begins: In his column about Atlantic Yards in the Nov. 17 issue, Stephen Witt writes that that “For doing this”--consistently seeking out the views of project supporters--"opponents of the project and their media mouthpieces, including Atlantic Yards Report blogger Norman Oder, continually blasted me.” The issue isn’t whether Witt seeks out other views, it’s that he’s an irresponsible and unreliable writer. But there's another letter, from the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, one of those whose views Witt embraces: I just read your column in the Our Time Press. I appreciate your consistency. I know that is has not always been easy for some individuals to be supporters of the Atlantic Yards Project. Thank God that there are individuals who believe in the benefits for the community that this project will accrue. Well, there's belief, and then there's proof...

(For the record, my story today about the MTA is much more important than this one.) Maybe the best defense is a good offense, but in the case of 35th District Council candidate Delia Hunley-Adossa's counter-attack against the media, the Courier-Life's notorious Stephen Witt doesn't come up with much, tagging the New York Times's blog The Local (and me) with some flimsy accusations while avoiding the central facts. Moreover, Witt is precisely the wrong Courier-Life staffer to be performing such surgical media criticism, given that his own newspaper recently published an article about his new novel while omitting a crucial fact--that it is self-published--that the author has apparently tried to obscure. "Paper of record accused of bias" In the article, headlined Paper of record accused of bias (and also on CNG's BoroPolitics ), Witt writes: A longtime civic activist charged The New York Times with propagating a smear campaign as she tries to unseat incum...

Regular readers of this blog know that I've been tough on the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park coverage by the "notorious Stephen Witt."  He now runs the admittedly pay-for-coverage-sometimes Kings County Politics, which I've  criticized   multiple   times  (without rebuttal) for posting Maimonides Medical Center news releases as news stories, without links to the original press release. Last year I tweeted about KCP judicial profiles that were not labeled "sponsored content," though in a separate email the candidates were listed as advertisers, though the disclosure did not follow FTC guidance. Now, a day before the primary election, check out the softball profiles on candidates Gina Levy ,  Ingrid Joseph , Steven Mostofsky , and Loren Baily . As of the pre-primary spending deadlines, I have not seen spending from the following relevant campaign committees: GINA FOR CIVIL COURT JUDGE, FRIENDS OF INGRID JOSEPH, and COMMITTEE TO RE-ELECT LOREN BAILY. ...

Forest City Ratner has not held the arena groundbreaking parent company Forest City Enterprises (FCE) in December "anticipated" by January 31, in the fourth quarter of FCE's fiscal year, and title to the land needed for the arena has not been transferred , as anticipated, to the Empire State Development Corporation. But that hasn't stopped the Indianapolis-based Hunt Construction Group, in announcing that it got the contract to build the arena, that the Barclays Center "has already commenced construction." (Hunt's contract was cited by underwriter Goldman, Sachs at a meeting in November.) Barclays Center web site claim based on Witt Also, the press section of the Barclays Center web site offers a link claiming Construction on Barclays Center Commences . It's attributed, without equivocation, to the New York Post, though it never appeared in the print newspaper and, when posted on the Post's web site, was clearly attributed not to the Post bu...

Update July 17: for my letter in the Courier-Life, Stephen Witt's response, and my rebuttal, go here . The press can help set the agenda in multiple ways, via the length and placement of articles and editorials, as well as the decision to cover or ignore a story, such as the New York Times's unwillingness to write about Forest City Ratner's bailout of ACORN . In writing a follow-up article on the May 29 state Senate oversight hearing , the Courier-Life’s notorious Stephen Witt irresponsibly chose to give an unskeptical platform to the Rev. Herbert Daughtry (at right, heckling), a project supporter and the most disruptive person at the event. The article is wrongheaded and unfair, so I'll go through it line by line. (Photo by Jonathan Barkey. Click on graphics to enlarge.) Watching Witt It's never been easy to take Witt's topsy-turvy approach seriously. His penchant for mangling reality was exemplified by his decision to quote Charlene Nimmons, a signatory of ...