WPCNR WHITE PLAINS VARIETY. By John F. Bailey. January 30, 2003:Hezi Aris and John Bailey, Editors of YonkersTribune.com and White Plains CitizeNetReporter, WPCNR.com, announced Wednesday during an interview with Paul Feiner, Greenburgh Town Supervisor, on Mr. Feiner’s WVOX Paul Feiner Problem Solver radio program that they were in the process of organizing a print version of their websites to be distributed in the major cities in Westchester County.
THE ALL-NIGHT NEWS BOYS IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY, being interviewed by Paul Feiner, Greenburgh Supervisor. Mr. Feiner, left, is shown grilling John Bailey, (Center) The White Plains CitizeNetReporer, and Hezi Aris, Editor of Yonkers Tribune in the WVOX Studios Thursday, on Mr. Feiner’s program,Paul Feiner, Problem Solver which airs Thursdays on WVOX 1460 at 10 A.M.
Photo by Howard Sturman for WPCNR News
The reporters that “Insider Westchester” reads, said they were looking for writers passionate about the news in the communities of New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, Greenburgh, and other points around the County compass to contribute to their sites on a paid stringer basis or edit news of their towns for the YonkersTribune.com and WPCNR.com sites.
The two also pointed out their sites are moving rapidly up the International Internet Charts in readership, building loyal readers who come back twice a day.
Mr. Feiner said he wanted to bring the two onto his program because “I feel I have to log on to their websites at least two or three times a day, and finds their sites very informative and interesting…You sort of have a nice compilation of everything that’s going on.”
Who are these guys anyway?Aris said he used to run a travel agency, and when he sold that he started doing some newspaper work and got the idea for The Yonkers Tribune, starting it about the same time Bailey started his site.
Bailey recalled he had been a reporter for
The Long Islander in Huntington, N.Y. when he first began his career, moved into advertising for 25 years, then, being semi-retired, he helped out being a volunteer parent advisor to
The Church Street Challenger newspaper, his daughter’s elementary school newspaper. He said, “It sort of got into my blood again.” He saw the potential of the internet as a news voice from a specific news sequence: “One day when the Seattle Trade Fair was not being covered by the major press, The internet broke some stories about the riots out in Seattle outside the trade organization, and I felt, my goodness, that’s great, that the internet was able to publish a story that was not being covered by the major media.”
“Then I noticed that there was perhaps one story a day in the
Journal-News about White Plains, and it seemed there was a lot more going on in White Plains than was being covered. I came up with this idea for the website (in February, 2000).”
Journal News Tries Hard. Falls Short.Feiner asked the two if they felt the Gannett chain and News12 cover the county adequately. The two were very politically correct:
Aris said, “I think that they’ve tried to, but as they’ve branched out to different areas of Westchester, Rockland and Putnam, that they can’t devote as many resources as they’d like to. That’s a failing to the city (Yonkers). One of the issues is there’s not a Yonkers paper, that is not Yonkers-centric and focuses on the local issues strictly in Yonkers…not all of it is covered.
The Journal News does its best, but I think if you’re focusing in one area you can do a better job.”
Bailey was blunt: “You also need a reporter who knows a community, who perhaps lives in it. That was the tradition of the old village newspaper. It was run by someone who lived in the town, knew everybody and was able to know a story when they saw one.”
Cover of Scarsdale Today Formed the network.The two explained that they were brought together after their sites were independently founded by Sean Cover of Scarsdale Technologies, who approached them about joining his Westchester Network to make it a news force. Cover offered them a easy-to-update format that allows instant updating of their sites to get the news out fast.
“We got together to cover a broader base of news that would cover a wider part of Westchester,” Aris said. “And we’ve done that. The thing that’s interesting is we do the
Westchester Wire where a lot of the news about Greenburgh, New Rochelle and other towns are covered. Each one of us is independent, but a times we get together because our resources are limited. If I can’t do an event, perhaps John can.”
Bailey said, “We do an exchange on stories of mutual interest…like the Associated Press.”
Spin Masters InvitedBoth reporters said they welcomed public officials to send them columns and position papers on areas of their concern. Feiner said, “the big problem that elected officials and candidates have is the inability to communicate with the voters, providing candidates with access so they communicate their thoughts in their own words, is really terrific.”
Aris, said, “We’re a beautiful vehicle to disseminate your message. We’re not adversarial with so many of the politicians.”
“We’re fair,” Bailey said. “We report both sides of the story. We just report the facts.We don’t take prepositions.”
Audience growing.Asked how the sites got the word out, the two new Ruppert Murdochs said their audience was growing thanks to their high listings on the major search engines. Aris said the group is “moving up very very strongly” on the alexsa.com Top Visited Websites list of all the websites in the world. The Westchester Network sites: Scarsdale Today.com, wpcnr.com, and YonkersTribune.com are in the top 300,000 most visited sites in the world.
