SusanCampriello: My Works

The honeymoon isn’t over for Gov. David A. Paterson.

Despite delivering bad news this morning to a room of business leaders, educators and legislators about the economy including staggering unemployment, fewer homes being sold, and the failure of programs organized to employ people, the governor’s speech was punctuated by lengthy outbursts of applause.

Before the speech, former Mayor Ed Koch said that the crowd—roughly 740 people all seated at tables in the midtown Hilton grand ballroom—was the largest turnout for an Association for a Better New York breakfast he could remember.

“He has a great opportunity to be heard because these are all the movers and the shakers in the city,” he said.

Paterson drew laughs and humbled himself in front of the audience, before he briefly addressed his entry into the governorship and discussed the state budget.

Paterson announced that he thought the budget would be approved later today, a budget he called too big and too bloated. He said that the budget growth should have been conservative, rather that one that “ballooned out of a lot of our revenue forecasts and our expenditures.”

“Even if we were wrong, we would have then returned a-billion-and-a-half dollars to a sagging economy,” he said, adding, “even if we had misestimated we would have addressed our problems down the road.”

He said that signs were in the air of the recession the country has entered well before the budget was drafted.

He said that by the third week of March, when he became governor, the state had received $461 million less in taxes from the 20 largest payers than it had by the same time last year. As a result, he cut the budget, lowering its growth from 4.8 percent to 4.4 percent over last year’s budget.

However the savings of that cut will be used up this month if the economy continues in the same direction.

“Though our budget is sound now, it will be dependent on whether or not people get the message that we so vitally need to understand, which is that our economy is reeling,” he said.

Paterson addressed the lack of employment opportunities in the city. He drew parallels between the present economic situation and that of the state in the early nineteenth century, when shipping along the Erie Canal brought economic growth to New York City despite the deficit of the budget.

“People moved where the jobs were. Now the people are moving away,” he said.

The government, he said, needs to spend its money more wisely and asked the audience to be a part of the solution.

Paterson said he hoped that projects like the Second Avenue subway line and the development of Stewart Airport, near Newburgh, N.Y., Hudson Yards and Moynihan Station on Manhattan’s west side will foster economic growth and offer new employment opportunities downstate.

After the speech concluded and as the plates of eggs and potatoes and dishes were being cleared away, Jeffrey Horn, a representative from 100 Black Men of America, Inc., a group dedicated educating and empowering youth, said that he would like to see the amount of money being put towards those projects going towards health care and education for more people.

But, he said, anything that brought jobs to the city was a worthwhile investment and was hopeful that the governor could bring action.

“I think he’ll make the smart cuts,” he said.

John Banks, vice president of government relations for Consolidated Edison, Inc., said that the governor’s reluctance to solve the state’s economic problems through taxation of citizens is refreshing.

Shira Phelps, of consulting firm Harris Rand Lusk, said she was impressed by Paterson’s numerous historical references and timelines of major construction projects in the 1930s and quotations of men such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Robert F. Kennedy.

In his speech, Paterson acknowledged the long hard road before him but is confident the government and business leaders can prevail.

“If we try hard enough, we may be able to look back in just a few years and be very proud of the work we’ve done,” he said.

In the days after Hurricane Katrina swept through the gulf coast and levees failed to keep the storm surge from flooding New Orleans, some members of the media said they were shocked by the poverty they found in the city. They vowed not to let poverty coverage fade from view. But some journalists say that’s exactly what happened. And today, a panel of news editors, opinion writers and reporters put poverty coverage, itself, under the microscope.

The panel, sponsored by the Welfare Reform Network, scrutinized the problems with current coverage including reader apathy and limited access to impoverished people and made suggestions on ways to bring more attention to issues surrounding poverty.

Many newspapers do not even have poverty beat reporters.

All too frequently, stock market or the housing market will headline a page and poverty will be left off it, Neil deMause, opinion writer for Metro New York, a free paper distributed on street corners and at subway entrances, said.

“Economic coverage is Wall Street coverage,” he said.

