The big news yesterday was Mets star Pete Alonso's announcement that a driver ran a red light and slammed into the slugger's Megaford, which then apparently flipped three times, he said.
Predictably, the local media played it as a simple sports story, when, in fact, the horrors of road violence (like all violence) should be played up front as a page lead.
The Daily News and amNY did slapdash first takes that didn't even provide details of the crash, then dropped the story. The Post did the same, but then added a sidebar from the perspective of Alonso's wife, Haley, who watched the crash from another car.
The Times blew it off lest the car-loving paper be forced to acknowledge that bad things happen behind the wheel.
Only Streetsblog's Dave Colon — himself an aficionado of the Metropolitans — reported the story with integrity, wit and depth befitting his outlet and the gravity of a story that was simply lost on his mainstream colleagues.
In other news from a super slow news day:
- Some papers (NY Post, Gothamist) gave you some minor initiatives left out of the state Legislature's one-house budget, but only Dave Colon of Streetsblog got the real story.
- Here are the only people who have a legitimate beef about high gas prices. (NY Post)
- Street vendors are waging a "sleep out" in front of Gov. Hochul's office to advocate for the state to lift the city cap on vending permits. (amNY)
- Gothamist is the latest outlet to demand public welfare for electric car owners. Will the media never learn? Cars ruin cities.
- Joco has pivoted to delivery rather than bike share. (TechCrunch)
- Great sites think a like. Hours after we posted Eve Kessler's story on an RV that remains parked on an uptown street, Patch delivered the chaser: the family living there feels so harassed by their parking-obsessed neighbors that they're leaving.
- Finally, you have a few more hours to vote in our March (Parking) Madness Manhattan regional contest, pitting the Central Park Precinct vs. the 24th Precinct. Polls close at 11:59 p.m. (and it's a nail-biter). And this morning, we posted our second Brooklyn battle, pitting the 69th Precinct vs. the 83rd Precinct. Polls close on Wednesday at 11:59 p.m.
