Tag: Melissa Mark-Viverito

NEW YORK CITY (TIP): The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) has granted $1 million to the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism to help New York City’s community and ethnic media outlets stay competitive in the current media landscape and bring them further into the digital age. The announcement of the grant was made, Monday, June 27 by MOME Commissioner Julie Menin at a well-attended press conference at CUNY School of Journalism in Midtown Manhattan.

The funding will allow a major expansion of training opportunities for journalists working at these publications, which have an enormous readership and are of vital importance to communities around the city.

In addition, the J-School’s broadcast facilities will be officially renamed the “Made in NY Broadcast Center” in recognition of MOME’s commitment to this important element of New York’s media sector. “The diversity and breadth of New York City’s community and ethnic media reflects the diversity of our city as a whole, and it is crucially important to keep these outlets thriving,” said MOME Commissioner Julie Menin. “These publications add key perspective to our local news landscape, and they keep New Yorkers in the know – whether their native language is English or Bengali. We look forward to collaborating with the J-School on this important initiative, which builds on their history of providing excellent training for journalists at ethnic and community publications.”

“Since 2006, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism has been dedicated to opening doors for a diversity of reporters and ensuring that everyone in the media industry has access to the new tools of the trade,” said CUNY J-School Dean Sarah Bartlett. “This partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, which ensures that the community and ethnic press throughout New York City will have many opportunities to benefit from professional training sessions, recognizes and builds on the CUNY J-School’s track record.”

New York City is the ethnic media capital of the world, with more than 350 community and ethnic outlets that produce news in dozens of languages for print, radio, television and the web.

A significant portion of New Yorkers – one-third of whom are foreign-born – rely on these outlets as a key source of news and information. Combined circulation of daily and weekly community and ethnic publications reaches 4.5 million people -more than half of New York City’s population.

The CUNY J-School launched the Center for Community and Ethnic Media (CCEM) in 2012 to address the need to support these news outlets in particular, and help them tackle the unique challenges they face.

Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced an expansion of New York City’s outreach and engagement with community and ethnic media in January of this year. The initiative includes the launch of an online directory of ethnic and community media for city employees to use in outreach and informational and paid campaign efforts.

While New York’s community and ethnic outlets are a key element of the city’s media landscape, many of them are struggling to keep up with the quickly evolving world of tech-driven journalism. In addition, many of the news outlets that CCEM serves are under financial pressure.

Their employees often wear multiple hats: reporter, publisher, editor, publisher, photographer, ad salesman, and social media director. These publications are stretched thin: they often cannot afford to devote resources to professional development, and few have been able to fully migrate to a digital environment.

Through this grant, MOME will provide CCEM with the means to create new, affordable courses building on the J-School’s current offerings in subjects such as social media, video storytelling, podcasting, and broadcasting techniques. It is estimated that MOME’s grant will allow the J-School to train 200 to 300 journalists per year over five years.

Potential courses supported by this grant, which will be developed by CCEM in collaboration with the J-School’s CUNY J+ professional development division include: Multimedia and data visualization: Journalists will receive training with tools for multimedia presentation, training on Microsoft Excel, and sessions on how to effectively use data visualization. Video: Courses will focus on video storytelling for the web, the fastest-rising application in the news industry and one that is increasingly drawing the attention of advertisers.

Social media: Participating journalists will learn to use platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube effectively. They will also learn strategy around different social media platforms, and how to use analytic tools to inform content.

Podcasting: Using the “Made in NY Broadcast Center” facility, participating journalists will learn about the components of a podcast and have the opportunity to make their own.

Broadcast skills: Courses will provide journalists with training for on-camera appearances, as well as practice with public speaking and presentation skills.

The “Made in NY Broadcast Center” is composed of a high-definition TV studio and radio recording facility, all with cutting-edge equipment including DSLR cameras, video cameras and audio recorders. Training for community and ethnic media reporters will include use of camera, audio, video, and lighting.

“I join my colleague and co-director Karen Pennar in thanking Commissioner Julie Menin and the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment for their very generous grant to support a new training initiative at the CUNY J-School’s Center for Community and Ethnic Media,” said J-School CCEM co-director Jehangir Khattak. “By helping this sector to adopt new technologies effectively, the Center’s training initiative will help community and ethnic media outlets improve the quality of their journalistic content, and support them in the important role they play in increasing the civic engagement of the diverse communities they serve.”

NEW YORK CITY (TIP): Mayor Bill de Blasio on Feb. 17 pledged that the city would spend more than $9 million in “language access” programs including translation and interpretation services in 2016, and that the city’s ad buys in community and ethnic media, which tripled in 2015 from 2013, were on track to outpace last year’s level of $1.3 million.