DeMause said that few media outlets dedicate themselves to long-term coverage of systemic poverty. Editors see the issue as a “downer” that does not interest the reading public, he said. “It’s not sexy.”

Instead of following economic issues of poor New Yorkers, panelists agreed that newspapers tend to cover poverty and poor New Yorkers around the holidays or will write an investigative series and then abandon the issue until the next season or policy change is in view.

The faults of coverage do not only lay with the reporters and editors, panelist Fred Scaglione, press editor of NY Non-Profit Press, told the audience of students, members of not-for-profit organizations and other journalists.

He urged them to write letters to editors, demanding that their papers publish more, and better, poverty stories.

“In my experience, editors respond to the demands of their readers,” he said.

But the best entry route into a story was contested.

Panelist Errol Louis, columnist for the NY Daily News, said that readers tend to lose sympathy for the subject of a profile or featured in an anecdote if that person made a bad decision that precipitated his or her current situation. He said that exposing flawed characters in print turn readers of his paper callous towards subjects. “Some readers think undeserving poor should not be helped,” he said.

But, he said, if a story is told that could happen to anybody—a car accident, for example, that renders a healthy adult disabled—and readers will be much more sympathetic, because they may be the next victim of an unfortunate turn of events.

Audience member Karen Wright addressed the panel and audience with a story of frustration. She was interviewed for an article about illegal boarding houses earlier this year. She felt that an element of the greater story was lost when her story was not told in full.

Wright also attacked panelist Jarret Murphy’s self-proclaimed love for using statistics in his stories. “I’m sick of being a statistic,” she said. Her words were met with applause.

Murphy, an editor of City Limits, noted that some organizations that work with poor New Yorkers direct staff not to speak to reporters. Instead, staff organize an interview with a client who has been spoon fed “talking points” to regurgitate to the reporter.

But audience member Barbara Delsman of The Hope Project, an organization that helps homeless and poor people find employment, explained that clients sometimes need to take caution when speaking with press. She does not coach clients, and was unable to say which organizations do.

“We don’t want them to fall victim,” she said. Instead, staff explains to clients that they should request anonymity if they are willing to divulge such information.

Delsman spoke about one example of a past client who told reporters personal information about his life regarding criminal activity and drug use, who later regretted his decision.

Louis noted that even though the number of New Yorkers living in public housing developments roughly equals the population of Atlanta, Ga., no public housing beat exists on his paper.

Jocelyn Wiener, a reporter with the Sacramento Bee and an ethics fellow with the Poynter Institute, who did not participate in the panel, said that many papers lack beats that cover poverty. One possible reason for this, she said, is that a poverty beat does not deliver a lot of breaking news.

At many papers, poverty, she said, is “not considered a fundamental element, like City Hall.”

When asked what issues of homelessness or poverty were being overlooked by the press, staff at Picture the Homeless, an organization of homeless people who work to prevent their compatriots from becoming mere statistics, answered, “how ’bout all of them?”

Click here to listen.

TRANSCRIPT (Tape Time:4:22):

CAMPRIELLO:
Brownfields must be cleaned before anything can be built on them. For example, work is going on at a site in Manhattan on West 61st Street, near Eleventh Avenue.

AMBIANCE UP, FADE UNDER NARRATION AND OUT AT “2003″.

CAMPRIELLO:
Brownfields that don’t get cleaned are left abandoned. A highly contaminated site in an expensive area, like Westchester County and Manhattan can cost millions of dollars to clean up. So, to encourage remediation, the State of New York has been offering tax credits as incentives for contractors to take on this work since 2003.

In the past, the State Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, could accept or reject a developer’s application to clean up a Brownfield based on “public interest”. But several developers whose applications were denied filed lawsuits against the DEC. In December of last year, a court in Rochester threw out the department’s criteria for determining eligibility, and said that every site has to be admitted to the program.

Val Washington is a deputy commissioner of the DEC.

AX WASHINGTON (5.0 seconds)
It’s in everybody’s interest to have this get fixed sooner rather than later.

