The historic subway shutdown on Wednesday morning missed most of the newspaper print deadlines, so we're going to offer a rundown of the best coverage we saw once the dawn broke to a new era in the City that Sometimes Sleeps. Here we go:
- The Times offered the broadest overview, with multiple locations and a broad sweep of history.
- The Daily News focused on stranded straphangers, who grumbled that the enhanced bus service didn't cut it on the first night.
- New York's Hometown Paper also did a feature on homeless people that reminded readers that these are real people with real problems that aren't being solved by being kicked out of the subway. The Post's version of that story focused on the numbers — 252 were kicked off the trains and about half accepted social services, a very high percentage. But the paper continues to use words like "vagrants" and "down-on-their-luck" "stragglers" to describe suffering souls.
- The Tabloid of Record added another story pointing out how difficult it was for homeless people to physically get to shelters thanks to, you guessed it, the lack of late trains.
- The Post solved one mystery: Why are trains still running, albeit empty? Because the MTA has no place to put most of them.
- amNY played up the social service angle.
In other news:
- Gov. Cuomo urged voters to use absentee ballots for the reinstated June 23 New York primary (NYDN). Get your absentee ballot here.
- Hoboken is getting into the open streets thing. (Tap Into Hoboken)
- Faced with outrage over how cops have overpoliced social distancing protocols, the NYPD sent out Chief of Department Terance Monahan to be the public focus of that outrage. “It’s not something we want to do, it’s something we have to do to keep people safe," he said on “Good Day New York” (NYDN). The Post played up the part where Monahan said the overnight transit shutdown went smoothly.
- Meanwhile, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams — an ex cop and current mayoral hopeful — said Mayor de Blasio was wrong to have the NYPD enforce social distancing rules. (NY Post)
- Oy, now JetBlue is getting into the business of doing a flyover tribute to New York's medical workers — a tribute in the form of combusted jet fuel pollution as we battle a respiratory disease. The fun fumes start at 7 p.m. (NY Post)
- We were first out of the gate yesterday, but obviously other outlets covered the mayor's latest open-streets announcement (NY Post, Gothamist). Bklyner pointed out a local bait-and-switch.
- And no one really covered the significance of Mayor de Blasio's announcement that he had formed a transportation planning panel — except us.
- And, finally, great news: Former Streetsblog USA Editor Angie Schmitt's hotly anticipated book about the rise in pedestrian deaths, "Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America," is available for pre-order! (Island Press)
