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Bigger Media, Less Local Democracy


“Give me another issue where the American Civil Liberties Union is working with the National Rifle Association; where you get MoveOn.org agreeing with the Christian Coalition,” Eric Klinenberg was saying in his office in the Puck Building. “When you get these extremes of the American political spectrum -- plus everybody in-between -- coming together on an issue, then it’s time to pay attention to it.”

The issue to which he was referring is media consolidation – the gobbling up by big corporations of newspapers, TV stations and radio stations. According to Professor Klinenberg, who teaches sociology at New York University, there is only one group that seems uninterested: “Major media companies do not cover this issue. They have proven incapable of covering themselves.”

Klinenberg focuses on the issue in a new book, “Fighting for Air: The Battle To Control America’s Media,” which seems itself to be getting plenty of attention, from Philadelphia to Chicago, Nashville to Seattle. We thought we would see what he had to say about New York City. An edited transcript follows:

Gotham Gazette: There is a sentence in your book, Fighting for Air, that sums up what it’s about: “Just as Starbucks knocked out independent coffee shops and Wal-Mart killed the corner store, media conglomerates have devastated locally produced newspapers, television stations, and radio programs throughout the country.” You say this threatens both cultural diversity and democracy. How so?

Eric Klinenberg: We’re not getting news about the places where we live and we’re not hearing local voices on the air.

There are newspapers across the country that have pulled out their City Hall reporters; that cut their school board beats or their environmental reporters. It’s not as if our local school boards no longer shape the quality of our children’s education. It’s not as if there are no more polluting corporations. It’s just that we don’t necessarily get the news coverage of them that we need to make informed decisions…

Television newscasts were better 20 years ago. You see more commercials now, more teasers, longer weather reports. One study of more than 4,000 local evening news broadcasts in the month leading up to Election Day in 2004 revealed that a mere eight percent of the broadcasts ran a story about a local political race, including campaigns for the U.S. Congress.

As for diversity, one of the most alarming trends in our broadcast system is the recent decline of minority and female station owners -- people who in many cases got licenses for the explicit purpose of doing cultural and civic affairs programming for communities that large corporations neglected. But they just can't compete with the Clear Channels of the industry, which sell package advertising at deep discounts, own live concert venues, and even own the syndicated programs that more than half of all commercial radio stations play.

Research shows that the larger the owner of a radio station, the less diverse its playlist -- compared to both its programming under the previous owner and to other stations in the same market. Big radio companies operate in top-down fashion. They want national market researchers finding music that appeals to the lowest common denominator, not local DJs selecting music that they like because it's interesting, innovative, and exciting. Local radio DJ’s are struggling everywhere to find jobs.

Big Media And New York City

Gotham Gazette: In New York City, there is no Wal-Mart, and there are still plenty of places to have an over-caloried coffee besides Starbucks (though there are more than 170 Starbucks in the city, and counting.) How is media consolidation affecting New York City in particular?

Klinenberg: Truly local coverage has become a luxury good. So the wealthiest cities are still getting a decent supply of local information. New York is the most competitive media market I know of. People in Los Angeles and Chicago envy New York for the diversity of its local news.

Gotham Gazette: But a lot of New Yorkers, especially community advocates, neighborhood activists, complain all the time about the lack of coverage of local issues.

Klinenberg: Yeah, well, it’s an enormous city. I’m not saying that every community is adequately covered. My point is: As we look across American cities and communities, we find that local information about them has become more of a luxury good.

But New York is not immune from this pressure of consolidation.

Radio Commercials.
The New York City music radio market has changed dramatically in the last ten years.

People here get the same formats and the same kinds of music that are available everywhere else, with the same increase in commercials that have driven many of us off the dial.

Cable Rates.
Probably the most frustrating aspect of consolidation in New York is the cable television industry. Most New Yorkers don’t have a choice about cable; it’s a non-competitive part of the marketplace.

As a result, the cost of cable television has skyrocketed. Rates have gone up higher for Cablevision subscribers than for anyone else. And we are paying for channels we never watch.