CAMPRIELLO:
But admitting every site could cost a lot of money.

AX WASHINGTON (21.2 seconds)
The first 25 projects that have gone through the Brownfield system are worth $1 billion–that’s billion with a “B”–for 25 development projects. Four of them, three in New York City and one in Westchester County account for over half of that, over $500,000, and that’s not sustainable over time.

CAMPRIELLO:
So, to stave off a budget crisis, former Governor Eliot Spitzer proposed in January a cap of 15 million dollars in tax credits for Brownfield cleanup projects.

Joel Landes works for Langan Engineering, a firm that performs Brownfield remediation. He says that everyone had been looking to the Governor to solve the problem.

AX LANDES (13.3 seconds)
I think his proposal was developed along those lines, to solve that issue, so that more developments can get into the program, to become eligible and they can go through the program without bankrupting the state.

CAMPRIELLO:
Now that ALL sites are approved automatically, developers face a new obstacle because their tax credits are set after they’ve been accepted into the program. For developers to get the credits, Landes says:

AX LANDES (6.3 seconds)
They’re going to have to show that without the tax credits, the project is not financially feasible.

CAMPRIELLO:
But not all projects in New York State are created equal. Those which are Downstate tend to cost much more than those Upstate. Yet, Brownfields are evenly distributed throughout the state. So Landes worries that projects Upstate will benefit more than those Downstate.

Val Washington of DEC sees a clear division, too.

AX WASHINGTON (24.2 seconds)
Under the current program to get 15 million dollars you’d have to have a 68 million dollar development. But a 68 million dollar development is a substantial development. And essentially that’s more or less the cut off point where you’d do better in the new program than the current program. So clearly right there Downstate - LARGE Downstate projects - wouldn’t do as well under the current program.

CAMPRIELLO:
There’s a second problem with the proposal: The cap will apply only to sites whose clean-up agreements were signed after July 1, 2007.

An environmental lawyer thinks that’s unfair to a developer who was promised, for example, twenty million dollars in tax credits under the old system, but would now receive only fifteen million. The lawyer worries that developers might be inclined to pull out of the program. Joel Landes, of Langan Engineering, agrees, but says that developers will have to work within the proposal if it goes into effect.

AX LANDES (5.2 seconds)
There’s not much they can do about it. They can argue, and take the State to court, but that’s always a chanc-y thing.

CAMPRIELLO:
Val Washington of DEC says developers who are angry about the loss of tax credits can find a way to make up the difference. They can appeal to a number of State development programs to procure funding.

AX WASHINGTON (10.0 seconds)
They layer these funding sources, so I find it hard to be sympathetic that people are unhappy about getting fifteen million dollars for developing a Brownfield site.

CAMPRIELLO:
Washington says that New York State has the best program in the nation. She also says that fifteen million dollars is a lot of money.

New York State’s new Governor, David Paterson, has submitted the proposal to the State legislature. If it’s approved, the Brownfield tax credit cap will go into effect on April 1.

Susan Campriello, Columbia Radio News.

Councilman Leroy Comrie spoke in City Hall today as a father, describing the “stomach-turning feeling of failing” to procure tickets for his children’s favorite Disney concerts and live shows.

Tomorrow, Comrie said, he will introduce legislation to the City Council that might make the stomach-turning a thing of the past.

The bill, nicknamed the “Hannah Montana Bill” after the Disney television show whose live concert received national attention over the scramble for—and prices of—its tickets, will mandate that 40 percent of tickets for shows in any venue receiving public funding will be set aside for sale to individual customers.

(In December 2007, $26 tickets to the Hannah Montana show were sold for over $250.)

“It is my hope that this bill will operate as ‘market-correction’ legislation,” Comrie (D-Queens) said.

His research found that, for example, tickets for the upcoming Van Halen concert cost between $15 and $154, while the same tickets are being offered on StubHub, just one of many online ticket merchants, for $6,975.

Tickets to sporting events at Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium and Madison Square Garden are subject to markup, as well as The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and the live stage production of “Go, Diego, Go,” a children’s television show.

