New York City’s attempt to boost local media faces recriminations

There’s a running discussion across the US of whether government subsidies — or government advertising — can play a role in propping up local media. New York City, for example, mandated that 50% of city government ad spending go to “community and ethnic” outlets. City Comptroller Brad Lander recently reported that the city has ignored those targets, which City Hall disputes.

But in a perhaps more troubling sign for independent media, the publisher of one local site, Greenpointers, wrote that she “received subtle pressure to publish weekly op-eds” from the government, which she rejected because she didn’t want to be a “propaganda mouthpiece.” She wound up getting a mere $7,000 from the city in fiscal year 2023.

Meanwhile, a politically-wired competitor, a chain of community weeklies owned by Schneps Media, received $2.1 million from the city’s program that year. Schneps’ owner had co-hosted a Hamptons fundraiser for future Mayor Eric Adams in 2021, and the group’s flagship, the free print paper amNewYork, is now where the embattled mayor publishes his own op-eds.

The company’s CEO, Joshua Schneps, denied that business imperatives influence the journalism — the organization’s local publications, he said, simply have “the largest print and digital readership of any community and ethnic media throughout the five boroughs,” and possibly “higher than all the others combined.” And City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said the amount of ad money going to Schneps fell to $1.2 million in fiscal year 2024 — though she also said the city’s overall local ad spending had dropped considerably.