Buffalo’s growing remote workforce

• Share on
• 
• 
• 
• 

Downtown Buffalo has been hit hard since the pandemic, with a loss of an estimated 20,000 workers. That helps to explain the rise in remote work in our region, as reported last week by Coworking Cafe.

The share of people in Buffalo working from home has grown from 4.1% in 2019 to 10.7% in 2023. Our share of the remote workforce is a little below the national average of 13.8 percent. That number in neighboring Rochester is 8.8 percent.

Partly as a result of fewer people commuting to work, traffic volume and congestion is down. In Buffalo, the declines were 9 percent in volume and 13 percent for congestion. Albany had a particularly large drop in congestion, 25 percent, despite a modest growth in remote work to 7.6 percent. Congestion in Rochester remained unchanged.

The Baltimore Sun is eliminating its features/culture department. People are upset. Of course, The Buffalo News dismantled its arts and culture coverage one writer at a time after Margaret Sullivan left the paper in 2012. There’s practically nothing left. I’ve heard from multiple sources management is seriously contemplating, if it hasn’t already decided, to kill the Thursday Gusto section in the near future. Gusto was dealt a severe body blow several years ago when it dropped event listings. Artvoice, the other major source of print listings back in the day, is closed. 

The Buffalo Hive launched last summer in an effort to fill a portion of the void. It’s a collective effort that includes a number of Buffalo News refugees, including Elmer Ploetz, Jeff Miers, Andrew Galarneau, Melinda Miller and Colin Dabkowsk. M. Faust, formerly of Artvoice and The Public, is also a contributor.

More media news:

• The Buffalo Newspaper Guild, which represents what’s left of the Buffalo News newsroom, joined nine other unions that represent Lee Enterprises employees to criticize the chain on Twitter last week for “its troubled, unappealing digital products, user-unfriendly platforms and insulting ‘customer service.’ “
• The (Newark) Star-Ledger, once one of the nation’s better daily newspapers, announced last week it’s ending its print edition and shuttering its printing presses in February. The Star-Ledger printed the Jersey Journal, which announced it likewise will end its print edition. Two other New Jersey dailies, The Times of Trenton and the South Jersey Times, are also ending their print editions.
• The fallout from the decision by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos to not endorse for president continues. Ten percent of the paper’s subscribers – 250,000 and counting – have canceled.  Meanwhile, The Post reports that the sprawling business empire of Bezos relies increasingly on federal contracts, which helps to explain why he decided to not tick off Donald Trump.

Why so many voters are misinformed:

• Fox is the leading outlet for political news, according to the Pew Research Center. Fox isn’t even a legitimate news organization. The New York Times is the only newspaper cited among the 10 most favored sources.
• Facebook and Instagram aren’t making a good-faith effort to combat disinformation on their platforms, according to ProPublica. 
• Twitter, thanks to Elon Musk, has become a major purveyor of election disinformation.
• YouTube, owned by Google, has permitted right-wing disinformation channels to set up shop on its platform.
• Wired provides a big-picture overview of the problem, which is that “those in charge [big tech] have all but abdicated their responsibility to fact-check information around one of the most critical votes in US history.”

Billionaires have spent nearly $2 billion on this year’s election campaigns, with nearly three-quarters of it going to Republican candidates and PACs.

Politics and Other Stuff has the latest details on campaign contributions flowing into WNY elections.

The Chautauqua County Industrial Development Agency is at it again. We reported last year about an audit by the state comptroller that found “inappropriate and questionable” spending that included paying for the country club memberships of agency executives. Last week The Buffalo News reported on the IDA refusing to release public documents while considering a request for tax breaks on several projects. That’s a no-no under the state’s Open Meetings Law.

A couple of stories from New York Focus: The energy demands of artificial intelligence could stress New York’s power grid by next decade, and the state makes it difficult for police departments to learn about cops with a history of misconduct when they apply to other departments.

Halloween is over, but what to do about leftover candy? How long is it safe to eat? Answer: A long time. And, as a belated holiday bonus, this, from The Boss.

Jim Heaney