 

The Death Of Alt?
The other dramatic story has to do with the transformation of the alt weeklies. The Village Voice is now managed by two libertarians from Phoenix, Arizona. They merged New Times with Village Voice Media, they took the name, Village Voice Media, but the controlling party are these two from Phoenix. They came to town, they fired veterans, they imposed conditions that were so difficult for others that they resigned, they lost an editor. In the view of many veterans at the Voice, they crushed the spirits of the newspaper and tried to impose a style whose fit for the city remains open to question. For example, many people at the Voice were concerned that there was a political purge, that [co-owner] Michael Lacey wanted to take the progressive voice out of the Village Voice. The Village Voice long ago lost its tight connection to Greenwich Village. It became a New York institution and somewhat of a national institution as well, but it’s always had this distinctly alternative voice, and the voice of Michael Lacey and the new Village Voice management is alternative only insofar as frat boy contrarianism of the kind that we associate with the party that’s in power right now is an alternative; in my view that’s not very alternative at all.

Gotham Gazette: This is on the basis of your reading the issues since the new owners took over?

Klinenberg: I think we’re still watching the Village Voice change. I’ve been reading the New Times publications for years, and I’ve had countless conversations with former New Times employees, current New Times employees, as well as those with other alternative weeklies, about the way that company does business. The standard operating style of the New Times weekly papers was to pare down the editorial staff so that they had fewer full-time reporters than papers like the Village Voice used to have. In the cultural coverage, they have a number of movie reviewers, music reviewers, who do content for all of the Village Voice media chain papers; that means a smaller number of perspectives.

Gotham Gazette: You are talking about what the chain was like before it merged with the Village Voice Media, and you are also talking about what has happened in other cities. I wondered if there is evidence that this has happened here.

Klinenberg: The jury is still out. I haven’t seen the Village Voice replace all the people who resigned or were fired.

Gotham Gazette: I have seen stories though that say they are hiring.

Klinenberg: I see ads.

Gotham Gazette: So, you don’t know for sure yet.

Klinenberg: I’m pretty certain they have not exceeded the number of employees they used to have. The style of management in this company is that you have smaller newsrooms. They have quotas; reporters have to get work out more quickly. Some of the reporters I spoke with [in other Village Voice Media newspapers] complained that when you have to produce reported stories quickly, you’re more likely to go after public companies or non-profits, whose financial information is more readily available, than do deep investigations into the private sector.

Gotham Gazette: So, to sum up: The effects of consolidation have been most dramatic nationally with radio and newspapers. In New York City, the effects are most seen in radio as well…

Klinenberg: They’re heard in radio.

Gotham Gazette: Yes, heard in radio. The other effects locally are in the cost of cable TV and possibly in the alternative newspaper, by which you mean the Village Voice.

Klinenberg: Yes, but I would add one thing: The mainstream newspaper industry has not been unaffected. I’m sure you follow the story of the Tribune company’s management of the Daily News, sorry, Newsday.

Gotham Gazette: The Tribune company actually owned the Daily News in the past.

Klinenberg: Which is why sometimes I make that slip. But they fired more than 100 reporters at Newsday. The staff recently wrote collectively a letter to the Tribune company, saying that you’re destroying the quality of journalism that made this paper important. So newspaper reporters in New York are experiencing a version of what’s happened to reporters in Los Angeles, just on a smaller scale.

Is Big Necessarily Bad?

Gotham Gazette: I want to show you what’s written on a soda cup from a Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant: “Chipotle, Unchained

“According to various media reports, Chipotle is now a ‘chain.’ (We thought we were just a burrito joint.) It simply means we have a lot of restaurants. But we’re aware of the negative connotation of that word…and we’re intent on disproving it by acting un-chain-like. Because big can be good…Because of our size, we can influence for the better how livestock is raised….We also buy organic pinto and black beans…because we’re buying so many, we’re helping to increase the supply. All that means better food for you. So, size does matter.”

I should point out that the Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant chain is owned by McDonald’s, so they are being a little coy here, if not outright misleading.

But still, what about their argument -- what’s so bad about big?

