New York Times compares area to Brooklyn, Part ILostCount

Remember that time(s) when the New York Times compared some area in the Hudson Valley or The Catskills or anywhere else anywhere to Brooklyn even though c'mon srsly again? It got so bad the Gray Lady's standards editor told his peeps to cut it out.


But that was waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in November of 2014, so long ago it's already been forgotten obvs idk lol?




So in the latest installment of "OMG THIS PLACE IS LIKE BROOKLYN YOU GUYS!" the venerable publication compared the town of Phoenicia to Williamsburg North, which prompted this most hipster reply from the Watershed Post good jorb. At least the interactive feature was very nice.




But let's not be unfair to the Times. This is standard modus operandi for a bunch of publications— online and in print— travel sites, Escape Brooklyn, shameless marketing listicles that I refuse to link to because they're terrible, Sari stahp, Hudson Valley Mag you too don't think I didn't notice.

I did a huge list of this four years ago and I'm still updating the abomination. It's as terrible as hipsters.

Or hipster quizzes. But seriously, "when I grow I I want to write about hipsters" is not what I was thinking when I went into journalism.




So when The New York Times asks, "what did we missed in the Catskills?" I. CAN'T. EVEN.




At least the Times is not this guy. Or this guy.




One artisanal cat: Felix Salmon is not a cat or a fish but a noted financial journalist I noticed he noticed that in Ulster County, pedestrians get tickets when they're hit by cars. Take that, Brooklyn.




One reclaimed Google Glass photo:



Yesterday's Internet, Today! is a random experiment in which I throw in a bunch of links I tweeted, faved or saw the day before or in the morning or the weekend in the case of this post because you don't seriously expect me to write every single day, do you? Today, the newsletter welcomes one new subscriber so you get one Internet. Don't spend it all in one place.

Ulster County Charter conference liveblog

Anne Pyburn of the Watershed Post is set to liveblog a conference at SUNY New Paltz  from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. about the Ulster County Charter after five years. I've kindly stolen the liveblog code after I found it hanging out naked on the Watershed Post site. After alerting the alert editors, they gave me the OK to include their coverage.

Panelists include County Executive Mike Hein, Comptroller Elliott Auerbach, former Freeman political editor Hugh Reynolds (! and ?), former charter commission head Gerald Benjamin and a hosts of other notables.
 

Disaster relief links

It's not over until it's over.

After the Deluge benefit set for Sept. 28 in Kingston

From our friends at the Kingston Digital Corridor.

"So normally, our monthly get-together is a friendly networking and catch-up event.

"Not this time. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that our region has been devastated by Hurricane Irene – followed by days and days of torrential rain. People have lost their homes, their stores… towns have lost roads, and whole downtowns. Farms have been lost. People are desperately in need of help. 

"On September 28th, KDC and the Ulster County Musicians Network will be doing something to help out. After the Deluge is a night of music in support of these folks. Thanks to our friends at the Watershed Post, we’ve found verified flood relief organizations in Ulster, Schoharie, Greene, and Delaware counties – the whole Catskills region.

All proceeds from this event will go to them. We’re asking you to pay what you can, but $15 bucks or more at the door, and the first beer is on us. We’re not maintaining a list of artists here, as it’s growing faster than we can keep up. But regardless of who ends up playing, it’s going to be a great night of music, and it’s for the worthiest of causes.

So please come out and show your support for your fellow Upstaters.

After the Deluge takes place Sept. 28 from 5:30 to 10 p.m. at Keegan Ales, 20 St. James Street Kingston.

Irene live blog non-stop since Aug. 27

Our friends at the Watershed Post are STILL compiling and collaborating to bring you post-Irene reports from across the area, especially the Catskills, and they've gotten some very nice deserved press for their efforts ("hyperlocal" - hahaha!) and have kept the post-Irene issue alive and will do so until this is over.

Anyway, Julia Reischel and Lissa Harris have been sharing reports from government organizations, media (including yours truly since Saturday, helping with info, tech and stuff) but, most importantly your posts.

I'm posting this again because it was buried with all the other Irene-related posts below.

Watershed Post talks Irene, interviews Cuomo

Our collaborative friends at the Watershed Post have their own half hour radio show and today they talked (for an hour, guys!) about Irene and somehow managed to get Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a guest.

Oscar tweethathon at 8 p.m. Sunday

Join us on Sunday at 8 p.m. for a smorgasbord of Oscar-related tweets featuring live insights from interviewer of the stars and author Martha Frankel (who also is participating at "A Night at the Awards" at the Emerson Resort); New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly; Timmian Massie, Chief Public Affairs Officer and Adjunct Professor of Communication and Religious Studies at Marist College; social media expert Allison Gray Teetsel; our friends at the Watershed Post; Rhinebeck writer Kitty Sheehan; TechCity's Paul Rakov; and yours truly.