The two agreed it was mostly word of mouth, and as Bailey put it, “and when a big story is broken by us. People come and read it and talk about it. They have to see it for themselves.”
Media too cushy a relationship with officials.Aris said: “What I find interesting about the media in Westchester county, it’s been too cushy a relationship with a lot of different political positions. They do have a set concept before they go into a story. That may be a management position, as opposed to an individual reporter position. I know that we’re fair, because we would rather listen to a story, and relate it as that, rather than to decide in advance how a story should go,” Aris commented.
“People have an ability to express their point of view. We give voice to their opinion. You won’t find our ego getting in the way of a story. We may have egos, but you won’t find it in our reporting.” Aris said earnestly.
“Just because someone says something and we report it, doesn’t mean we’re going to the other side what they think about it. We try and investigate the facts behind what they say,” Bailey commented.
Bradley a Role Model for Picking off an Incumbent.Asked if he felt his site played a role in Adam Bradley defeating Ms. Matusow in the Democratic primary in September, Bailey said, “I think Mr. Bradley got himself elected because he campaigned extremely well. I just simply covered it. I think Ms. Matusow ran an absolutely unenlightended campaign to say the least. Didn’t work too hard on it. That’s a pick-off situation. Primaries are going to be the way you pick off long term incumbents from now on if you can get a particular issue.”
Aris agreed that Ms. Matusow was complacent.
Feiner agreed saying, “When you’re in office for awhile, it’s very easy to become a legend in your own mind. You go to events and everybody’s generally saying you’re terrific, you start believing in your own press releases. It’s sort of easy to lose touch with your own constituency.”
Reaches a different audience.Aris said, “We can be a supplement to reach an audience that’s too busy to be watching a half-hour news program or a 50-60 page newspaper. You can go to our sites and see the stories, read what you want, quickly.”
Bailey added that the audience was “upscale and loyal, they come on twice a day in the morning and in the evening. And we generally get the stories before you see them in print or on News12 for that matter.”
“That’s why I log on,” Feiner said, “because I can get the scoop what’s going on before most other people do.”
Aris said how he recently put the news about the Gorton School boiler accident and the closing of school on his site a half-hour before
The Journal News and 6 hours before News12.
Print Version Plans Announced.Mr. Aris announced on the air that the inquiring duo are going to combine resources shortly in a print edition for distribution in Yonkers and White Plains and ultimately, countywide.
Mr. Aris said, “People look at
The Journal News as the ultimate media outlet in the county, (Bailey pointed out, it was the only outlet, not the ultimate), but people have been begging us to go into print. It will be distributed in White Plains and Yonkers and we hope that it will be able to offer an alternative to
The Journal News and other media outlets in the county.”
Bailey said he expected print to always be there because advertisers are more comfortable with it.
Has News12 changed?Feiner said News12 has changed over the past few years, saying it was using less reporters, “They used to cover real mom and pop stories. There’s less emphasis on the real local news. It’s almost like Gannett.”
Bailey agreed, “ I feel News12 doesn’t really know what’s going on in the communities, unless the communities inform them of stuff that’s going to happen, like at press conferences. You have to have stringers, people in a community, that basically watchdog that community and check in with your newsrooms. But, of course, you have to pay stringers, and I think there’s a real movement to cut budgets on the part of the media and this is not good. Because it means less is covered, and news can be spun by the news sources, instead of news being ferreted out and covered.”
“That’s really the beauty of your publications,” Feiner observed, “is that people can get so much more news and then decide for themselves whether or not it’s important or not important.”
“Unfiltered,” Bailey chipped in, “I have to emphasize that word, unfiltered. We cover the meetings, we talk to the people, we go to the court cases when they are tried.”
The two said they were looking for reporters interested in reporting on events in their communities, especially in New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, Yonkers, White Plains, and should contact them at
[email protected], or 914-997-1607, or
[email protected].
Final Impressions?“We try and be more local,” Aris said. “We don’t just cover the fact of the shortfall in the budget in the Board of Education but how that relates to the students.”
“To cover it you have to cover it,” Bailey said. “You have to be there.”
Mr. Feiner’s last question to the irreverent pair was whether their impression of government had changed since they had been writing about it.
Bailey said, “ Oh, definitely, I think people in government and public positions, work extremely hard. They’re under a lot of pressure today. At least, in White Plains, and Yonkers, too, people who work for their city government work terribly hard. Long hours, and a lot more efficient than I visualized it.”
Feiner, said, when he comes into Greenburg Town Hall on weekends, he is always surprised to see people working, regularly.
Bailey said, the average citizen does not realize how hard city governments work. “The private citizen has all sorts of ideas on how they would fix things as I did, when I first started reporting, and all sorts of preconceptions. When you start reporting on what is happening every day, you suddenly realize, it’s not so easy.”
