Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

I’ve argued time and again that the New York Times should take special care in its coverage of Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project, given the parent New York Times Company’s business partnership with the developer in the new Times Tower. And, as evidenced most recently in coverage a special tax break for the developer, the Times has failed. In other words, Atlantic Yards deserves the same care that Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt, in a column yesterday headlined When the Issue Is War, Take Nothing for Granted , urges for highly contested topics such as the potential for war with Iran. Regading Iran, Hoyt concluded that the Times’s coverage has generally been good, but he still has some qualms, writing: But there are special lengths that The Times — or any other news organization — must go to when dealing with an issue so protracted, so complicated, and so politicized. It must take pains when reporting today’s events to add yesterday’s perspective. It must attribute information e...

Today, in a remarkable but late mea/nostra culpa headlined The Acorn Sting Revisited , New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt agrees that the paper misled readers by describing James O'Keefe as presenting himself as a pimp in some heavily edited videos. Hoyt writes: Here is what I found: O’Keefe almost certainly did not go into the Acorn offices in the outlandish costume — fur coat, goggle-like sunglasses, walking stick and broad-brimmed hat — in which he appeared at the beginning and end of most of his videos. It is easy to see why The Times and other news organizations got a different impression. ...But I am satisfied that The Times was wrong on this point, and I have been wrong in defending the paper’s phrasing. Editors say they are considering a correction. (Hoyt, of course, has never addressed the Times's failure to cover--and later, minimal coverage--of ACORN's bailout by Forest City Ratner.) Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog takes issue with Hoyt's conclusion tha...

In a column yesterday headlined When Your Sister Is the Story , New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt criticized the newspaper for not aggressively covering the financial troubles at and potential closure of the Boston Globe, which, like the Times, is owned by the New York Times Company. Hoyt writes: The Times, which demands transparency and accountability from all sorts of other public institutions, found itself in the uncomfortable position of trying to cover one that had zipped its lip — its own company. “We believe negotiations should be private,” [corporate spokeswoman Catherine] Mathis told me. But that’s the business side speaking. The news side did not keep pushing hard enough, in my view. Special obligation Hoyt cites explanations about the contour of coverage from Times editors and observes: It is true that the outlines of the story have become depressingly familiar — falling circulation and revenue because of the double blow of a deep recession and the rapid shift of reade...

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt last Sunday pointed out that the Times's op-ed page should pay attention to verifiable facts--a deficit, as I've pointed out, that applies to coverage of Atlantic Yards. His essay, headlined Entitled to Their Opinions, Yes. But Their Facts? , concerned a contributor's coverage of Islam and Barack Obama, but the lesson has broader application. Hoyt wrote: The Times Op-Ed page, quite properly, is home to a lot of provocative opinions. But all are supposed to be grounded on the bedrock of fact. Op-Ed writers are entitled to emphasize facts that support their arguments and minimize others that don’t. But they are not entitled to get the facts wrong or to so mangle them that they present a false picture. Did [contributor Edward] Luttwak cross the line from fair argument to falsehood? Did Times editors fail to adequately check his facts before publishing his article? Did The Times owe readers a contrasting point of view? I interviewed five ...

By some measure, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, the first elected official to speak at the epic 8/23/06 Atlantic Yards public hearing , got some results. He called for three buildings to be scaled down. Developer Forest City Ratner complied promptly , as if preordained. Markowitz called for the Williamsburgh Savings Bank to remain the borough’s tallest building. That took longer. In a well-timed “concession” on the day of the 12/20/06 vote by the Public Authorities Control Board (PACB), the developer agreed to bring Frank Gehry's "Miss Brooklyn" from 620 feet to 511 feet. (However, as noted, the view of the bank, which Forest City Ratner promised to protect in its 12/10/03 project announcement, remains blocked from the crucial Flatbush Avenue corridor. And we don't know the bulk of Miss Brooklyn.) Getting real? But Markowitz spotlighted another issue, probably the biggest one in the surrounding communities. “Get real about traffic and parking,” he decl...

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt today writes about three episodes in which the newspaper's ethics guidelines were not followed by freelancers. In only one case did the violation lead to a tainted product on the page, so I'm dismayed that Hoyt played the issue so prominently--he could've put most of the column on the web. Meanwhile, he remains obdurately unaware of the Times's inability to cover the Atlantic Yards project, or to even disclose its business relationship with Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner. In other words, he should focus on how readers are being served. In two recent cases--FCR's bailout of ACORN and the revision of the Barclays Center naming rights deal--the Times slipped in information either parenthetically or at the end of the article, thus downplaying significant news. Chewing over the ACORN bailout Hoyt writes: Transgressions are heavily chewed over on the Web, doing no good for the reputation of a paper trying to protect i...