Klinenberg: What I’m most concerned about is uncompetitive media marketplaces. Big might not be bad, if by big you meant big journalistic staffs, big studios filled with all the live djs and reporters. But what we are seeing is big companies downsizing -- reducing the number of live local human beings producing original content. So in my view we’re getting big companies, small journalism… We once considered local news and information to be necessary for democracy in this country; we have a profoundly local political system.

Fragmented, And Neglected

Gotham Gazette: Is there an argument that just as in Europe , we’re becoming more one culture where regional differences are smoothing out and there is such a thing as an American or national culture and society? Is it actually making us more united as a people when the people in Atlanta are reading the same statements from Barack Obama as the people in Chicago?

Klinenberg: I have the reverse interpretation -- that the era of the mass society in the United States is actually in decline; that culturally, we’re fragmented….

In the last 25 years there has been a political shift in this country that involves more political power delegated to state governments. The corporate communities have figured that out, which is why they have made unprecedented investment in lobbying at the state level. If you go to any state capital in this country today, you can see the whole landscape has transformed with fancy hotels, big chain restaurants; it’s an elite scene now.

At the same time the corporate community and lobbyists raced to the state house, the newspaper industry and the radio reporters were going out the other side of the revolving door. Media companies pulled out their investment in this kind of state coverage. And here we have this incredible paradox. There are more significant political decisions taking place in the state capitals, and we have fewer journalists covering that information.

A Change In The Culture?

Gotham Gazette: In the book you attribute a lot of the problems to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. How much can you blame on that single law, and how much is it a change in the culture, and in technology?

Klinenberg: It depends on the industry.

Until 1996 it was illegal for any company to own more than four radio stations in a single market and it was illegal for any company to own more than 40 radio stations nationally. And that meant that by definition, this was a relatively small business. The radio industry was dominated by mom and pop players. There were some big companies that had big radio stations, but it was a highly competitive industry. After 1996, the Telecommunications Act raised the local ownership cap to eight in the largest markets, and eliminated the cap altogether nationally. What happened is that in the next two years, 40 percent of America’s commercial radio stations changed hands. That’s a staggering number. And a small number of companies (basically three) emerged as the true giants of the field, including Clear Channel, which went from 40 stations to more than 1200 in four years.

Radio changed as a result, for the worse.

Gotham Gazette: What about the argument that the large companies have actually saved some local newspapers from going under – and that the cutbacks are about survival in a changed environment?

Klinenberg: These businesses are tremendously profitable. Newspapers have profit margins that dwarf other companies. Typical Fortune 500 companies have profit margins of six percent. Newspapers typically have 30 percent. You’ll have a hard time persuading me to feel sorry for the owners of newspapers.

Media companies are arguing that they’re losing audience because of changes in technology. I’m arguing they’re also losing audience because of their business model – to get rid of local content. Radio broadcasters turned off a generation of radio listeners, who may now not go back.

Countertrends

Gotham Gazette: You talk about counter-trends to the homogenization of media, such as so-called pirate radio stations – whose motto is “Low Power to the People” – and the Internet. Do these leave you hopeful?

Klinenberg: There’s no doubt we have access to more information. But all the evidence shows that there is not more information available on the local level. You can read about South Africa on your computer. That won’t help you make decisions in your neighborhood, in the city, or in the state. No matter how cosmopolitan we are, no matter how global we aspire to be, in my view we all live, ultimately, local lives. When our schools are bad, our children suffer. When our hospitals are bad, it affects our health.

Gotham Gazette: What about hyperlocal media, or what’s being called citizen journalism?

At this point, I would like to do what Kurt Anderson does in New York Magazine and give a full disclosure notice that’s actually an exercise in self-promotion. Your book devotes several complimentary pages to Gotham Gazette as the example of “innovative Internet journalistic projects”, calling it “a remarkably rich publication” and Jonathan Mandell its “tireless editor.”

Klinenberg: I love the Gotham Gazette. I read it every morning. Gotham Gazette would be a sliver of itself were it not for all the local news organizations full of professional reporters, on whom it relies daily for its information.

I love Gothamist too. The co-founder of that blog told me that if they didn’t have the local press, the whole Gothamist model would fall apart.

