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The third State of the City for the Adams administration, the depressing state of journalism, and chairs #70

Good evening from the greatest city in the world – where the rats are moving to New Jersey, the selection for affordable apartments is about to change, and the City Council and the mayor are still fighting over bills (and chairs and lights, apparently.)

Let’s start first with the mayor’s State of the City, held Wednesday at Hostos Community College. I recapped it for THE CITY, but there wasn’t much major news (which isn’t uncommon even for a sweeping speech like this.) The focus was on housing, on the economy, on a proposed new agency to focus on sustainable delivery, on public space, and on rats of course.

What some said was missing: anything comprehensive or substantive about the asylum seeker crisis, or about mental health initiatives. 

Some interesting tidbits from the speech:

Mayor Adams plans to renovate a public plaza in Chinatown, including an archway that needs private funding. Sounds familiar? That’s because as borough president, Adams teamed up with his then-volunteer Winnie Greco to install another archway in Sunset Park, but nobody really knows what happened to the money raised for that. My colleagues Yoav and April wrote more about these arches. [THE CITY]

The administration wants to build on 24 pieces of publicly-owned land this year [NYP]

Tony Hawk is gonna help build more skateparks [NYDN]

Also this week: the city settled a years-long lawsuit challenging its practice of giving 50% of any affordable units through its housing lottery to residents in the neighborhood where the units are being built. Under the settlement, the preference will drop to 20% and then 15% in five years. [THE CITY]

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“I JUST WANT OUR CHAIRS!!!!”

Every day as a reporter is exciting, invigorating, emotionally fulfilling and draining at the same time. And then sometimes you get to witness a deputy chief of staff to the mayor of the largest city in the country try to remove chairs from a press conference because he says they don’t belong to the legislative body his team shares a building with.

Here’s a video, and another, and here’s a short write-up on the incident that has spawned a lot of jokes (and, more seriously, gives a good idea of the state of relations between City Hall and the council.)

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THE STATE OF THE NEWS

I’ve worked in journalism since 2011, bounced around a few places, worked very hard, got laid off twice, but I have never felt more depressed about the industry as I did this week. The dread comes after a string of layoffs since the start of the month – a steady drip that felt like a tidal wave. It used to be that each outlet got at least a few days as “the place with the layoffs.” Recently it’s been a bunch of places all at once, every few hours in some cases. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to end. 

One newsroom bargaining with its management on a better contract is the Daily News, who walked out Thursday and organized a work stoppage (alongside Forbes, also experiencing layoffs.) 

I spoke with three Newsers for FAQ about why they were walking out, how they stay positive and do their often difficult jobs under these conditions, and where we can all go from here. [FAQ]

In the meantime, there was one bright spot with the news of my alma mater receiving a large donation to help make tuition free in the future. CUNY was free back when my mom, and that free education is what set my life up to where it is. Helping students get a masters degree without the burden of insane loans is better for the industry, since it encourages all different people from all different backgrounds to get into this business. 

But I cynically wondered where they’ll all work when they graduate, if this is what we’re looking at now. 

If you care about news, subscribe to what you can afford to and keep reading/listening to/watching. And to my fellow journalists, I guess we’ll just keep going until we can’t anymore. 

Hope this is funny enough to make up for that last paragraph. Thanks for reading!