Payback--NY media secret meetings helped Bloomberg, now he boosts media

On 8/22/08 the NY Times reports Mayor Bloomberg had secret meetings with NY media to secure their support for a term limit extension for himself:

• "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has quietly approached some of the city’s most
• powerful media figures to assess whether their publications would endorse a bid to overturn New York City’s term limits, which could
• clear a path for him to run for re-election next year.

Over the last several weeks, Mr. Bloomberg has held confidential conversations with

• Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation, which owns The New York Post;
• Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News; and
• Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company,

• to gauge their views on the issue, according to people familiar with the talks.

The conversations are the clearest evidence to date that Mr. Bloomberg is seriously considering a challenge to the term limits law that will force him from office January 2010.

• Such a move would upend New York’s political world and be a dramatic reversal for the mayor.
• He has voiced intense opposition in the past to making any changes to the term limits law, which restricts
• citywide elected officials and members of the City Council to two consecutive terms in office....

New York voters passed term limits in 1993, and polls show

• they remain strongly in favor of them,

a major obstacle for any campaign by the mayor.

• Mr. Bloomberg is trying to appeal to influential business leaders,

• especially in the news media,

• to sway public opinion in his favor,

• people familiar with the matter said."...

***Bloomberg was in fact successful in clearing the way for his third term bid. ***

• Today news Bloomberg is launching an initiative to help 'media' in New York:

• "City Looks to Bolster Media Industry," New York Observer, 11/4/08

"Last Thursday, at the Audit Bureau of Circulations’ annual conference, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dropped by the Waldorf-Astoria to deliver brief remarks to a ballroom about two-thirds full....

• New York has long prided itself on being the country’s media capital, home to the publishing and magazine heavies, the television networks and two national newspapers. But the long-term

• future for The New York Times and just about every other printed product looks grim, spurring questions of whether the city’s media dominance could soon wane.

To this end, the Bloomberg administration is launching an initiative to boost the media industry...

• “This is aiming at media broadly defined, but we’re interested primarily in the transition from traditional media outlets into the electronic age,” Mr. Strauss said. The initiative comes as

• old-media firms in the city and region are bleeding."...

via Poynter.org/Romenesko

Tweet Stumbleupon StumbleUpon