Gotham Gazette: But this is the first generation of Internet journalism. When Time Magazine first started, it was basically just a rewrite of the articles in the New York Times. Of course now, they have their own massive independent news operation (despite recent layoffs). If Web sites are starting to make money covering local news, why couldn’t they start sponsoring original reporting?

Klinenberg: In theory, that could happen. But I’m not prepared to say that as newspapers fire reporters, bloggers will make up for it. Are bloggers going to replace investigative reporters? Are bloggers going to report on issues that require technical knowledge of a field? Journalism is a profession that took generations to develop. What they do is not always wanted by powerful people, whether they’re public or private.

Gotham Gazette: It’s not always wanted by regular people either.

Klinenberg: The demand for newspaper journalism is at an unprecedented high, if you include the Web versions of the newspapers.

Gotham Gazette: But do readers really miss the investigative pieces, or are they satisfied with the latest escapade of Paris Hilton? What about the argument that publications and stations are giving their subscribers what they want?

Klinenberg: There are many of us who are not getting what we want. If you’re a radio listener, is what you want 20 minutes of commercials every hour? Do television viewers really want extreme political invective rather than local coverage?

Gotham Gazette: How optimistic are you about the future of local media?

Klinenberg: It depends on whether the major telecommunications companies get their way with Congress, and take control of the Internet, so they can offer faster access to their own sites as well as to those sites that can afford to pay a premium for high-speed delivery. This would mean that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation could pay to make it fast and easy for you to get to one of its Web sites – and could make it impossible for you to get to Gotham Gazette or Gothamist or any other site unable to pay.

If we preserve network neutrality on the Internet, I’ll be much more optimistic. A healthy media is necessary for a healthy democracy.

 

It's the Development, Stupid, on Staten Island


It would be hard to imagine two political contests more diametrically opposed than the two Special Election races in New York City on February 20. While the Brooklyn race has captured the most press attention with its unwieldy crowd of candidates, complicated ethnic calculations, and laundry list of issues, the Staten Island contest is fairly straightforward.

The election to fill the council seat in the 51st district presents only two candidates -- one Democrat and one Republican, even though under city law, the ballot for the special election will not identify either candidate as such. And both candidates agree that one issue -- overdevelopment and its effects on the area -- overshadows any and all other topics.

In many respects, the 51st represents an anomaly in New York. It is overwhelmingly white, resembles the suburbs more than the city and is one of only three City Council districts represented by a Republican.

Vincent Ignizio hopes to continue that tradition. Currently a member of the State Assembly, he previously worked as chief of staff to Andrew Lanza and has held other staff positions at Staten Island. He said he wants to continue in the tradition of other Staten Island Republicans, such as City Council Minority Leader James Oddo and U.S. Representative Vito Fossella. His opponent, Manny Innamorato, thinks it is time for a change.

EFFECTS OF THE BOOM

Each of the two candidates argues that he is best equipped to deal with the problems created by the area’s population and building boom. Both offer a number of proposals to deal with it. Manny Innamorato would like to see the establishment of a Staten Island Planning Commission that “would be more sensitive and more focused” than the city planning commission. He would seek a number of changes in the way the city issues building permits and questions the granting of some variances that have allowed for new constructions, some of its in inappropriate places or not in keeping with the surrounding community.

Vincent Ignizio points to his work on down zoning as a City Council aide. Zoning for less density, he said, is “a major initiative for curbing overdevelopment” that has sharply reduced the umber of new housing permits issued on Staten Island.

Traffic is inextricably linked with all the new housing. “My commuters have the longest commute in the country for the shortest distance,” Vincent Ignizio said. To provide some relief, he would work for the city and state to arrange ferry service between the South Shore and lower Manhattan. Manny Innamorato would like to see the area’s street completed; much of the planned street grid he says has never been built.

Crowding in schools is also a byproduct of all the new homes, Vincent Ignizio said. He is working with Mayor Michael Bloomberg to develop a new school complex, with grades kindergarten through 12 , on the South Shore.

While development remains at the core of his campaign, Manny Innamorato has also been expressing concern about property taxes. For years, the city property tax rate for homeowners was reasonable, but he said “we’re starting to see that our numbers are creeping up.” If that continues, he worries that people will start to leave the city for New Jersey” and, Innamorato said, that’s the last thing we want to see.”

