Posted on 12/27/2009 1:06:38 PM PST by Impala64ssa
You could take the borscht out of the Catskills, but you'll never get "the borscht belt" out of a lead of a New York Times story about the Catskills.
Mark my words. After you read theirs.
No matter what the story is about, where it gets placed in the paper or when it gets published, the Old Gray Lady will forever bleed beet red when telling a tale about Sullivan County. They can't help it.
Such was the case last week, when the metro desk of the newspaper decided to remind its baby boomer readers that the one-time vacation destination of their youth was in an economic tailspin.
A statement of fact to be sure, but one the Times felt it didn't need to substantiate with facts on Sullivan's rising unemployment, stalled housing starts, declining sales tax and increased number of residents on public assistance.
Nope, instead they told us how the Catskills are a far cry from their tourism heyday.
Really?
This must be what they call investigative journalism.
The story came with the appropriate Times headline: "Few Laughs Left in a Catskill Town Struggling to Revive."
Notice the subtle "laughs" line in describing the once entertainment hotbed. Cute.
Now, we are talking the venerable New York Times, so it's not surprising for them to be serving up more than just cheesy headlines to their readers.
The story also provided a nonstop smorgasbord of stale, cliche remarks about the area.
After leading with the two words that are mandatory for all Times stories about the Catskills — "borscht belt" — this piece, supposedly on how the strain of the recession was taking a toll on Sullivan in 2009, was noted with a 22-year-old reference to "Dirty Dancing" (didn't see that one coming) and a quote from Max Kellerman, the fictional movie character who owned the fictional Catskill resort, Kellerman's, where those dirty dancing moves were to have taken place.
Since they were determined to go in this direction, I wonder if the Times reporter ever thought to talk to a real Catskill hotel owner?
What followed the "Dirty Dancing" line were even more reminders by the Times of how much Sullivan has changed since the early 1900s. Back then, the newspaper reports, farms gave way to boarding houses, eventually evolving into such famed resorts as Grossinger's and the Concord, where stars like Woody Allen, Don Rickles and Mel Brooks honed their craft as the "upper-middle-class Jewish New Yorkers" escaped the heat of the city to "mambo in the mountain air."
Does the paper bring up Andrew Carnegie and U.S. Steel every time it writes about job losses in Pittsburgh or Henry Ford and the Edsel when telling of the economic struggles in Detroit?
I love talking Catskills history and sharing stories of the old hotels as much as the next guy. But what do boarding houses and Don Rickles have to do with Sullivan's current unemployment rate of 9 percent?
Or the fact that 40 percent of the folks working here have a household income of $35,000 or less? And taxes are going up almost 6 percent, jobs are getting cut and the county could soon find itself tens of millions of dollars in debt because for years lawmakers ignored the need to replace an aging jail and deal with an increasingly full landfill.
I'll let you in on a secret.
This Times reporter called me about two weeks ago and left a message, asking if I'd help her on a story she was doing about Sullivan's economy.
I didn't get back to her, but I figured she'd be able to contact the county's various economic groups on her own. You know, Sullivan's Chamber of Commerce, the Industrial Development Agency, the Visitor's Association, the Partnership for Economic Development, county, town or village officials. As a start.
To gather some facts.
Instead, the reporter made up her own.
Like the "fact" that the Record had closed its Sullivan County bureau in Monticello. Not true.
Or the "fact" that "developer Louis Cappelli has tried to revitalize the area's three biggest lures of old — Kutsher's, Grossinger's and the Concord — with varying degrees of success."
Guess the reporter missed the story that ran the week before in the Times Herald-Record, that Cappelli owes some 19 contractors more than $18 million for his "Entertainment City" project. And that ever since Cappelli bought Grossinger's and the Concord more than a decade ago, he has promised Sullivan residents everything and has delivered nothing.
As the county concludes its bicentennial and begins a new decade with an admittedly slow economic turnaround ahead, folks here should keep an eye on the future. And let the world's paper of record live in our borscht belt past.
