Feel Good Articles and Printing Press Releases Hurts Bay Ridge
Dear Journalists,
Sometimes in your effort to write an article and get paid, you are hurting my community, Bay Ridge. When you print a press release, without investigating if it is true, you make the politicians in our area look like they are doing quite a bit for us, when in reality they aren’t. When you present some positive points and not the whole story, it is misleading. We have some serious problems developing in the area and they aren’t being handled because the politician’s offices are able to feed some pics and a story to the press about “sweet topics.”
I purchased a home in 2009 and my taxes were around $4,000. Now my property taxes are $1748 quarterly – almost $7000 for the year. I am sharing my tax bill with you so you know the issue is real.
I hope you will think about the residents of Brooklyn before you print that “feel good” easy press release you received.
The 68th Precinct tells us they are so understaffed they can’t answer our calls. Yet, other precincts are thanking our precinct for loaning them officers. How about a story on how many PO’s work at the 68th Precinct versus other precincts. Can you believe that the 68th precinct is understaffed, but they have a police officer whose job it is to manage their twitter acct? Me either, but I spoke to a lieutenant at the 68th about it earlier this summer and he told me that there is someone close to retirement who is managing it. The NYPD account shares pictures of drugs – here too, yet the papers don’t cover what our local pols are doing to combat this problem.
When you pat politicians on the back with your writing and don’t tell the community the whole story, it lets the politician sit back and do nothing about real problems. Reading local papers leaves residents frustrated and they are blowing up my Facebook feed with stories about drugs being dealt on their block. Politicians could have cameras and signs put up on these blocks, but residents say these problems have existed for years and no one is helping them. They are even leaving comments on an article Will Bredderman wrote in 2012. It might help to join the Bay Ridge Community on Facebook if you want to know what concerns residents have. Try a search on twitter and see what residents have written to @NYPD68Pct and see that the 68th Precinct doesn’t respond to them. (Here’s just a few: Car break ins, parks that need monitoring and PBA cards used for parking)
If you want to do feel good stories once in awhile, please do it about residents doing good things (like this guy and this woman) and not politicians who are trying to stay relevant with a ‘feel good’ story, but aren’t helping most of community. If you cover a story of a politician introducing a bill, you need to cover the entire story and tell us that they didn’t carry the bill to a law (which is rare in some cases).
Some journalists have told me that their boss dictates the article and even the title. C’mon journalists, you can still use your eloquent words to shed light in our community. Let’s end the printing of the ‘feel good’ press releases and go back to printing the news. And I’ll go back to working, collecting my paycheck and paying my huge property taxes.
PS. In the future, I will be responding to all feel good, half-baked stories.
Hugs,
marlene
Topics: Bay Ridge | 3 Comments »
September 4th, 2015 at 6:41 am
Queen,
We mostly get the reprinted press releases so they don’t have to work so hard. Most of the news for our neighborhoods is in the blogs. We were talking about you at dinner and my wife’s friend said, “You act like you know the Queen of the Click.” Keep writing!
Joe your BR neighbor
September 4th, 2015 at 11:55 am
Joe – I get it that everyone needs a break and sometimes they need to get the job done, but some reporters do it every week and it’s the reason the neighborhood is having problems.
Let me know when you are on 3rd sometime and I will come out and meet you and your wife.
September 4th, 2015 at 11:56 am
Everyone – thank you for your messages.
I haven’t posted your replies here because I would need to verify some info and in some cases I don’t think you want me to publish your info here either.
I have your messages, you don’t need to repost it. If you left your numbers I will get back to you soon.