Mayor Bloomberg was once described as an antidote to the old urban politics. Today he's become an institution whose work could define a generation in government much like two other three-term mayors, Ed Koch and Robert Wagner.
Are the news media revising their views on Mayor Bloomberg in this election year? Can he hold on to the winning image of an independent, effective reformer three times in a row?
The Center for New York City Affairs convenes leading journalists to discuss changing perceptions of Mayor Bloomberg.
Bio
Wayne Barrett
Wayne Barrett is an American journalist. He has been an investigative reporter and senior editor for the Village Voice for over 20 years.
He is the author of many articles and books about politicians, especially New York City figures such as Ed Koch, Donald Trump, and Rudy Giuliani. He is a major interviewee in Kevin Keating's 2006 documentary Giuliani Time. He is also on the adjunct faculty of the Columbia Journalism School.
Dominic Carter
Dominic Carter is the Anchor of NY1's long-running news and commentary program focused on New York City politics, Inside City Hall. He has been a reporter and anchor for the network since its inception in 1992.
Robert George
Professor Robert George is a member of the President's Council on Bioethics and formerly served as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He was Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award.
He is the author of In Defense of Natural Law, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, and The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion and Morality in Crisis. He has published numerous scholarly articles and book reviews. Professor George is a recipient of many honors and awards, including a 2005 Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement and the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Teaching Award from Princeton's Department of Politics. He holds honorary doctorates of law, ethics, letters, science and humane letters.
Professor George is the 2007 John Dewey Lecturer in Philosophy of Law at Harvard University.
Errol Louis
Errol Louis was formerly an associate editor of The New York Sun. He has taught college courses, co-founded an inner-city community credit union, run for City Council and was once named by New York Magazine as one of 10 New Yorkers Making a Difference "with energy, vision and independent thinking."
He became a writer for the New York Daily News in June 2004. He also writes a column, Commerce and Community, for Our Time Press, which is published twice a month and based in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Louis is often featured on news television shows, including CNN's Lou Dobbs.
Louis holds degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Brooklyn Law School. He was raised in New Rochelle and lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife, Juanita Scarlett. He is the son of a retired NYPD inspector.
Joyce Purnick
Joyce Purnick resumed writing the Metro Matters column for The New York Times in the fall of 1999, after she spent two years in editing positions. Ms. Purnick had previously written the column from 1994 until 1997, and returned to it after deciding she preferred writing to managing. The twice-weekly Metro Matters column covers the government, politics and people of New York.
Ms. Purnick has had a distinguished career as a Times correspondent and columnist. After being named deputy editor of the Metro department, the largest news department of The Times, at the start of 1997, she became the first woman to head the section that same June.
Prior to this, she wrote the Metro Matters column from 1994 until becoming deputy editor of Metro. Previously, from 1989 until 1994, Ms. Purnick served on the paper's editorial board, writing opinion essays on urban affairs. She joined the paper in 1979 and has covered the state government in Albany, the New York City school system and New York's City Hall.
Ms. Purnick's Metro Matters column has won several awards, including the 1996-97 Mike Berger Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Columns she wrote about the fatal neglect of abused children by the city's welfare system were among The Times's writings that won a George Polk Award for metropolitan reporting in 1996.
Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush
Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush as Executive Editor of the nation's oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper. Vourvoulias-Bush is a veteran journalist and scholar with extensive experience leading editorial teams of notable publications. The appointment is effective June 1, 2005.
Why is it that when a right-wing leader seeks to extend term limits, as Bloomberg did in 2008, as Uribe recently did again (after succeeding to do just that previously), there's hardly a peep about in in the media - but when a left-wing leader does the same, the whole world is up in arms about it (Chavez) - even going so far as to de facto supporting the overthrow of such a leader (Zelaya)?
If the US population thought about ways to create value and wealth instead of chasing it and/or only talking about it, maybe the US and politics would be in a better position. If you don't like Bloomberg then why do so many people in this world use his products and services? If you don't like and/or agree with Bloomberg then why don't you compete with him in the marketplace? The USA are missing some fundamental values.
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