I delivered the Times Herald Record when it first started in Middletown.
The Concord has been demolished, IIRC.
Just 3 Mi.
to the
Red Apple Rest!
Yes the Concord was knocked down about 2yrs. ago. In fact a week or so ago before they began demolition, Sen. Schmucky Schumer in his never ending quest to be in front of every news camera, held a press conference while hovering around the Concord in a helicopter promising bigger and better things for the region. Well, unless there’s invisible bulldozers breaking ground, the Concord site is still a huge empty lot.
Sadly, the Red Apple Rest closed down several yrs. ago. The building still stands, and it’s uncertain what will become of it while it continues to deteriorate.
Excellent indie rock fests at Kutshers every September.
http://www.atpfestival.com/events/atpnewyork2009.php
Can you imagine this question being asked today?
Let’s name the ‘reporter’...
2007 - Jennifer Mascia is a news assistant at The New York Times and attends the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.
Her father was a racketeer, cocaine addict, drug dealer & murderer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/nyregion/19metjournal.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/fashion/01love.html
Jennifermascia
at cosmetics convention at Javits Center. Teeth so white they glow in the dark. :)
1:25 PM Sep 16th from mobile web
managed to sidestep the entire Balloon Boy drama. It IS possible to avoid 24-hour news!
11:34 AM Oct 18th from web
ate Little Caesar’s crazy bread for the first time since I moved here from California. The Bronx is awesome.
9:54 AM Oct 21st from web
Happy birthday, Angela!/Ted Kennedy R.I.P. As someone born on Nov. 22, I understand what it’s like to be inextricably linked w/the Kennedys.
10:43 PM Aug 25th from web
Cash for Clunkers goes bye-bye. Even successful government programs get canned.
2:05 PM Aug 20th from web
just saw Marc Jacobs on 40th and 6th. Damn, that is one manicured specimen.
1:52 PM Aug 13th from web
is feeling for Claire McCaskill right now...
11:41 AM Aug 11th from web
just watched Al Franken announce the confirmation of the first Latina justice to the Supreme Court. Surreal.
12:16 PM Aug 6th from web
I am trying to remember where I read an article, or where I heard an interesting discussion that there simply is NO money for ANY investigative journalism, that almost all of what we identify as investigative journalism is done by hobbyist bloggers, not newspapers or newsmagazines who cannot afford it.
Got a criminal in the family? Write about it, become a NYT’s feature and get a book deal.
******
Newsroom Assistant Lands Sunday Feature, Book Deal
By Ron Hogan on Aug 28, 2007 12:43 PM
Earlier this year, NY Times news assistant Jennifer Mascia was browsing through the online archives of the paper’s “Modern Love” column when she realized she had her own story to tell. “It just poured out of me,” she says of the article detailing the truth behind her father’s criminal record, including secrets that were only revealed on her mother’s deathbed. Shortly afterwards, as literary agents and movie producers began asking if she wanted to do more with the story, a colleague at the Times referred her to Alice Martell, who was immediately excited by the prospect of expanding the article into a book. (”But the most surprising reaction to the story came from inside the Times newsroom,” Mascia said. “Suddenly, everybody knew who I was, even the masthead names.”)
Hey, follow the money, right?
Mid-Hudson Valley, as in West Point Hudson?
“2007 - Jennifer Mascia is a news assistant at The New York Times and attends the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.”
Is this an unpaid internship?
You get what you pay for....
I’m thinking it was probably a panel discussion, but I just can’t recall who was on the panel, now which channel it was broadcast on.
Unemployment is a huge problem in the Catskills.
There used to be huge resorts and factories in Sullivan and Ulster - now the prisons are the biggest employers.
Reading this article got me started...went looking for old pics of the Catskills. Here’s a site with a lot of interesting ones taken at abandoned resorts- including the Concord.
http://www.uer.ca/~bratchny/catskills/
That’s almost amazing - the THR taking the Times to task. Between the two of them, they could teach a graduate degree in bad journalism.
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