He also said that members of the community and ethnic press would gain more ready access to city officials, noting that three seats would be reserved for community and ethnic media representatives at the City Hall press room. [The City Hall press office clarified that “three available desks will be rotated to accommodate different outlets, based on request volume.]

While saying that he wanted to be careful about making a “blanket pledge” about meeting any and all requests from the ethnic media, Mayor de Blasio said that the city was dedicated to “deepening” its relationship with these diverse media outlets. “My goal is to consistently do more,” he said.

“We are the ultimate city of immigrants. We honor that fact and know that it’s essential to our greatness and that means we need to communicate with people” in a way that they trust, said the mayor. In the past, he said, “New York City government too often attempted to basically communicate with the people of New York City only through traditional mainstream media and didn’t understand the power of community and ethnic media.”

Now, he said, “we’re going to start changing that reality and we’re going to deepen these changes over the next few years. We aim to reach all of the people with everything we do.” On matters from pre-K seats to IDNYC to taking advantage of the earned income tax credit, de Blasio said, the city wants people in diverse communities to be well-informed, and the way to ensure that is through “pushing out more information to all of you than we have in the past.”

With City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito on his right and the Commissioner for Immigrant Affairs Nisha Agarwal to his left, the mayor addressed and took questions from more than 50 members of the community and ethnic press in a standing room-only briefing held in the Blue Room at City Hall. Mark-Viverito and Agarwal also addressed the group.

Mark-Viverito said she understood the role that community and ethnic media play in the city, and was “very passionate” about developing a strong partnership with that media, since she is bilingual and bicultural, gets her information from many media, and herself was once a journalist at WBAI. She noted that she had named the first-ever director of media diversity relations for the City Council, Juana Ponce de Leon. The Council speaker said she was “very excited” about the city’s efforts, that this is “just a beginning” and conceded that “it’s overdue – let’s be clear about that.” During questioning from the community and ethnic press, the mayor took notes and told some individual reporters that he would be sure to have their particular questions or complaints about prior inattention addressed. Agarwal, who described some of the city’s new initiatives to improve language access, such as inviting residents to dial 311 with complaints if interpretation services were found wanting, said that “we want to be held accountable in how we are bridging the language barrier.”

Prof. Indrajit S Saluja, Editor of The Indian Panorama underscored the need to provide press releases to ethnic newspapers in their languages. He said many South Asian language newspapers fail to carry important City information only because they have no in house translators to translate press releases which are in English or Spanish.

Following the end of the briefing, which lasted nearly an hour, press officers from numerous city agencies circulated among the ethnic and community media, inviting them to make contact.

(With Voices of New York)

NEW YORK CITY (TIP): Mayor Bill de Blasio and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced, January 27, an expansion of New York City’s outreach and engagement with community and ethnic media outlets across the five boroughs. Today’s announcement includes the launch of an online directory of ethnic and community media for City employees to use in outreach and informational and paid campaign efforts, and a system to ensure accountability with the aim of having equitable communications across diverse ethnic, racial and geographic communities. The Mayor and Speaker will convene community-based journalists in the coming weeks to discuss these efforts.

Many New Yorkers turn to neighborhood, youth and ethnic media to get their news, frequently in languages other than English, and the de Blasio Administration is committed to providing equal access to information. Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito has advocated for proactive and consistent engagement of community media, and has dedicated resources and expertise in working with the Administration to ensure inclusion of diverse outlets.

“In the city of immigrants, no person should be denied access to vital services or information due to their language. Half of all New Yorkers speak a language other than English at home. Almost one-sixth of all NYC households – 1.8 million people – are proficient in languages that are not English. Today we are ensuring that the City speaks the language of our people,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“Government has a responsibility to engage diverse media equitably so that we can communicate with a wide range of constituents,” said Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. “I am pleased that we are raising the bar for the way agencies plan and execute their outreach, public service announcements and paid campaigns. By doing so, we move towards being a more inclusive city at all levels.”

“The de Blasio Administration is committed to speaking the language of multilingual New Yorkers, and as part of this outreach we must also reach them in the media outlets that are an integral part of their day-to-day lives,” said Nisha Agarwal, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. “The Administration has also deepened its commitment to language access to ensure that information is made available to all New Yorkers by hiring an Executive Director at MOIA who works to implement citywide tools, training, and reporting mechanisms. 311 now also accepts complaints from New Yorkers who have experienced language barriers at City Agencies.”

“The Ethnic and Community Media Directory will strengthen the effectiveness of communications efforts throughout the city,” said Mindy Tarlow, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Operations. “Now communications teams have a guide that will further ensure their message is heard across the five boroughs.”