If you want your insights to appear, just post a comment below or tweet using the hashtag #dfoscars.

UPDATE! I've added Monique Paturel, and New Haven Register entertainment editor Jordan Fenster and television editor and columnist Joe Amarante.

I'm also adding #nhoscars. We're going to make this a multi-state event!

UPDATE 2: Playwright David J. Loehr will join from Kentucky and our entertainment friends at the New Haven Register in Connecticut. I'm also adding a Tweetizen feed for ease of access.

The production god is dead. Long live the Internet

As you know, it's been a hard but transformative week for the Freeman, having moved print production to Troy. Yes, our mailroom and press employees were let go as a result. I've know many of them for many years and it has been difficult to see them go.

But along with that difficult move comes a ray of inspiration. Our future is looking bright and I'm glad I get to be a part of it.

If you need a refresher, here's Publisher's Ira Fusfeld addressing our future and an illuminating interview by the Watershed Post with Managing Editor Tony Adamis, which addresses "how to make the transition from being a newspaper – which is a good thing to be -- to being a multimedia journalism company."

I'll let Journal Register Company CEO John Patton explain why we are doing what we are doing.

That Hinchey episode, explained

Daily Freeman Managing Editor Tony Adamis spoke to Julia Reischel of Watershed Post on Tuesday about the whole Hinchey-reporter incident:

Watershed Post: It's good to see the Freeman weigh in on this, now that this video has gone national.

Tony Adamis: We took a lot of flack for the length of time that it took us to respond, but we were just trying to be responsible about it. We took a kind of third-party approach to it. Even though I trust my correspondent, he and I both agreed that if any story was going to be run, it would be done by some other reporter approaching it as any reporter would. Plus, I took the time to do my own investigation.

It's a great and serious piece (unlike, say, the musings of this horrible person), and explains a lot of things. If you would like to take an inside peek at our newsroom, I recommend you give it a read.

Among the findings:

* Correspondent William Kemble was not taken off the Partition Street story, as many had thought:

Ariel (Zangla) had been working on that story for months. And William was working, for a shorter period of time, on the story on the earmarks issue. And after the earmarks story, the Hinchey camp complained about the characterization in that story having to do with the Partition Street Project, which led us to delay Ariel's story about Partition Street while we tried to do our best due diligence of looking at the complaint. The result was the second Kemble story. That wasn't even a planned story. It was really just a result of the complaint from the Hinchey camp. It's not true that [Kemble] had been taken off the story.

* Veteran Freeman reporter Paul Kirby once had the mayor of Kingston throw his own tape recorder at him. (That would be the late T.R. Gallo, not James Sottile - he throws drinks).
* The Freeman has been described as a right-wing paper.
* The Freeman has endorsed U.S. Rep. Hinchey over and over and over and over.

In conclusion, the Freeman is bipolar.

And everyone, it seems, remembers the incident differently. Hugh Reynolds of the Kingston Times even described that after the incident, Hinchey, "looked directly at the reporter, about 20 feet away, put his right hand around his throat and pointed at him with his left index finger."

Ouch.

Also, I wasn't there, but I remember it like this:




I know. I'm a horrible person.

UPDATE: Maurice Hinchey fans are hyperventilating because his lead is slipping, according to the Wall Street Journal. He's only up by a whooping 19 percentage points, according to internal polling, the Journal reports.

In other words, if true, he's set to crush George Phillips.

PANIC!

UPDATE 2: A korrecshun, Hinchey is up by 17 points in that Dem poll. 

Hinchey Poll Memo

UPDATE 3: It should be mentioned that Republican polling has them tied. 
The New York Times' FiveThirtyEight summarizes it neatly.

Of Ribs and Men (and Women)

Lissa Harris, our friendly neighbor at the Watershed Post website, decided to tackle the most important issue of the day today with a massive takedown of our Hudson Valley Rib Fest story, written by Paula Ann Mitchell.

The tongue-in-cheek post about the tongue-in-cheek article raises some important questions:

* What is the Watershed Post?
* What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
* Would Harris like to get into a rib-eating contest with snarky Life Editor?
* Would Harris pay for the ribs in such a contest? (I'm kind of broke)
* Do you have a quarter I can borrow?
* Most importantly, how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

We may never know.

But, alas, point well taken.
So as penance, I'm putting Paula in a diet of ribs injected with cheese, barbecue sauce and granola. No pudding.

Also, thanks for reading.