“This bill ensures that the free market principles behind ticket resale will still take place, however, it levels the playing field for working class New Yorkers whose tax subsidize the arenas where these concerts are taking place,” he said.

Research also revealed that internet ticket vendors use technology that enables them to snap up highly anticipated tickets in an instant, leaving very few tickets left for individual purchasers. Technology has also been used to also get around purchase limits already imposed by Ticketmaster.

Comrie hoped that ticket brokers would soon equip themselves with security software that allows a computer to distinguish between human users and automated devices, although this is not outlined in the bill.

The bill also limits individuals to purchasing only four tickets from a particular vender per day. However, it does not mandate which seats would be held. Doing this would encroach on the way that venues do business, he said.

The Hannah Montana Bill is modeled on Missouri legislation, which requires people who purchased tickets over the internet to show identification and a credit card when they retrieved their tickets.

Comrie did not discount the idea of using an online affidavit to ensure that each individual was, in fact, an individual.

“What happens now is that [vendors] have no idea who these tickets are going to,” he said.

In June 2007, Governor Spitzer signed a measure that ended a price cap on resold tickets. The legislation was supposed to protect season tickets holders from being penalized by major sports teams who claimed they had exclusive rights to resell their organization’s tickets.

Comrie said that the high prices seen now are an “unintended negative consequence to that legislation.” What began as a slow rise in ticket costs, he said, has become a crescendo.

Legislation similar to the Hannah Montana Bill in front of the State Assembly would prohibit service charges in sales of tickets and exclusive contracts between ticket agents and publicly owned or supported venues.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester) proposed that bill in January 2007, but has yet to find a sponsor in the State Senate. Brodsky opposed the bill Spitzer signed last summer. Staff said that the Hannah Montana Bill, upon first hear, sounded like it would work well for the city, where most of the State’s large venues are located.

“It is imperative for the City Council to address this issue,” Comrie said.

Now posted on The Columbia Journalist.

The waiting area of the St. George Staten Island Ferry Terminal, with its aqua and blue colored tiled floor, high metallic-buttressed curved ceiling and windows to fit, looks like an indoor swimming pool. And, Tuesday morning, 400 brightly colored swimmers made a splash in it, drawing photographers, delighting children and catching the eye of commuters waiting for the ferry there.

The swimmers were Caribbean fish with names like “Convict Tang”, “Semilarvatus Butterfly” and “Scribbled Angel” and added their black-and-white stripes, solid yellow and blue-accented-with-yellow colors to the terminal’s décor.

The fish darted around two eight-foot high 2,200-gallon fish tanks, unveiled this morning by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro and city officials. Their construction and installation is part of an ongoing tourism effort officials hope will benefit the borough and the city alike.

Using as many fish-related puns as possible, Bloomberg and Molinaro said that the borough’s $750,000 capital project will draw tourists to the terminal. An estimated 60,000 people use the ferry system every work day. Molinaro said that the ferry is the city’s third largest tourist attraction, after the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.

“Something’s fishy,” Molinaro said, beginning the event. He followed up by pointing out the “schools” of children, wearing blue, yellow and purple fish-head hats commemorating the event, crowded around him with their parents, and said that during rush hour, everyone would “be packed like sardines.”

“Holy Mackerel!” the mayor said, taking the microphone later, warning that he would use “a boat load of fish puns.”

“What’s the porpoise, you ask,” he teased the audience before speaking seriously about the tank project.

The tanks are the latest phase of the overhaul of the Staten Island Ferry system. Other projects have included the renovation of both terminals, the addition of three new ferries last year, and the installation of a talking kiosk for visually impaired passengers in St. George, with plans to install one in the Whitehall terminal.

“I really think these tanks will add to the allure of Staten Island,” Bloomberg said, stressing the second syllable of “allure”, drawing laughter from the crowd.

Bloomberg said that he also enjoys fish tanks and has had them installed in every one of his news offices. Fish have a calming effect, he said.