“The responsibility of ensuring that our communities have access to relevant news is shared by press and by government. This Council is interested in engaging community press sources in a real way and this commitment is memorialized in part by today’s announcement. Without a doubt, we need to remain engaged about how we strengthen our relationships with community press and by extension, with the communities that they serve. I am proud to be witness to this important first step,” said Council Member Carlos Menchaca, Chair of the Committee on Immigration.

“The ethnic and community press plays a crucial role in our city’s diverse neighborhoods –  especially to public school families who collectively speak more than 200 languages,” said Maite Junco, NYC Department of Education Senior Advisor for External Communications. “These media outlets spread out across our city are vital vehicles to reach our families and I thank the Administration for providing communication professionals in city government with an online tool to help us reach every New Yorker regardless of their zip code or language they speak.”

Historically, City Agencies’ media outreach has focused primarily on English-language outlets, in spite of the fact that New York City is the ethnic media capital of the country -with hundreds of community and ethnic media outlets speaking dozens of languages. This trend has shifted under the de Blasio Administration, with the development of campaigns to inform all New Yorkers about IDNYC, Paid Sick Leave, and Pre-K For All, among other initiatives. Ethnic and community media were central to the outreach strategy, and the engagement and enrollment results clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of multilingual media outreach.

To ensure that engagement of community and ethnic media becomes standard citywide practice, MOIA has worked with the Mayor’s Office of Operations, the City Hall Press Office, the City Council Speaker’s Office and the CUNY School of Journalism to create an online directory of ethnic and community media. The directory is a database of more than 200 TV, radio, print and digital news outlets covering more than 30 languages. This directory will help City Agency communications staff identify the most effective ways of reaching their intended audiences through media outreach as well as public service announcements and paid media campaigns. For City Agencies, this resource will strengthen the Administration’s communications reach to all corners of the five boroughs. In addition, City Agencies will report on an annual basis their advertising budgets alongside the budget spent on ethnic media outreach. This process will ensure that agencies are accountable and will measure communications efforts against metrics that gauge if outreach is equitable amongst different ethnic/racial and/or limited English proficient (LEP) communities.

“A significant portion of New Yorkers depend on ethnic and community media as a source of news and information. By providing City Agencies with this media resource, the City will better connect with immigrant communities across the five boroughs,” said Jehangir Khattak, Co-Director of the Center for Community and Ethnic Media at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

“Ethnic and community media play a critical role in reaching dozens of immigrant communities. As an organization, we work closely with a broad range of ethnic media, recognizing that they are lifelines for immigrants who learn about programs and policies that impact them in their own languages first,” said Steve Choi, Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition, composed of over 200 community-based and immigrant direct service organizations, representing constituencies across New York State. “The Ethnic and Community Media Directory released by the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and the City Council Speaker will be a vital tool for city government, agencies, and community organizations to strengthen their connections to the reporters and journalists who are at the frontlines of immigrant issues and who will ensure that our communities are fully informed.”

NEW YORK (TIP): Mayor de Blasio on Thursday, August 20, floated the idea of tearing up the popular pedestrian plaza to rid the area of the topless painted ladies and the costumed characters who harass tourists for tips, say media reports.

“You could argue that those plazas have had some very positive impact,” de Blasio said. “You could also argue that they’ve come with a lot of problems. And a lot of the surrounding business community has certainly cited those problems. So we’ll give that a fresh look.”

De Blasio said he’s already discussed the idea with Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, the co-chair of the city’s special task force charged with ousting the jiggly panhandlers from the Crossroads of the World.

“Now that’s a very big endeavor and like every other option comes pros and cons,” the mayor said. “So we’re going to look at what those pros and cons would be.”

Bratton sounded like he was ready to start tearing the plaza up right away.

“My own personal preference, as I’ve looked at all the different options, is to return it to what it once was,” the top cop said. “Part of the attraction for the characters and the topless ladies is that is a very wide plaza where they can congregate. If it was just sidewalks they would not be able to congregate to the degree that they’ve been able to do in that public space.”

The pushback started literally within minutes.

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito immediately turned thumbs down on that scheme.

“The City Council is considering its legislative options, but the Speaker believes in and supports keeping pedestrian plazas,” her spokesman, Eric Koch, said.

Mark-Viverito also suggested City Hall was over-reacting to the painted ladies.

“There are many, many more serious issues facing New York City which deserve our immediate attention and this is not one of them,” her spokeswoman, Robin Levine, said.

City Controller Scott Stringer called the proposal to tear up the pedestrian plaza “a serious overreaction to what is essentially a quality of life enforcement issue.”

And City Councilman Dan Garodnick, who represents Times Square, said “let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.”

“The Times Square plazas have provided a safe haven for pedestrians who previously had to navigate very narrow and overcrowded sidewalks right next to fast traffic,” he said.