NAME GAME

Aside from the development debate, one of the biggest controversies in the race has been Emanuele Innamorato’s name. The candidate sought to appear on the ballot as Manny Innamorato, the name by which he says he has been known since high school. When the Board of Elections rebuffed his bid, the candidate took the issue to court. There a state Supreme Court judge ruled in his favor, declaring the ballot should be changed. The Staten Island Advance reported, it will cost the Board of Election $35,000 to make the switch.

THE RACE

In his campaign, Ignizio points to his accomplishments as a City Council aide, helping to bring, preserve open space and limit new construction on Staten Island. He said that as a council aide he worked on the first applications for down zoning and will continue to pursue such policies as a council member.

Innamorato is skeptical. During 30 years of Republican leadership, he said, “overdevelopment has gotten worse. Traffic has gotten worse.” Republicans only acted, he said, when problems reached a “fever pitch.”

So far both candidates have lined up endorsements from members of their party, with Michael Bloomberg and Staten Island Republicans backing Ignizio and Senator Charles Schumer supporting Innamorato. The Independence Party and Working Families Party also support the Democrat. With more than $58,000, Ignizio has raised three times the amount that Manny Innamorato has.

CHANGING PLACES

Vincent Ignizio’s campaign surprises some who question why a politicians would want to give up a seat in the State Assembly -- which, dysfunctional or not, is virtually a lifetime tenure -- for a term-limited seat on City Council. Ignizio said he thinks he could do more for his community on the City Council. Being a minority member of the City Council, even when the margin is 48 Democrats to three Republicans, is not the same as being a Republican in the State Assembly, according to Ignizio. “The City Council is a much more progressive body and a much more bipartisan body that the State Assembly,” he said.

A victory by Vincent Ignizio would have an interesting ripple effect. If he wins, there will almost certainly be yet another special election, that one to fill his seat in the legislature.

-----------

Vincent Ignizio: A longtime resident of Staten Island’s south shore, Ignizio worked for City Council and served as chief of staff for Andrew Lanza, whose seat he now hopes to fill. He has been a member of the New York State Assembly since 2005. He also serves as chair of Richmond County Republican Party.

Emanuele “Manny” Innamorato: A lifelong resident of Staten Island Inamorato formerly worked for the New York City Department of Transportation. He is now director of technology for the city of Yonkers. Innamorato ran against Vincent Ignizio for the State Assembly in 2004.

Plan NYC 2030


When Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a plan for New York City in the year 2030, he said it was needed because the city will be getting much bigger, the infrastructure will be getting older, and the environment will be at risk. Plan NYC 2030 (or, the way the Office of the Mayor actually writes it, plaNYC) is based on the prediction that in the coming decades there will be a million new residents requiring some 265,000 new housing units.

Only once before has there been something similar – a master plan known as The Plan For New York City, in 1969 – but it was never approved. For the first time in the city’s history, City Hall is focusing on:

• the long-term environmental and health effects of growth (both past and present)
• how the city’s energy and transportation systems can sustain quality of life and new growth
• the potential impacts of global warming.

It remains to be seen, however, whether this unique planning effort is itself sustainable, and will lead to policy changes that last beyond 2008, when voters will elect a new mayor. That will depend on the extent to which the process can include and engage people in the city’s diverse neighborhoods and reflect their needs and aspirations.

Focus on Growth: What If NYC…Shrinks?

The basic premise of PlanNYC2030 is the prediction that there will be another one million residents by the year 2030. Who says so? How do we know? Well, demographers at the NYC Department of City Planning (DCP) say so. How did they figure it out? They did a pretty good job of detailing the way the population changed in recent census periods, breaking it down by age group and borough. They calculated birth, death and migration rates. But to establish the baseline trends – the rates of population change – they used the trends from 1980 to 2005. It just so happens that this period is one of relatively high growth rates, compared to prior decades for example. But they could have gotten the same result by taking a ruler and drawing a straight line on a graph; actually any one of us can do that.

