Cardwell to City Hall
Congrats and, in case you didn't get the memo:
To: The StaffFrom: [Metro Editor] Joe Sexton
Diane Cardwell's first byline in the paper a dozen years ago carried this headline: Rapwear. Soulwear. Hipwear. The story introduced a new and fresh voice to our pages, and it is a voice that over the years has shown itself to be wise as well as witty, authoritative as well as nuanced, tough as well as tender. She wrote, for instance, the obituaries of Onofrio Ottomanelli -- the famed Village butcher -- and Freddy Ferrer -- the Bronx pol who didn't quite, ahem, make the cut.
She profiled the assassin at City Hall and Mr. Bloomberg's more or less constant companion. She traveled the country and filed from the battleground states in 2004, then returned to Brooklyn and took up a different kind of turf fight at the Atlantic Yards.
Along the way, her coverage of the City Council earned her a reputation as a shrewd and sophisticated observer of one of the city's more curious institutions. It made you laugh and cry, which pretty much means she got it just right.
Starting next month, Diane will bring her voice -- and all the intelligence and instinct and rigor that informs it -- to her role as City Hall Bureau Chief. It's an appointment we make with enormous excitement and great satisfaction. Diane, who has a real feel for the landscape and its inhabitants, also has a host of bold ideas for chronicling the second term of the Bloomberg administration and taking a true measure of its arguable accomplishments and potentially lasting improvements. We are, too, quite confident she will serve as an artful manager of a very busy and very talented couple of accomplices in Room 9.
In short, Diane -- child of Harlem and lifelong lover of the city -- rocks. We can't wait to get the party started.
Room 9 just got alot more interesting and pleasant. Congrats Diane.
and this is going to change the world, the state, the city? who cares!!!
Diane seems great, but Joe Sexton should be embarrassed over that treacly purple prose!
Whats news another clueless reporter reports on press releases at City Hall.
Memo to Ms. Cardwell: Welcome Diane! We are excited to hear civility and professionalism will return to City Hall reporting.
Memo to Rutenberg: Don't let the door kick you, etc., etc. Now let's see how you handle Scott and George.
This means no news coming from Washington?
maybe she can get bluestein a job?
I will always remember Jim Rutenberg for actually believing that Ramirez left his phone off the hook by accident, giving Rutenberg the "exclusive" on how Ferrer's nomination was so inevitable that the campaign wasn't even paying attention to the primary. The next time someone convenes a "high-level" meeting of campaign strategists immediately after having some difficulty in disconnecting from Jim's voicemail, he might not want to be such a dupe. Rove should have some fun with this ace reporter.
If you only knew what else he said on that call...
This is an unfortunate development for NYC journalism. Cardwell, who was assigned to the Ferrer campaign early on in 2005, wrote a series of puff pieces, perhaps as a result of her close personal relationship with his consultant, Jen Bluestein. Then it seemed that Pat Healy took over campaign coverage, and as we know, he was roundly criticized by the Ferrer team after the fact. Are we to conclude that sucking up to pols is the fastest route to promotion at the NYT?
Rutenberg was great at City Hall, no question. Good luck to him.
anybody's better than steinhauer
Diane Cardwell's coverage of the Atlantic Yards issue was hardly stellar. How was it that the Times neglected to cover the only city council hearing last year on the turf fight? That was the hearing where Forest City Ratner announced plans to trade office space (jobs) for condos. Then she wrote about the new Gehry plans in July and neglected to point out that the developer's jobs promises had changed significantly. Only in November did the Times write about it. There's lots more--go to www.dddb.net/times if you're curious.
Good luck, Jim! You were great and we'll miss ya.
yawn. . . .
I want to know what happened to the Times editor who decided to run a photo of Freddy Ferrer in a burka.
To suggest that Diane Cardwell's coverage of the Ferrer campaign was affected by a "personal relationship" with me suggests that the writer (whom I note has chosen to be 'anon') didn't bother to read any of Cardwell's coverage. Diane was a tough and formidable reporter, I'd say even stubborn, right down to the post-mortem she wrote about the Ferrer campaign the day after--some conclusions of which I strenuously and angrily disagreed with.
I suggest that "Anon", in the future, be prepared to attach his or her name to outrageous statements like that which s/he posted about Diane, and b)read the paper more carefully in the future.