« Here's what's up with "what's up Chuck" | Main | PRESS RELEASE: Democratic Candidates Forum, 11th Congressional & 57th Assembly Districts »
July 11, 2006
NLG "my bad" on affordable housing meeting graphic
Lumi's taste of crow:
I got a call yesterday from NY Observer reporter Matthew Schuerman, who was doing some fact checking for a coming article.
In an interview with Schuerman, Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards Development Group President Jim Stuckey cited NoLandGrab's post on tonight's FCRC "Affordable Housing Information Session" as evidence that the Atlantic Yards opposition is guilty of "lack of transparency," a charge frequently leveled against the developer.
First of all, it was totally MY BAD.
I was planning on using excerpts of the ad, since the graphic was too big for the NLG format (the FCR designers are big on white space). However, while I was working on cutting and pasting, I had second thoughts and figured that the pubic interest would be better served if I posted the entire ad. Unfortunately, I accidentally output the image with the headline repeated, obscuring the meeting info.
This is what was posted (click images to enlarge)... |
and this is what should have been posted. |
 |
 |
Personally, I'm embarassed that the meeting info was left out. However, the RSVP info and web site (www.atlanticyards.com) still appeared in the image and we listed the event (free of charge) on our Events page, so it's doubtful that it appreciably affected the response rate.
You might be thinking that Stuckey's example of "lack of transparency" is small potatoes next to the fact: * that there will be no legislative oversight of the billion-dollars-plus of subsidies, * that Forest City Ratner still hasn't released its profit projections for the project, so no one knows how much Ratner stands to gain from the taxpayer's investment, or * many of those who sold to Ratner are contractually prohibited from speaking out against the project or the developer.
But a mistake is a mistake, and it deserves to be corrected. It's also shoddy work, even for a bunch of amateurs.
We would have sent out a press release to broadcast my error, but since most of the reporters occasionally check in with NoLandGrab anyway, it would've been redundant.
[See below for another NLG-eats-crow post. Bleechh! For the record, crow does not taste like chicken.]
Posted by lumi at July 11, 2006 12:14 PM