Over the past couple of weeks there have been three major stories.
- The OSC Audit of the NRIDA which gave the IDA an F-
- The New Rochelle Armory Home Rule bill where four Albany lawmakers sponsored and then de-sponsored a bill requested by the Mayor
- The end of a federal trial in which a jury found for the plaintiff against the City of New Rochelle to the tune of $181,000 in a case where court employees were said to have been dealing drugs in the courthouse, arranging no-show jobs for family members, fixing tickets for mobsters and much more.
I do not count the Journal News story picking up out crossing guards story, which in turn was picked up by Channel 12 News, ABC News and other outlets because we ran that story back in April.
So far, only a perfunctory report on the IDA audit has been run by the Journal News. Neither the JN, Sound & Town or Channel have mentioned the Armory story, same with with the Amorasano case involving Jimmy Generoso. I know its bad but these are some MAJOR stories: the Democratic Majority Leader in the State Senate repudiates a home rule bill claiming he was mislead by the Mayor and that gets NO coverage? A federal jury hands down a judgement against the City of New Rochelle with salacious allegations and not a word gets printed about it?
The long exception has been WVOX.
What do WXOX and Talk of the Sound have in common? They are NOT “state run media”.
Channel 12 News is owned by Cablevision which must receive permission from the City of New Rochelle to operate.
The Town and Sound Report brands itself as the “official” newspaper of New Rochelle just like the old Pravda did in the Soviet Union.
The Journal News? Who knows why they have not covered these stories. I would chalk it up more to tack of resources than anything else but it is certainly strange.
Unlike these other outlets, the content on both WVOX and Talk of the Sound reflect what people are talking about in New Rochelle. It is this gap between what people want to know about and what they are talking about and what outlets like the Journal News will report that is largely responsible for the financial collapse of traditional media outlets, primarily print outlets.
How can you trust a news outlet that does not tell you anything at all about the Mayor’s attempt to pass a home rule bill when no one was looking when EVERYONE who pays attention to goings-on in this City was talking about that story?
This post is not meant to celebrate Talk of the Sound driving community dialog in New Rochelle as we have been doing on an increasing basis for many months now but rather to mourn the decline of these other outlets. New Rochelle needs vibrant media coverage. There is nothing good at Channel 12 or the JN turning a blind-eye to news in New Rochelle.
The test case for me is the Amorosano-Lepore case. How on earth can the Journal News NOT report at all on the outcome of a federal trial in which serious allegations were made and accepted as true by a jury? Same with Channel 12 News. As the “official” newspaper of New Rochelle I have zero expectation for the Town and Sound newspaper but still…nothing from any of them?
Just me venting. Feel free to ignore.
UPDATE: Heh! Just checked my New Ro Buzz feed and lo and behold Hannan Adley has a story on the Amorosano-Lepore case.
Jury: New Rochelle owes fired court clerk $181G
I see that the lawyer for Amorosano-Lepore was willing to be a bit more forthcoming with Adley than me and that Kathy Gilwit was willing to issue a statement to her after ignoring me (presumably per Chuck’s orders). I did ask Drita Nicaj if there were any changes since the case was filed and she failed to mention Jimmy Generoso settling his end of the case for an undisclosed sum.
I will say that the JN is doing a better job covering New Rochelle over the past six months than they had been doing going back to 2008 and 2009 although you would not understand the full nature of the corruption allegations from the JN story. Still, I am glad to see this story got SOME other media coverage. Now, how about Channel 12?
