RIP Queens reporter Ruschell Boone

 

NY1

We have some deeply sad and personal news to report.

Ruschell Boone, an Emmy award-winning journalist and our beloved colleague here at NY1, passed away Sunday due to complications related to pancreatic cancer. She was 48. 

For 21 years, Ruschell was a member of our staff, as well as a friend and mentor to many.

Every New Yorker’s story starts somewhere, and Ruschell West’s story began in Kingston, Jamaica, where she spent her early childhood before immigrating to the Bronx with her family when she was 11 years old.

Ruschell’s path led her to Harry S. Truman High School and then to Baruch College in Manhattan. But she found her way into journalism by fate. When she was a senior in college, a classmate missed their radio slot, giving her the opportunity to jump in. This was the beginning of what became her life’s work, telling the stories of New Yorkers.

For someone who lived and breathed the five boroughs, NY1 was a perfect match, and she joined the station in 2002 as our Queens reporter.

She embedded herself in the borough, dedicating herself to issues that directly affected residents. From neighborhood controversies and police misconduct cases, to devastating events like Hurricane Sandy, Ruschell was all over Queens, pounding the pavement and following up, no story too big or too small.

Ruschell had a unique ability to connect with New Yorkers — through the screen and in person — in a way that made her feel like a trusted friend. Highlighting the city’s diverse communities was always a priority.

As a proud member of the Caribbean diaspora, attending the West Indian-American Day parade on Eastern Parkway each year was a highlight for Ruschell - and for the New Yorkers who got to celebrate with her.  

Ruschell was always comfortable in a crowd, whether asking New Yorkers about their thoughts on national politics or as a familiar face at some of the city’s biggest celebrations — the Annual Village Halloween Parade, and in Times Square for the ball drop. 

She took home numerous awards throughout her career, including Best Spot News Reporting from the New York Association of Black Journalists, a New York Press Club Award for Best Feature Reporting, and a New York Emmy Award for a series that was a creative labor of love for her: “New York: Unfiltered.” 

In 2018, she was the only television reporter to speak live with an underdog candidate for Congress who was about to become world-famous. In fact, she delivered the news to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

And at a time when thousands of people took to the streets of a pandemic-ravaged city, Ruschell was front and center, in the crowd and hearing directly from protesters who wanted someone to tell their story. 

Despite her long list of awards and accolades, Ruschell was always most focused on her family, including her mother, her siblings, her husband Todd and her two sons, Carter and Jackson. Todd and Ruschell met at NY1 and married on Sept. 24, 2005.

She also had so much love from her other family: the generations of NY1 colleagues who relied on her for friendship and advice, and some straight talk when it was needed.

After nearly two decades of telling the news from the street, Ruschell moved to the anchor desk in 2021, where she brought New Yorkers the latest each day at noon on News All Day, a show that highlighted her love of community, her passion for breaking news and her understanding of the way New Yorkers live. She also always found time each day for some joy — and for her trusted pair of Nikes worn around the newsroom, and on the anchor set. 

On June 2, 2022, Ruschell celebrated 20 years at NY1, surrounded by colleagues. Shortly after, she learned she had pancreatic cancer and began a grueling fight. 

Throughout a difficult process, Ruschell was open about her journey, sharing regular updates on social media. She made it back to the anchor desk and was joined by the mayor on her first day back. 

She was devoted to raising awareness about cancer and other health issues. And while she was facing a constant fight of her own, Ruschell felt it was important to extend a hand and help others in their time of need. 

Wherever Ruschell was, she always made time to laugh, to dance, and to celebrate life.

A mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a journalist, a Jamaican-American, a true New Yorker, Ruschell leaves behind a rich and loving legacy for her family, her friends and her city.

Ruschell covered and helped platform this blog 16 years ago. Wish we could have more of her out there giving voices to independent reporters and concerned citizens in the World's Borough. Rest In Power Mrs. Boone.

Here's a blast from the past. 

Setting the record straight

It was brought to my attention that Ruschell Boone from NY1 filed a story on Friday, December 3rd about a tree stump and a broken sidewalk alongside the Van Wyck Expressway service road in Jamaica.

Greg Mocker from WPIX reported on the same stump/sidewalk issue on Monday, December 6th, the same day I posted Ruschell's story here on the blog. Mocker said in his followup report after the stump was removed that the City was watching. Well, they are, but it's not him they're watching. Got this official statement from Parks:

"We saw the story on NY1. We haven't watched WPIX since Kaity and Jim got the boot."

