In early December, Newsday decided to suspend its failing paywall strategy and free up its content as part of a Radio City Musical sponsorship that ran until the first few days of January. I’m no expert, but based on these figures from Alexa, they may want to reconsider.
Thanks to a family member’s subscription to Newsday, I received an email this morning about the “striking changes” to the paper’s website. Not only does www.newsday.com have a “fresh look,” but also a “faster load time” according to the announcement. But what’s most noticeable about the slightly revamped site is the access. Read more »
The headline reads: “5-year-old knows right and wrong, and graffiti is wrong.” Sadly, this is not for an Onion piece, but an actual story in today’s Newsday—don’t forget this brilliant reportage. What was reporter Rocco Parascandola smoking when he thought it made sense to write way too many words about what some 5-year-old Long Island kid’s opinion on graffiti is? It’s still hard to believe the newspaper wasn’t duped after reading some of these quotes from the Port Washington kindergartner who first started hating graffiti when he was 4: “Graffiti is very bad, dude. “I’m angry about it, all the way to 100 degrees.” He’s really pissed about UTAH and ETHER’s rampage too. His grandfather read him the story about the arrest of the infamous vandal couple and the youngster was so moved that he supposedly wrote a letter that was dictated to his granddad and then emailed to Newsday:
Welcome to obvious graffiti stories week. Yesterday Newsday kicked things off with their hard hitting piece about taggers preferring urban landscapes over suburban ones and not the AP jumps into the mix with a nothing new article about the city’s kid-chasing cops known as the Vandal Squad.There’s really nothing in this piece that hasn’t been said before. But the captions are entertaining, like this one describing the art stalking cops unique ability to read the writings on the wall: “The task force has about 60 officers who specialize in graffiti, and can decipher tags that, to the naked eye, seem like a mess of scribbles.” |AP|
“Graffiti doesn’t seem to be much of a problem in Port Washington. Not along Port Washington Boulevard. And certainly not on Graywood Lane,” writes Newsday’s crime reporter Rocco Parascandola in the intro to the ‘no shit Sherlock’ story of the year. The journalist describes how name writing vandal, VELO, leaves the Island and “puts his graffiti tag” in Astoria rather than his suburban enclave. But why come to the populated city where fellow graffiti writers are, and others that will actually notice your work? According to “police sources” the answer is simple, fame: “[I]t gets them more attention, among other taggers and on Web sites dedicated to graffiti.” No shit? You mean the secluded, homogenous, car driving communities of Long Island aren’t a hotbed for the outlawed urban artform? Nope! If you expect anyone to see your work, the city that birthed graffiti is where it’s at according to “one source” who offers up this groundbreaker, “This is how they make a name for themselves. You get a lot of attention if you tag in the city.” |Newsday|
Photo: |Street Stars|
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