NEW YORK CITY (TIP): At a Dec. 11 roundtable with ethnic, community and independent journalists, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced the launch of an initiative to strengthen the Council’s outreach efforts to diverse media across New York City.

“My vision is for a New York City that is more equitable and inclusive -and this includes of all media,” said Mark-Viverito to a meeting attended by more than 60 representatives that covered dozens of ethnic publications, communities of color and a cross-section of neighborhoods. “We also know that editors and reporters like you are leaders in your communities and that you wear several hats – as guides to navigating a broader society, as providers of news and information that is relevant to your communities, and as advocates for their rights.”

As part of this vision, the Speaker has brought on Juana Ponce de León as Director of Media Diversity Relations, a position created specifically to provide ethnic, community and independent media with equal access to information. Ponce de León is the former Founding and Executive Director of the New York Community Media Alliance, a nonprofit organization that worked with and advocated for more than 350 publications in New York City serving the city’s immigrant and communities of color.

At the roundtable, the Speaker heard the concerns of some of the attendees, who expressed interest in more responsiveness from city agencies and fairness in the distribution of ad dollars, among other issues. The Speaker also outlined some of the Council’s achievements during the first year of her leadership, including passage of legislation to create a Municipal ID, funding for legal services for unaccompanied minors, and a stabilization fund for community-based organizations.

This is the first time that such an effort is undertaken by a New York City Council Speaker to promote a culture of media diversity and ensure that the Council’s outreach is inclusive and consistent. The roundtable was convened with the help of the Center for Community and Ethnic Media at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and is the first in a series to be held during the Speaker’s tenure.

NEW YORK CITY (TIP): The New York City Council announced, September 11, formation of the Committee on Courts and Legal Services. Chaired by Council Member Rory Lancman, the Committee on Courts and Legal Services will allow the City Council greater oversight of the New York City’s legal system in its mission to provide due justice and fair representation for all New Yorkers.

“Every New Yorker is entitled to equal justice under the law, and the Committee on Courts and Legal Services and the City Council will work with community partners and city agencies to identify ways to meet that fundamental goal,” said Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. “Under the leadership of Chair Rory Lancman, the Committee will examine the demand for legal services and the resources and support needed for the courts to serve our city with integrity.

Now more than ever, this is an important step forward and I look forward to commencing hearings in the weeks ahead.” “A sound justice system — fair and efficient courts, access to quality legal representation – – is essential to progressive government, and I’m grateful for the Speaker’s confidence in my ability to help move these issues forward,” said Council Member Rory Lancman. “We applaud the New York City Council for its insight in creating the new Committee on Courts and Legal Services which will focus on access to justice issues, expansion of much needed legal services, and the need to provide additional services to communities of color,” said Seymour W. James, Jr., Attorney-in-Chief of The Legal Aid Society.

“The Committee should review the availability of legal services and make recommendations for much needed increases in funding for legal services. We at The Legal Aid Society look forward to working with this new Committee in the future.” “Civil legal services are essential in the fight against poverty and for equal justice for all New Yorkers,” said Raun Rasmussen, Executive Director of Legal Services NYC. “Unfortunately, fewer than one in five lowincome New Yorkers who need legal help can get it due to insufficient funding. We are thrilled that the City Council is taking this important step toward expanding access to justice for all New Yorkers.”

“Every year the New York Legal Assistance Group turns away tens of thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers seeking our services, who are forced to navigate the civil justice system without benefit of counsel,” said Yisroel Schulman, President and Attorney-in-Charge of the New York Legal Assistance Group. “We support the City Council’s efforts to increase access to justice for those least able to fight back – seniors, immigrants, ailing veterans, children, families facing foreclosure, renters facing eviction, low-income consumers, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable populations.” “Civil society depends on well-functioning and properly maintained courts, and on access to quality legal representation for all parties,” said Joseph Carola III, Esq., President of the Queens County Bar Association.

“That’s why the Queens County Bar Association commits so much time and resources to advocating for our justice system and supporting the professional development of our members. I commend Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito for establishing this important committee and Council Member Rory Lancman for his willingness to undertake this important responsibility.” “As a chapter of the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York, the New York Women’s Bar Association and the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York support access to justice for all.

Access to justice addresses the core of WBASNY’s mission purpose: the advancement of the law to assist women and all in society,” said Yacine Barry-Wun, Esq., President of the NYWBA. “Every day, thousands of New Yorkers — many of them self-represented or without adequate legal representation — rely on our courts to render impartial justice on matters large and small,” said Mitchell B. Nisonoff, Co-Chair, Civil Court Practice Section, New York County Lawyers’ Association. “The City Council has an important role to play in ensuring that our justice system is fair and efficient. I strongly commend this increased focus on our courts and the provision of legal services.”