And there you have it. On the trail of a reporter trying to take credit for someone else's work, I'm the Queens Crapper.

Mayor Adams tells reporters to manufacture consent for him

 

Impunity City 

 Oh, boy, looks like Mayor Eric Adams has let the job get to him or he’s in over his head, even with that massive ego he’s been carrying since primary election day last summer. That same ego is also getting bruised by New York City’s legacy media press, which at one point the nearly two month Hizzoner welcomed with open arms and treated with reverence that was entirely absent for 8 years when Bill de Blasio was stifling them and then suppressing them in the last 2 years of this pandemic. But 45 days later, which has seen a massive rise in all index crimes and his failed attempt to persuade Albany’s obstinate and arrogant legislative leaders to reform the bail reform laws that have exacerbated those crimes, Mayor Adams has decided to scapegoat journalists for his disappointing return to the city for the way they wrote about it and told them he wasn’t going to answer their questions anymore unless it’s about the issue or the theme of whatever he’s publicly speaking about in future "media availabilitys"

Student reporters get sex predator teacher removed from school that the city kept on

 

NY Post

 Pupil Power!

Thanks to intrepid student journalists, an English teacher and coach at prestigious Townsend Harris HS in Queens was yanked from the school this week after it came to light that city investigators confirmed he had sex with a former female student.

Joseph Canzoneri, 53, allegedly brought the girl to an apartment where he plied her with wine and marijuana before they had intercourse and oral sex, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools found.

The SCI recommended Canzoneri be fired, and the Department of Education tried to do so. But the girl refused to testify at a hearing, so the case was dropped and he was entitled to keep his job under New York tenure protections.

After more than a year in a rubber room, a space where accused teachers await the disciplinary process, he quietly returned to Townsend Harris at the start of the school year in September. The principal kept him out of classrooms in an office.

The scandal remained under wraps until three weeks ago, when someone leaked the case to teen journalists at the school’s student newspaper, The Classic.

Known for aggressive reporting, the paper has run a series of articles in the last year on six former students who claimed sexual contact with three Townsend Harris teachers — cases all kept secret at the time. The unnamed teachers no longer work at the school.  The editors have called for greater openness and training on educator sexual misconduct.

In light of this campaign, an anonymous “concerned parent” sent The Classic the bombshell SCI report on Canzoneri. The precocious journos spotted him in the building and on Wednesday filed a Freedom of Information Law request with SCI to authenticate the document. 

Suddenly the DOE took action. The same week — the agency would not say which day — officials shunted Canzoneri from Townsend Harris into a “central office” somewhere outside of the building. After making $135,000 last year, he remains on the payroll.

“It is past time for greater transparency about what has gone on at Townsend Harris and for the DOE and school administration to engage students and families in an open, honest conversation about the horrific allegations we have reported on,” editors-in-chief Ryan Eng, Julia Maciejak, and Jasmine Palma told The Post.

This school should send these kids to City Hall and trail the Blaz for the next month. 

Middle Village event space fight and drive-by shooting revisited

 

 

 Impunity City

A pleasant weekend evening in the borough of Queens devolved into another incident of the gun violence that is still persistently casting it’s shadow on the streets of New York City. This time the violence came to Middle Village, where a shuttered commercial property that once was home to a hardware store that went out of business 2 years ago.

 In recent days, or maybe longer according to area residents complaints, the vacant property has been re-appropriated as a pop-up event space for DJ and bottle parties where high end booze is consumed in mass quantities. Basically these are glorified but unregulated nite clubs, no different than the speakeasies of the last 20’s this nation went through last century. From the looks of this place, the entrance to the event space was in the back.

 The local area newspaper Juniper Park Civic immediately had the scoop, naturally because it’s base is right there where the incidents occurred. The Civic also updated their tweets to include a DOB record of a violation given for a complaint over a month earlier for illegal partying in the former hardware store.

Given that this was another incident adding to the city’s continuing gun crisis and increasing rise in unabated shootings in the face of the equal rise in gun possession arrests, compounded by the fact that a building landlord would flout regulations and violations by continuing to permit illicit parties in his space, it would be wholly inconceivable if this wasn’t picked up by all the major local newspapers and news websites and even the other Queens weekly periodical newspapers.

But it was conceivable. Because despite the severity of the crimes committed and of gun violence being a daily occurrence in the five boroughs, the NY Post didn’t cover it, the NY Daily News didn’t cover it, Gothamist didn’t cover it, QNS, Queens Chronicle, Queens Post and Ridgewood Post didn’t cover it. Hardly any local Queens blog covered it (sans Queens Crap, which my ally and original Queens Crapper dutifully posted Junipers tweet immediately with a deliciously sardonic headline). 