Greenland Forest City Partners presentation Jan. 2016 shows bulk shift to 250-foot Site 5 from B1 site. The appraisal covers the 2006-approved variation. Guess what: New York City might get paid $1 million-plus if construction doesn't start at Site 5-- currently home to Modell's and P.C. Richard across from the Barclays Center--by next May. ( Psst : construction almost surely won't start by then.) Or, perhaps, the city might not get paid. Or maybe--though far less likely--the developer will simply forfeit development rights. Who knows? After all, Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park is an ever-shifting project. The city retained development rights (as  I wrote  two days ago), but the unbuilt square footage ultimately doesn't have significant value, given that the appraisal was on terms seemingly generous to the developer. Still, this obligation has never been publicly discussed; it was disclosed thanks to a Freedom of Information Law request. At right, Site 5 at 3...

Recently we've been reminded of lingering clauses in official Atlantic Yards documents that seem to have been forgotten by the government officials required to enforce them, such as the 5/12/22 deadline to build the Urban Room, with a potential $10 million penalty for delay--unless it's waved away by a renegotiation and amendment. Another is a requirement I  wrote  about in November 2019: how developer Greeenland Forest City Partners (GFCP) faced a 5/12/20 deadline—ten years after the project  Effective Date, 5/12/10 —to start construction at Site 5, longtime home of the big-box stores Modell's (now closed) and P.C. Richard. If not, the developer had to either pay New York City for its retained development rights or give up those rights, according to a document known as the Atlantic Yards City Participation Agreement. Construction, of course, has not started at Site 5; the developer has proposed--but not yet started--a plan to move most of the bulk of the unbuilt B1...

So New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt today follows up on last week's ACORN column with a piece headlined Notes About Bias, From Opposite Points of View . He begins: LAST Sunday’s column about the coverage of Acorn prompted nearly 400 messages and online comments from readers, some convinced that The Times is suppressing news that might damage liberals, and others equally convinced that The Times is about to cave in to extremists on the right. The rest of the story? After ventilating debate about the sting-scandal regarding ACORN, in the last part of the column, Hoyt moves on: Others want to know more about Acorn, but not the same things. Jill Adams of Makanda, Ill., asked, “Why has there been so little coverage of the good work that Acorn has done?” David Holtkamp of Los Alamos, N.M., wanted a follow-up on the various investigations of Acorn for voter registration fraud. Acorn seems to be a study in grays, not the blacks and whites so many paint it with. Bayyinah Tariq of Ne...

Judged by the allotment of column-inches, a reader of the New York Times would have to conclude that the trial of Peter Braunstein, a former writer for Women’s Wear Daily charged with the sex-abuse and kidnapping of a former colleague, is much bigger news than the legal battle over the Atlantic Yards project. The Braunstein case, which has been huge in the tabloids, got extensive coverage in the Times this week, including a preview Monday , followed by trial coverage Tuesday , Wednesday , Thursday , and Friday . The Friday headline was "Suspect’s Purchases Are Cast as Window Into Dark Mind." However, the window into the mind of the Empire State Development Corporation, whose Atlantic Yards blight designations were questioned sharply in court Thursday , went unexplored. Neither the Times nor any other daily sent a reporter to Thursday's epic hearing in the lawsuit over the Atlantic Yards environmental review. Brutally weird . News as construct The Times's slogan ...

Dear Mr. Hoyt , If you read other newspapers in New York, you would’ve noticed that there was a lot of Atlantic Yards-related news last week. If you followed the story online, you would’ve learned even more. That’s why any consumer of media in New York should be disappointed by the New York Times’s failure to publish a word about Atlantic Yards in the past week. Not only is it a major story for the city and region, the Times, given the parent New York Times Company’s business relationship with developer Forest City Ratner, developing the new Times Tower, has a special obligation to be exacting in its coverage. (Here's my report on the Times's poor coverage, as of 9/1/05, and here's a summary of some lapses last year. I can point to much more, such as overplaying a token scaleback, failing to show the scale of the plan, and extensive rowback .) March liftoff Let me recap. On March 21, the Times, in a front-page story—and the lead in the local edition—reported on a stall ...