 

Source: PlanNYC2030

DCP’s demographers may be right in projecting continuing growth at the same rate. Or they may be wrong. Global, national and regional trends could shift in unforeseen ways as they have in the past. Migration trends are the most subject to variation. But even if the city’s demographers are right, this is a questionable way of using population projections to do planning.

In the January 2007 issue of Planning Magazine, a publication of the American Planning Association, Chris Williamson notes, “A projection that assumes past development rates will stay on course is really a policy recommendation to continue developing at past rates….If a city plans to a projection, is it also implicitly recommending growth policies for future city councils?”

There is nothing wrong with doing plans to meet projected growth, but the public should know from the start not only what assumptions are made in doing the projections but that the projections would be different under other assumptions. For that reason many planning offices prefer to run several scenarios using different assumptions. Williamson notes, “Planners and others who create and use projections should be aware of the implied assumptions and should prominently list and discuss them rather than let them remain unstated or buried in a technical appendix.” The assumptions for NYC2030 are indeed buried in a technical report prepared by DCP.

The city’s growth scenario will appeal to the economic sectors that thrive on growth – real estate, finance, construction, and some services. By starting with this scenario and not exploring other possible scenarios, NYC2030 is silently making a major policy decision that favors what some have called “the growth machine.”

What if the population remains stable? This question would force planners to focus on the improvement of life in the city as we know it, and away from the task of accommodating new construction. Is it unthinkable that the population could even decline a bit? While the thought of a shrinking population base conjures up images of widespread neighborhood abandonment during the 1970s, that doesn’t have to happen in the 21st Century. Many European cities, for example, have lost population or remained stable without suffering abandonment. It all depends on public policy.

NYC2030’s projected growth rates by borough are also based on implicit policy decisions. The Bronx is projected to grow at the slowest rate and Staten Island the fastest. Staten Island, the borough with the most available land for development, would absorb much less growth than it could. That’s a decision that continues, without further discussion, a city-wide land use policy that concentrates density around a small number of downtown centers instead of building centers for neighborhood living throughout the city.

Focus on Sustainability

The Mayor’s decision to focus NYC2030 on sustainability is both unprecedented and bold. Other cities like Boston, Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles are ahead of New York, but it’s never too late to raise the basic sustainability question as defined by the United Nations: how can we meet current needs without compromising the needs of future generations?

NYC2030 starts with reasonable assumptions that with or without growth the city faces ten daunting challenges:

1. affordable housing
2. traffic congestion
3. lack of open space
4. the need to maintain the existing water infrastructure…
5.…transportation infrastructure
6.…power infrastructure
7. the need to reduce greenhouse emissions
8. air quality improvement
9. brownfields reclamation
10. improved waterways.

Goals are proposed for each of these areas.

Noticeably missing from the list, however, are things like education, city services (especially sanitation), public health, noise, and neighborhood preservation -- items that typically appear on the top of the lists of complaint by New Yorkers.

However, NYC2030 does put on the agenda issues that are of crucial concern to many community, advocacy and environmental justice groups but have often been left out of high-level policy discussions. These include the asthma epidemic, brownfields reclamation, power plant siting, and the lack of open space, all of which are of special concern to low-income communities.

The Role of Neighborhoods and Community Boards: Whatever Happened to the City Charter?

The mayor’s office has launched a series of meetings for community leaders and civic groups in each of the five boroughs to discuss the plan. However, it is not at all clear whether this will lead to any changes in the plan, and if so who will make those decisions. NYC2030’s website makes it all sound like a harmonious process in which we all join arms and march into the future. New Yorkers can submit their comments on the website, but how do these get digested and acted upon?

This leads us to a bigger question of how the plan gets approved and implemented. Will it get submitted to the City Planning Commission, City Council, or the voters for approval? Will the plan be anything more than the Mayor’s swan song before he moves on to his next job? Will the next mayor care? Where is the city’s capital and expense budget process in all this? And the city’s 59 community boards?

NYC2030 evades entirely the mechanisms set up in Section 197-a of the City Charter to produce and approve plans. City Hall may not like those mechanisms but they are the only ones we have. Without them the Mayor’s plan could become just one chief executive’s boardroom strategy that provides some guidance but has no teeth.

Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of NY, editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community-based Planning. 



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