He also used the event to promote the Staten Island Zoo, which will assume tank maintenance and monitoring duties next year.

But not everyone agrees that the 5,000-pound tanks are a boon to the island.

Before the brown butcher paper was untapped from the tank’s 3-inch acrylic sides, Helen Walker waited for the ferry on her day off, on her way to her union office.

“Do you think a fish tank will mean anything to people without a job?” the Silver Lake resident, who holds down two jobs, asked.

She voiced concern that the borough was placing a stronger emphasis on tourism than on its citizens and their troubles and that waterfront development here was attractive to wealthier individuals, but excluded poorer ones.

But other commuters saw the tanks differently.

“It’s nice to see projects going on in the terminal; to see a little life,” said Rafael Loveszy, 16, who was, with his siblings, waiting for the ferry to Manhattan for a musical rehearsal.

Walter Levendosky, aquarist and keeper of the Staten Island Zoo watched with displeasure as small children slapped their hands against the tanks.

The fish in the tanks cost anywhere between $8 and $60, he said.

Regardless of cost and politics, the tanks made an impression on one busy commuter who hurried towards the entrance with a friend. “These tanks are just the most amazing thing I’ve even seen,” she said.

One of the fish in the new tanks.

(As seen on The Columbia Journalist.)

MANHATTAN, Jan. 29 — The recent death of actor Heath Ledger in his SoHo apartment has given new impetus to a proposed New York State law that would restrict rights to photographs and other images of deceased celebrities to only their estates or families.

Such a law would ensure, for example, that Matilda, Ledger’s 2-year-old daughter with actress Michelle Williams, could benefit from images of her father but photographers could not.

The estates of deceased celebrities and photographers have gone head-to-head in the past, most famously over the sale of a T-shirt depicting Marilyn Monroe in an Indiana court last year. Thirteen states have laws that restrict the licensing of deceased celebrities’ images by photographers, but New York is not among them.

“Enough states have it, so New York’s holdout is an inconvenience,” Alan J. Hartnick, of Abelman, Frayne and Schwab, said today at a New York State Bar Association panel on the issue.

Because no national law exists, the prevailing law is that of where the celebrity died.

Lawyers at the bar association’s annual meeting engaged in a lopsided debate of the postmortem celebrity privacy bill at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

A supporter of the bill, Hartnick cited a similar and more swiftly moving bill that concerns the use of images of fallen soldiers and veterans.

Under that bill, the name, portrait of or picture of armed forces, living or dead, cannot by used commercially by anyone but the family.

“Why should soldiers be treated differently than Heath Ledger?” he asked.

Chris Serbagi, who represented the estate of photographer Sam Shaw in the Monroe case, argued that the bill would serve only the interests of a few—two or three—people.

He claimed that a similar California statute was created and pushed by Anna Strasberg, executor of Monroe’s estate. He accused her of using the law to capitalize on Monroe, asserting that through royalties Strasberg has made untold millions.

The California law, which retroactively covers celebrities who died before 1985, was signed into law in October last year.

Monroe died in 1962 in California.

State courts in New York and California ruled in two cases last year that such statutes should not act retroactively and cover celebrities who passed away before Jan. 1, 1985.

Serbagi argued that Anna Strasberg should never have received image rights, as she was not family and was not a friend of Monroe.

Strasburg is the widow of Lee Strasburg, the acting coach to whom Monroe left a portion of her estate. Shaw was the photographer who captured many iconic photographs of Monroe. His family allowed an entrepreneur to use one image on a shirt and was sued by Strasburg.

David M. Marcus, a grandson of Shaw, also denounced the new statute, speaking from experience that a photographer’s livelihood stems from sales from and commissions for their artistry.

“There will be a chilling of free speech if this is passed in New York,” Marcus said.

A new public health plan was announced Wednesday at a press conference attended by leaders of public action groups, medical societies and health care professionals, who generally supported the plan but voiced some concerns.