 

New Bad Update:

A few nights after the Queens Chronicle article about the community's complaints about the closed business cum pop up nite club, another illicit party went on with total impunity.

 

 

 

 

 

Schneps Media buys AM New York and merges it with Metro NY in their continuing consolidation and parodying of local news media

NY Post

Fifteen-year-old Metro New York, one of the city’s two freebie daily papers, will disappear following the sale of assets to Schneps Media, which already owns the other freebie paper amNew York.
A merged paper will be reflagged as amNewYork Metro starting Jan. 6.
“We’ve purchased the assets of Metro New York and Metro Philadelphia,” said Schneps Media president Joshua Schneps, confirming a story that The Post reported on Dec. 30. Metro Philadelphia will continue to be published under its current name.
The staffs of both papers were laid off by former owner Metro US on Friday, but Schneps said some of the employees will be offered jobs at Schneps.
“We have job offers out to about 20 people,” he said. Group publisher Ed Abrams and Philadelphia publisher Susan Peiffer are expected to keep their jobs under the new owners.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

Now that Brooklyn Paper owner Schneps Media, recent buyer of amNewYork (now downsized), has bought (and apparently closed) the other free daily, Metro, it's worth a look at the recent podcast interview, Schneps Media Publisher on Dominating Media Online and Offline.


At 8:19 of the interview, Walker asks, "What do you look for in terms of like a quality of a writer or a story?"

Schneps responds:

The first thing is we always look for people who get it about community news. So we have editors. For every single one of our papers has their own editor, so that they are the voice of the community. We don’t homogenize news and we use our team of reporters to cover each part. Let’s say in Queens, we’ll have the editor-in-chief, but then we’ll have reporters covering the northwest, the northeast, the western, the southern parts, so that we are able to get the stories and make sure we have reporters who get it about the importance of the community, the business community, because I believe that without a strong business community like we have on Bayside on Bell Boulevard. 

When you don’t have any empty stores, that means that’s a good neighborhood, because that neighborhood is supporting the businesses. So I’m a big believer in supporting local businesses and then being able to know that we have them understand that you’ve gotta go to the community board meetings, and it’s not what’s on the agenda, it’s the people in the audience. 

So we really train our reporters to be as grassroots as we are, in terms of reaching out and getting stories, being exclusive with the story, being able to develop relationships with some of the political leaders that need to have their story told. 

We’re not a political newspaper, but we get it that we have to cover the politics of our borough. We just went through a crisis with Amazon in Queens, and the disaster of a few people who were very negative and left-wing about giving Amazon incentives, and that was a big story for us because it was local but yet it was also international and national.

 Wait a second.

While it is true that most of the Amazon incentives were off-the-shelf, there were significant questions as to whether they were justified. Moreover, there was a discretionary grant of half a billion dollars from the state, plus a seemingly generous land deal. (Plus, as we just learned from the Wall Street Journal, an initial offer that was more generous.)

That's supposed to generate journalism. Schneps is more likely to gush about Hudson Yards (in what seems to be a freebie hotel visit).


Gushing is understating it, from her cheesy titled weekly op-ed "Victoria's secrets"

Friendships take me on many paths and this weekend I discovered a new world in our great city: The Hudson Yards created over the ugly train rail on the West Side of Manhattan.
The train tracks are there, but some creative genius engineers figured out how to put a “roof” over them and build stunning soaring buildings on the new surface.

My friend Lydia Sarfati was honored two weeks ago at the Polish American Women’s Conference in Manhattan. At the VIP party, I had the good fortune to meet Emily Kopelman, the impressive manager of the Equinox Hotel. I had heard positive things about the cutting edge hotel that opened in Hudson Yards a few months ago.
She and I immediately bonded and she invited me to stay at the hotel. I accepted and last Saturday it was my treat to spend the night there.
As I drove up the West Side highway and took a left turn onto the “campus” of the Hudson Yards, I saw the glistening Vessel, the extraordinary centerpiece of the Yards surrounded by a Neiman Marcus mall, which connects to The Shed, a cultural center, and my destination, the Equinox Hotel.
I felt lost in the remarkable setting and called Emily, who told me to look for her doorman wearing a white shirt. With her guidance I found the hotel across from the shopping mall.
The doorman showed me to the elevator, which I took to the 24th floor to check in. From there, we were taken to our corner room on the 30th floor with incredible views of the Hudson River and Midtown.
The Equinox brand is 25 years old and this is their first hotel. I love how their theme of “high-performance living” has translated into an unusual 5-Star luxury hotel experience.
I was amazed when the bellman showed me the TV sleep system programming, which included relaxation, stretching, and yoga videos.
I knew I was in a special place for a serene night of sleep when I saw the puffy down comforters and specially designed push-button blackout shades from an iPad with temperature and light control.
I took a tour of the Equinox’s 60,000 square-foot gym, as well as their rejuvenating spa, which added to their “temple of well being” feeling I had at the hotel.

