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September 24, 2012
Brooklyn Paper/Courier-Life publish special section: "Brooklyn welcomes its new arena"
Atlantic Yards Report
Both the Brooklyn Paper and its sibling Courier Life/Brooklyn Daily, both owned by Rupert Murdoch's Community Newspaper Group, offer a 24-page special section saluting the Barclays Center.
(I believe it's also in Murdoch's New York Post.)
Yes, there's a big ad from the arena, as well as from local businesses. Yes, there's a big ad from the arena in the regular issue of the weeklies, as well.
So it's not surprising that the content is celebratory.
...Flashback
Could you believe that the Brooklyn Paper published a 1/24/04 editorial by its founder, Ed Weintrob, headlined The real story is the land grab, not the Nets:
That the Nets are coming is beside the point. And that is the real story, a story masterfully buried by developer Bruce Ratner and his media shills. (When the New York Times is your real estate partner, it’s amazing the story its pages will tell — more than three pages featuring nine upbeat, luciously illustrated stories in Thursday’s edition.) The real story is that the Atlantic Yards project — and its companion Downtown Brooklyn Plan — is not about the Nets (whose stadium would occupy a tiny part of the massive site), it’s about a land grab by Ratner and his political clients, the largest, most expensive government seizure of private property for private benefit ever in Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn Paper was sold in 2009.
Related coverage...
Noticing New York, Isn’t That Cute?: Cover of Brooklyn Paper Special Section Fawning Over Ratner/Prokhorov “Barclays” Arena Feints At Mention of LIBOR Scandal
The cover of a “special 24-page section” the Rupert Murdoch-owned Brooklyn Paper issued today to fawn appreciatively over the Ratner/Prokhorov “Barclays” basketball arena feints at mention of, and almost seems to refer to, the LIBOR interest rate-fixing scandal for which the Barclays Bank name is a virtual synonym.- And then it actually doesn’t- Just the reverse in fact.
The plastered headline “Banking on Barclays” punningly/cunningly (?) evokes the presumed reliability of the banking practices behind the “Barclays” name. It does that notwithstanding that most people who actually read real news should think of LIBOR instead.
But, in truth, the Brooklyn Paper is probably not thinking in this vein: The Brooklyn Paper has never devoted one jot of ink, or even a few electrons of its web edition articles, to spelling out the acronym LIBOR and that includes the nine new feature articles inside the “special section” all of which mention “Barclays” repeatedly. . .
. . . One of them is appallingly titled: “The People’s Arena!”
Atlantic Yards Report, The "Barclays countdown" in this week's issues of Metro
Let's take a look at this week's installments of the "Barclays countdown" in the free weekly Metro. Is it just a coincidence that editorial content is coupled with copious Barclays Center advertising?
Posted by eric at September 24, 2012 1:06 PM