Richard N. Gottfried (D-Manhattan), chair of the Assembly Committee on Health, unveiled the new plan, New York Health Plus, which would guarantee health coverage and decrease coverage spending for all New Yorkers by $4 billion a year.

Estimates say that employers and individuals spend $63 billion a year in premiums, deductibles and co-payments. Under the new plan, the cost to the State would be only about $59.2 billion.

Enrollment in the plan would be optional, however, private individuals and employers that provide coverage for employees who opt in would be able to chose their own participating health care providers or a public provider, like Medicare. If adopted, employers would no longer have to provide health coverage to employees, and instead pay a premium, which would be set by the State.

Gottfried said that he hoped the lower cost, which would be below current rates, would entice individuals and companies to join the plan, but acknowledged that enrollment would likely be small at first, and then evolve over time as it attracts providers and subscribers.

Because the plan would be funded by taxes and taxpayers, Gottfried trusts that coverage would be accountable to the public and not shareholders, holding costs to a minimum. He stressed that pressures from the bottom up would balance pressures from the top down, ensuring that the State and providers will agree upon the best price and coverage for those enrolled.

“Currently insurance companies pay what the market will bear,” Gottfried said, noting that he believes the government can run a health care system for less money than the current, employer-based system. Raising costs for employers has forced many to stop providing health care to employees, he pointed out.“The vast majority of New Yorkers will have higher take-home pay,” he said.

The real audience for the plan, Gottfried admitted, is Governor Spitzer, who, in July of this year announced that he would develop what he called “a partnership for universal health care coverage,” which would involve taking steps towards increasing Child Health Plus eligibility, streamlining Medicaid enrollment and monitoring Medicaid spending and growth, ultimately ensuring health coverage to all 400,000 New Yorkers.

New York Health Plus was built to expand open the Family Health Plus and Child Health Plus, existing State programs for individuals who do not have health insurance but do not qualify for Medicaid. But to make the new plan attractive, it must appeal to residents who do receive health coverage on their own or from employees.

“Unless it is for all of us, I don’t think it is politically realistic,” Gottfried said to a smattering of applause, arguing that smaller plans—plans that are less inclusive—would not attract the 96 percent of voters who have coverage and would not otherwise vote for a measure that would take their money but offer nothing in return.

Representatives of groups in attendance, including the Commission on the Public’s Health System, the Metro New York Health Campaign, Rekindling Reform and the Academy of Family Physicians voiced support for the plan because it offers coverage to the currently uninsured as well as benefits for New Yorkers with insurance.

Many called the plan a step in the right direction, saying that any move towards implementing a public health system, accessible to and including all New Yorkers should be applauded.

“New York Health Plus sets the bar for any health care program that’s adopted by New York State,” Pamela Bennett, director of Citizen Action of New York City, said of the proposed plan. “New York Health Plus would make New York a much more healthy place to live, work and do business,” she continued.

But others did not see the plan as a finished proposal, but more of a jumping-off point for other plans.

Mark Hennay, director of Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign, called the plan “the beginning of a conversation,” between the State Assembly and Senate and his and similar groups that would lead towards broad and comprehensive health care reforms.

The New York Health Plus plan, as written, does not state a plan for how to raise revenue to support the system. The plan does not quote tax deductions for those who opt out of the plan, as they would still have to support it to a certain degree. But, larger companies and wealthier individuals who join the plan would have to pay more to support the plan than small businesses and less wealthy individuals. Deductions would depend on how the agreement is constructed, Gottfried said.

Vitto Grasso, the executive vice president of New York State Academy of Family Physicians, called for an amendment to the multi-payer plan to allow physicians to negotiate with the State to “streamline and foster uniform administrative procedures among the many managed care plans that would participate in New York Health Plus.”

“Collective bargaining between physicians and the State should include discussion of ways to reduce excessive medical liability costs,” he said in his statement.

“Overall,” Grasso said, “the proposal represents a very positive approach.”

Richard N. Gottfried discusses New York Health Plus

The purpose of this post is not to solicit sympathy, but to warn others that it is so very hard to get information here.