A glimpse of the 60,000 square-foot gym inside the hotel.

Brunch was on the 24th floor overlooking the Hudson at Electric Lemon, offering the fluffiest, tastiest egg-white omelette I ever ate. There’s something enervating about sitting on top of the world and the sun shining light onto our comfortable plush sofa seating.

Gothamist actually did a shockingly good report on this:

The addition of the amNewYork brand, a respected citywide outlet, would seem to bolster Schneps’ claim to being the most far-reaching media company in the New York market—and one of the few publishers to find a path for growth in an era of crisis for local news.

Appearing on NY1 earlier this week, Josh Schneps attributed their success to maintaining a “deep investment in the local community.” The company was started by his mother in her Bayside living room in 1985, and has remained rooted in the neighborhoods of northeast Queens through its flagship, Queens Courier.

But as the publisher continues to seize wide swaths of the city’s battered local news landscape, those who’ve found themselves under the stewardship of the Schneps family are raising concerns. 

According to current and former reporters and editors who spoke to Gothamist, the Schneps playbook involves cozying up to advertisers and local powerbrokers, while muzzling critical coverage of friends and public officials close to the owners. Employees who didn't embrace that approach say they were soon made to feel unwelcome by the new management.

“It very quickly became clear that they’re less of a news company than a promotions company,” said Vince DiMiceli, the former editor-in-chief of Brooklyn Paper, who was let go two months after Schneps’ acquired Community News Group last September. “They wanted to make sure that anything we wrote about any politician was glowing. That's not what newspapers do.”

Reporters at multiple Schneps-owned properties said that the family was particularly fixated on pleasing local judges, since they dictate placement of the mandatory legal notices that remain a major source of revenue for community newspapers. Within months of Schneps takeover, fawning profiles of controversial justices like Noach Dear—who once organized a government trip funded by a whites-only Johannesburg city council, and was later the subject of a federal complaint for campaign finance violations—began appearing in the Brooklyn Paper, with no mention of past scandals.

Reporters also said they were suddenly assigned to cover low-stakes political events—like Brooklyn political boss Frank Seddio's anniversary party—with explicit direction to highlight as many judges as possible. The company’s 76-year-old founder would call the newsroom “several times a day” if a print spread did not feature enough flattering photos of public officials, according to one ex-employee.

“All of a sudden that’s what my editors were doing instead of editing my copy,” that person recalled. (Most of the half dozen editorial employees who spoke to Gothamist requested anonymity, out of fear of angering powerful employers in New York City media or because they’re not authorized to speak about company operations.)
 
Expect more of this hard-hitting intrepid journalism with our "free" dailies and weeklies.

Politco journalist gives props to this blog on social media

Thanks a million, Laura. You rock. 

Journalist banned from reporting on community meeting about Kew Gardens jail.

Kew Gardens Patch

 Reporters were banned from a heated meeting in Queens about a much-contested plan to build a new jail in Kew Gardens.


Dozens of Queens residents argued Thursday night with Mayor's Office representatives for more than two hours over the proposed jail, which is one of five possibilities to replace the detention center on Rikers Island, attendees later told Patch.

"They don't seem to get the message," Queens resident Sylvia Hack said. "This is the wrong project for the wrong community."

Patch planned to be one of those attendees, but a spokesperson from the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice refused to allow our reporter entry, saying it was closed to press. Patch reached out to that spokesperson on Monday for comment.

"They aren't public meetings," Eric Phillips, a spokesperson for the mayor, wrote on Twitter. "The general public isn't invited en masse




Several Queens locals expressed their anger that a journalist had been barred from reporting on the plans, which they argue would only worsen mounting congestion near the Queens Criminal Court, Queens Boulevard, the Van Wyck Expressway, Grand Central Parkway and Union Turnpike.

"How did they throw you out? It's a public space," Hack said. "They can't decide any such thing. It's our community center. They had no right to throw you out."

