May 7
2023
Monday Morning Read
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Subscribe, for free, to WeeklyPost and you’ll not only get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading (below), but his summary of Investigative Post’s reporting for the previous week.
For starters, here’s a thoughtful piece by Dick Tofel, a retired ProPublica executive, on what NPR and commercial television newsrooms are doing to fill some of the void being created by the demise of local daily newspapers. Tofel cites research that concluded neither are rising to the occasion.
In other media news, Vice News appears headed for bankruptcy and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times laments the disappearance of traditional newspaper newsrooms.
I’ve worked in two big city newsrooms, at The Orlando Sentinel and later The Buffalo News. I likened them to locker rooms with computer terminals, and I mean that in a good way. They were a source of great camaraderie and team work. Many newsrooms emptied out during Covid-19, never to return to full strength. Investigative Post took only a four-month hiatus at the outset of the pandemic, as reporting and editing is a collaborative endeavor best done in close quarters.
Jim Shultz, writing for the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, takes Republican leaders to task for criticizing changes at OTB after they turned a blind eye to corruption there.
Charlie Specht of The Buffalo News reports on Albany money flowing into the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party’s favored candidate for the seat representing the Ellicott District on the Buffalo Common Council.
I have a great deal of respect for the folks at Reinvent Albany, a reform-minded good government group with serious research chops. Here’s their analysis of the state budget.
The budget included a provision that establishes a monitor with veto power over subsidy deals approved by the industrial development agency in Orange County. Seems to me that the Niagara County IDA, in particular, merits similar treatment. Here are reports from the Albany Times Union and Rockland News.
The New Republic asks: Is Kathy Hochul worse than Andrew Cuomo? I say she’s not, but that’s damning with faint praise.
The Atlantic reports that it’s not pleasant to live in the backyard of Elon Musk’s SpaceX operation.
I found this an interesting read: We call them row houses, the British call them back-to-backs. They’ve all but disappeared in England, save Leeds.
I don’t care for George Will as a columnist. Except when he writes about baseball.