Thank you to the three people who were helpful, or at least did speak to me over the last week.

I set out to write a story about a renovation project upon which a City authority is embarking.

I called the Community Board, however, they would not answer questions but sent me to the Councilwoman’s office. I called her office and was told that the person working on the project was at the downtown office. I called him there. He was at a meeting and I left a message. Two more times over three days I called him while he was out or busy, leaving messages with the secretary each time. The third time I called I was told that he worked at the district office, but was given the number. When I spoke to him, he referred me to a number of different websites, one of which belonged to the Community Board.

I called the agency, as well. I left similar messages for the “community liaison” for the project and finally, after three days, she called me back. But I also called the public affairs office, which I had to reach by calling the president, you see, because the vice president of the specific division did not answer his phone, nor did a voice mail service come on the line. I also called the number for “ADA Compliance,” listed on this authority’s website, and discovered it not only to be the number for emergency services, but the message on the extension for “other inquiries” asked telemarketers not to call, and the extension for “customer care” cut the line. The authority has another 15 or so days to respond to my FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request.

Staff at a State Assembly office “promised” she would call me back this afternoon. Well, I’m still waiting for my call. Staff at a second State Assembly office was helpful.

A State official’s office told me they would call with information I needed. I’m still waiting.

The architect involved could not speak to me without the go-ahead from the agency. That specific person is away from the office.

Deborah Solomon stopped by class Oct. 23 and, among other things, mentioned that her New York Times Magazine column will have a little disclaimer printed before it, along the lines of the one suggested by Clark Hoyt in the New York Times Oct. 14.

The addition of a disclaimer comes after Solomon fell under fire for not publishing transcript-style questions and answers from interviews conducted for the weekly column.

This announcement has not been made public by the Times, however, so it shall be seen what form the disclaimer will take.

Author Joseph Berger spoke Oct. 16 about his new book at the 92nd Street Y, bringing to life his own experiences and those shared by immigrants in New York City.

A long-time reporter for the New York Times, Berger based the book, “The World in a City,” on articles he wrote for the paper spanning the broad topic of immigration yet by introducing scenes and characters, like the cobbler in Chinatown and the part-time nanny from the Bronx, explores the issue on a neighborhood level.

The discussion was moderated by Berger’s former colleague at the Times’s religion desk, Daily News columnist and professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University Ari Goldman.

The talk, just like the book, began with the story of a young and recently immigrated Berger, his brother and a friend exploring New York City by foot in the early 1950s, and both progress to show haw the city has changed in the last half-century.

The city was a mix of “European beige” during his childhood, but now with 60 percent of the city’s population being immigrants or the children of immigrants, one can visit “25 different countries for the cost of a MetroCard,” Berger explained. This is a paradigm of what is happening in the rest of the country, he continued.

Berger noted that the rich variety of race helps immigrants adjust to the city’s own history has been built upon immigration since the first Dutch and English settlers arrived nearly 400 years ago. He argued that New York City lacks the sense of nationalism and xenophobia known in Paris and offers a more fluid class system than London as two reasons immigrant populations today mesh relatively well with each other today here and not there. He illustrated the idea with an example of Brazilians and Middle Easterners living together in Astoria, Queens.

The ethnic diversity of immigrants entering the City is not the only change Berger has witnessed, for advancements in technology have made it easier for immigrants in New York to contact and keep in touch with family and friends in their countries of origin. One example described in the talk as well as the book is of a husband and wife living in the Bronx in 2005 speaking to their children in Ecuador via an internet and video feed and a television. Their children showed off their gown-up bodies in new clothes (it had been years since the whole family had seen each other) and they showed off the evidence of a new brother on the way; a pregnant belly.

(In the 1950s, Berger’s own mother had to wait weeks for replies to letters sent via air mail to her aunt in Poland.)

Berger believes that immigrants who have recently arrived and who are on their way will continue the pattern of previous immigrant generations who merged with and assimilated into the life of the City.

“The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York” is available in stores and includes short guide to where to go and what to eat in each neighborhood visited.