"Something of this scope needs to be a transparent process," added Andrea Crawford, a Kew Gardens resident and member of the jail project's neighborhood advisory committee.
Crawford argued Thursday's meeting, should have been open to the press because local community associations, such as the Community Preservation Committee, had invited others who don't sit on the advisory board.

"It's a demonstration of their trying to prevent light being shed on this very poorly constructed farce that they're engaging the neighborhood," Crawford added.

 "A meeting to gather 'input from Queens residents' certainly should be open to the local press," said Patch editor-in-chief Dennis Robaugh. "The only reason to exclude the press is to limit public debate and discussion on an important neighborhood and city issue."

This is basically government repression against the press (Well, the press they don't want or desire, because some reporters were allowed to come in). Also according to the mayor's spokesperson in a pathetic play on semantics, an attempt to repress the general public despite it's claim on the flyer above feigning to desire input from the community about the tower jail.

Then there is this that Maya Kaufman, the Patch reporter that was bounced out of this public meeting, told me about the "neighborhood" advisory committees that were assembled by the city for this and the three other tower jails planned for the other boroughs using the ruse about community participation and transparency:

"Theoretically the NAC meetings are just open to the chosen group, but in Queens we’re seeing community members try to open up the meetings to the community at large by sharing notices on social media. So, this specific meeting had many not on the NAC."

City Limits (from January 2018)


The city is pursuing a unique path to getting approval for the four new jails that will take over housing detainees and inmates when Rikers Island closes: There is one environmental review, and one Uniform Land-Use Review Procedure, for the four very disparate sites.
That could mean that the voices of each individual neighborhood are less audible than they would be if the city proceeded jail by jail. However, the city has created four Neighborhood Advisory Councils to create a forum for getting community input into the plans for each facility.

 City records are not crystal clear on whether people attending these meetings are NAC members or non-members there to observer or speaker.

These are the individuals selected to advise (or advocate) for the Kew Gardens tower jail:

Jane Stanicki	Hour Children	Queens
Mary Abbate	Queens Community House	Queens
Murray Berger	Kew Gardens Civic Association	Queens
Robin Spigner	District Leader	Queens
Rosemary Zins	Queensborough Community College	Queens
Seth Willens	Community Board #9 (sitting in for Andrea Crawford)	Queens
Sister Tesa	Fitzgerald Hour Children	Queens
Steve Bell	Kew Gardens Civic Association	Queens
Sylvia Hack	Community Board #9	Queens

You think after the Amazon HQ2 debacle, Mayor de Blasio would have learned a lesson about keeping citizens in the dark about their policies and plans for neighborhoods. But as with the bike lanes and homeless shelters that have been induced on eastern Queens, this has been standard operating procedure.

Lancman wants taxpayer-supported journalism

Op=ed by Rory Lancman from the Daily News:

Obviously, the private marketplace hasn’t figured out a way to do local journalism and make money at the same time. Since the rise of the internet, it’s a devilishly difficult code to crack.

Which is why, as taxpayers and citizens, we owe it to ourselves to step in and fund organizations capable of providing this vital civic resource: call it a tote bag in every pot.

Government support for quality journalism is not a new or radical idea. Its role in distributing the mail, providing health care, and offering free book-lending and museums is taken for granted.

We badly need more good local journalism. If the market can’t provide it, taxpayers must step up.

Considering that the local papers are still around and are printing holiday ads and press releases by pols verbatim, it appears we already have taxpayer-funded journalism.

How brainwashed is the Queens press?

So remember a couple of years ago when reporters announced with glee that crime decreased after the Pan Am opened, relying on bogus stats from the NYPD and the DHS to make it look like there was hysteria over nothing?

Then came the problems that couldn't be hidden. One by one the reports piled up.

DHS' response? That a racial incident was perpetrated against an unnamed Pan Am shelter kid by unnamed assailants of a local school. No arrests were ever made, and the NYPD and DOE were never notified of the incident, yet it was reported as fact, because local journalists don't think DHS has a reason to lie.

Now the shit is really hitting the fan, as real journalists, like citywide reporters Courtney Gross of NY1 (5-part series) and Greg Smith of the Daily News (5-part series), absolutely rip the de Blasio administration apart over their mishandling of shelter problem.

When a community reports major problems with a shelter, maybe it's best that the local reporters take them seriously.

Please do your jobs and stop being shills for the mayor.

Someone understands the role of the press!

Dear Mr. Larry Mendte,

Would you please do a seminar for publishers of Queens weekly papers? They need to understand what their purpose is. You seem to get it. They don't. As evidenced by this....