What the New York City Hall Scandals Can Tell Us About the State of Local News

Including the difference between uncovering wrongdoing and tracking official investigators

Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time, how it (often its business) is evolving, and the challenges it faces.

One of the key arguments for why the business crisis in local news matters is that without probing local journalism, corruption is left to flourish.

Well, it certainly seems to have flourished in my home town of New York, which is now facing the greatest set of municipal scandals in more than 90 years. So I thought it would be a good time to look at what role local reporting has played—and failed to play. Going into the analysis, there would seem to be ample room to worry: the New York Times has drastically curtailed metropolitan coverage, and the tabloid papers, the New York Daily News and the New York Post, are shadows of their former selves. A number of local nonprofits have sprung up, but how much have they filled the gap?

A caution from Watergate

Before we dive into New York in the 2020s, though, I want to go back to the 1970s, and Watergate, to make an important distinction. The legend about Watergate is that it was a press triumph, largely led by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post. Woodward and Bernstein certainly did some great reporting (as did Time magazine and a few others), and were supported by legendary editors and a staunch publisher. But there is also a revisionist strain of history, led by Max Holland, that emphasizes how much of that reporting was simply following what government investigators, notably at the FBI, were uncovering. With the 2005 confirmation that Woodward’s key source, “Deep Throat,” was the number two official in the FBI, this view has taken on greater weight.

So in looking at what’s happened, and is still happening, in New York, I want to emphasize this distinction—between reporting that uncovers wrongdoing, and journalism that merely shares with the public what government investigators have discovered.

Looked at this way, while there has certainly been some really excellent reporting in New York, much of it by newer outlets, the lesson is more nearly that we need to redouble our efforts, rather than some reassurance that the gaps left by the retreat of the legacy press have been successfully filled.

Like the Tammany Hall scandals of 1930-32 to which it seems increasingly comparable (and about which I once wrote a book), the current wave of New York municipal corruption is actually a collection of somewhat distinct scandals. (The same was also true of Watergate.) So we need to first look narrowly at the only indictment so far, against Mayor Eric Adams and centered on his Turkish connections, and then more widely at other matters.

Tammany Hall in the era of the last scandal of this scope

No advance hints on the Turks

The narrow view is the most discouraging. The government now alleges that Adams’s corrupt ties to Turkey date back to 2016. The only story I could find even hinting at the issue before the government began seeking search warrants, raiding homes and seizing phones in November 2023 ran in the New York Daily News in February 2021, as Adams was running for mayor. It focused on Adams’s junkets to countries with poor human rights records, including Turkey, and noted the limited Turkish travel expense help Adams had disclosed, but of course not the much greater amounts he had not.

The New York Times had an extensive piece on Adams’s often dodgy fundraising and spending in May 2021, but the only mention of turkey in the 4800 word opus referred to the bird rather than the country.

Once the government pounced, things changed. The Times has done a remarkable job charting the progress of the investigation, apparently with great sources. It quickly revealed the contents of an early search warrant identifying the focus on Turkish straw donors to Adams’s campaign, and later followed with breaks on Adams’s intervention in a building inspection, the widening of the Turkish probe, Adams’s acceptance of upgraded air travel and the flipping of a key witness.

Gothamist, which is part of New York Public Radio, contributed detail on what is alleged to have been corruption of the Fire Department, and a construction firm with Turkish ties. The Daily News chipped in on an element of what amounts to obstruction of the investigation. Anyone who read all of these stories would have been entirely unsurprised by the substance of last month’s indictment.

My kingdom for a business class seat

The upstart local nonprofit The City didn’t seem to have the same sort of law enforcement sources, but its on the ground reporting added key details on the straw donor scheme. The Daily News revealed that the scheme continued into Adams’s re-election campaign.

A happier picture with a wider lens

After the FBI rang the opening bell, and on other aspects of the scandal, which have not yet been the subject of charges, the picture is somewhat better for original reporting. This is particularly significant, as the Justice Department said in court recently that additional charges against both the Mayor and others are likely.

The news nonprofit The City, working with a Chinese-speaking reporter from Documented, revealed another straw donor scheme in the Chinese-American community. That may have prompted FBI raids in February. A key City reporter had left amid pay cuts there, but the City and Documented continued this reporting in partnership with the reporter’s new employer, The Guardian.

Gothamist has contributed significant reporting on the scope of Adams’s apparent violations of campaign finance regulations. (Disclosure: I previously did some paid consulting for Documented, pro bono consulting for The City, and am on the Board of New York Focus, a digital entrant that focuses on the government of New York State.)

Many New Yorkers expect that more shoes will drop, particularly around the NYPD. Adams’s first commissioner abruptly resigned, in seeming disgust. His second and third police commissioners, the deputy mayor for public safety, that deputy’s two brothers (one of whom has been the schools Chancellor), the First Deputy Mayor (who recently married the Chancellor), another key aide and a mayoral consultant have all been the target of federal raids. The Chancellor and the First Deputy Mayor have both resigned, he before their wedding, she after; the Chancellor’s brother resigned earlier this week. (Here’s a piece from The City, just before Adams took office, on this group’s web of connections. And here’s a wonderful app from Hell Gate charting the unfolding scandals.)

the breadth of the problem— although Hell Gate did this first

The coverage of the NYPD, and particularly the second commissioner, who may be the locus of problems there, has been particularly strong from my former colleagues at ProPublica. The City also published an early and important story on these issues.

Where this leaves us

What should we take from all of this? First, the New York Times can still do great metro reporting when it bestirs itself. It’s therefore a particular shame that it does so rarely. That 4800-word piece three and half years ago, for instance, was a siren warning that Eric Adams bore watching, a siren the Times ignored even when the call was coming from inside the house. (It wasn’t the only warning, by the way.)

The Times’s shortcomings here extend to the editorial page, which, in just the last two months has managed to announce that it will no longer endorse candidates for mayor, and then called for the incumbent Mayor to resign. If he followed that advice, a special election would ensue, on the outcome of which the Times would apparently have no editorial view. That makes no sense, at least to me.

As for the upstarts, they have made valuable contributions, but they are under-resourced, and it shows. It took the FBI to point their reporters in the right direction, and then they mostly lacked the sort of law enforcement sourcing that can be essential to investigative work on official corruption. But I do hope the takeaway of funders, both institutional and individual, from this is to lean in, not away. If a mess like that now unfolding in the nation’s media capital can happen here, it’s proof anew that we need more watchdogs everywhere.