Andrea Batista Schlesinger

Blackout on the Blackout

Three days with no electricity. People too hot to work. Small businesses losing thousands of dollars. Elderly people suffering without elevators. Dehydration. Exhaustion.

Where could such a thing happen?

Try Queens.

For the third day, literally thousands of Queens residents of neighborhoods like Sunnyside and Astoria and Woodside and Long Island City have gone without power. Assemblyman Michael Gionnaris: "We need to get the power on. This is New York City, for God's sake. This is not a Third World country..A lot of us feel abandoned."

And he should. A quick look makes it clear that the Queens blackout isn't really headline material.

No A1 from the New York Times. In fact, the power outage for residents who live in Queens made it only mid-way through a piece on the heat wave's impact on the transit system in Metro.

New York Post? Made page 13 (perhaps not enough room with very important updates required on the "Sex Scandal Love Shack")

Daily News? A little better at page 8

At least you can rely on Newsday and NY1.

The city's official Web site, www.nyc.gov, is quiet except for a passing note on the upper right about the public schools being closed in LIC. Where is the Mayor?

Nothing on the blogs that purport to keep us up to date on what's happening in New York City. More important stuff to talk about, like how much Jeanine Pirro spent to put her ads up on their air and whether Joe Lieberman will run as a Republican.

Jesus. If it were a couple thousand residents and small business owners on the Upper East Side, as opposed to Long Island City, I can't help thinking we'd get better headlines. In fact, I could barely walk around all the press gathered just because some guy blew up his house on 62nd street.

What's with the blackout on the blackout?

Andrea Batista Schlesinger: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 3:06 PM, Jul 20, 2006 in New York
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