Tuesday’s Headlines: Who Needs the Media Edition

The big story was Mayor Adams’s announcement that he doesn’t need reporters asking nosey questions because he’s setting up his own newsletter!

Never mind that the mayor already has an entire press operation issuing statements, speeches and wacky videos (click here to read them all!). And forget the fact that people prefer getting their news from the media because we provide important (and sometimes inconvenient) context that you don’t get from press releases. Hizzoner says the public will be better served in signing up to get his regular updates rather than reading the local papers and its “distorted” view of him (read: we do indeed report on his failures as well as his successes).

The story first broke (via the mayor’s press release) in amNY, but several others covered it with a more jaded eye:

• The Daily News said the mayor has “grown increasingly cranky lately with how he’s covered by the City Hall press corps.”
• The Daily Beast went even further, with a headline reading, “Thin-Skinned NYC Mayor Wants to Write His Own News Stories.”

In the end, others ignored the story, but plenty of pixel-pocked pundits weighed in on Twitter:

And speaking of the mayor’s oh-so-important opinions, he came out against Gov. Hochul’s completely reasonable opposition to gas stoves with classic “electric stoves don’t cook as well” demagogy, the Post reported.

So we can’t wait to hear more unfiltered pronouncements from the mayoral lips.

In other news:

• The Daily News followed Gothamist’s weekend story about the beloved graffiti-covered tunnel that the city painted over.
• The Post’s Nolan Hicks keeps hammering away on MTA work rules.
• Speaking of the MTA, Grand Central Madison will open for real on Wednesday. (Gothamist)
• Hell Gate followed up on the cyclist “die-in” on Ninth Street last week.
• President Biden is coming to New York next week to tout the Gateway Tunnel project (and, hopefully, congestion pricing?). (NY Post, amNY)
• Like Streetsblog, amNY wrote up the annual Transportation Alternatives’ Vision Zero report.
• Axios has finally noticed that pickup trucks are killing this country.
• And, finally, welcome to the War on Cars, Clare Malone of the New Yorker: