A bone marrow drive for a Forest City employee (and "Deputy Chief") gets much press attention. The Barclays Center fine for noise does not.

It's always public spirited, isn't it, when a news publication devotes valuable real estate to trying to save lives, especially when the person was a 9/11 responder.

So on one level it's admirable that so many New York City news outlets have spread the word that members of the public can help Barclays Center head of security Steve Bonano and others by registering as a bone marrow donor today and tomorrow in Downtown Brooklyn. (Details below; here's general info on the "delete blood cancer" drive.)

But the widespread and in some cases very prominent placement of the news also say something troubling about the press's willingness to accommodate the p.r. efforts of developer Forest City Ratner and the ease of filling space with press release information.

After all, it's quite easy to rewrite a press release and slap it into print (and pixels).

But without a press release, exactly zero of the press outlets have published some even more legitimate news: informing the public that Forest City Ratner, via an affiliate, last week paid a $3200 fine for a noise violation at the Barclays Center, though concert noise is still leaking into residences. (It's not hard to learn of that news, even without a press release. I reported it, and the word was spread by outlets like Curbed.)

In the Daily News

The most prominent coverage, Bone marrow drive to benefit 9/11 hero cop battling blood cancer possibly tied to Ground Zero work,  as noted in the screenshot above right, was even promoted near the top of the New York Daily News home page:

The clock is ticking for a hero in distress.
Retired NYPD cop and 9/11 first responder Steven Bonano is battling a rare form of blood cancer believed to be tied to his time working at Ground Zero.
Now his new employer is racing to save his life.
Forest City Ratner, which last year enlisted Bonano to head security at the Barclays Center, will host a bone-marrow registry drive in downtown Brooklyn on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Could that have anything to do with the fact that the Daily News is the Barclays Center's business partner, sponsoring the arena plaza?

The "Deputy Chief" poster


Part of the prominence in the press may have been nudged by the way Forest City and its affiliates framed the issue, describing the retired Bonano as "Deputy Chief" and picturing him in his former rather than current uniform.



The New York Post

The Post got the ID right.


From DNAinfo

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

From Metro

From amNY

Note three (!) typos (Ratner, driver, Barclays) yet uncorrected.

From Patch

This was posted by a staffer at BerlinRosen, one of Forest City's public affairs consultants.

From DowntownBrooklyn.com

This is the website of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, in which Forest City has significant influence.

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SKDKnickerbocker back in the news; chief-of-staff in NYC office was FCR flack; firm produced misleading Atlantic Yards brochures

News that Audrey Gelman, spokesperson for Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer (and occasional actress on Girls) is going to the consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker reminded me to take a look at the firm (previously known as Knickerbocker SKD) and its multiple Atlantic Yards connections, producing propaganda on behalf of the project and hiring a former Forest City Ratner flack..

The NYC chief-of-staff

The Chief-of-Staff in the New York City office is Loren Riegelhaupt, famously known for saying:, on behalf of Forest City, "When it comes to sharing information with the public and governmental bodies, there’s no such thing as too much, as far as we are concerned." DDDB went to town on the developer's consistent violation of that pledge.

From the SKDKnickerbocker web site:

Loren is a communications veteran specializing in directing corporate communications, crisis management and public affairs campaigns. Throughout his career, Loren has successfully delivered multifaceted national and regional campaigns by uniting and managing community leaders, elected officials and the media behind his clients’ missions and objectives.

Prior to joining SKDKnickerbocker, Loren served as Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC), one of the largest development companies in New York and owner of the NBA Nets franchise. As part of his duties, Loren handled all external communications for the multibillion-dollar firm. He also managed the development and implementation of the multi-year integrated public affairs campaign for the Atlantic Yards project resulting in multiple positive editorials in the New York Post, Daily News and New York Times.

Loren has worked in public relations for more than 10 years serving as a public relations, crisis management and public affairs consultant, advising and leading clients facing regulatory, legislative and public interest issues. Most prominent among Loren’s efforts was Madison Square Garden’s (MSG) campaign against the proposed New York Jets football stadium on the West Side of Manhattan.

Loren is a graduate of Colgate University, where he earned a B.A. in English in 1997.

Previous coverage



As I wrote 5/10/06, Forest City Ratner's recent reality-bending brochure was the equivalent ofs a political campaign, produced by KnickerbockerSKD, which has worked on political campaigns and strategic communciations for major players, including Mayor Bloomberg. After all, why would the third page of the flier (right) offer a distorted fisheye photo, implying that the 8.5 acres of railyards constitute the majority of the 22-acre site.

And just as newspapers like the Times regularly evaluate political commercials (including those by this firm) for accuracy, they should do the same for such developer p.r.. They didn't, and they haven't.

The only previous acknowledgement of the consultant's role was a 10/14/05 article by the New York Times, headlined To Build Arena, Developer First Builds Bridges, which stated:

Forest City Ratner also contracted with Knickerbocker SKD, a media consultant, to produce two promotional mailings, each going to more than 300,000 households in Brooklyn.

That's strategy, not analysis.


There was no attempt by the Times to evaluate the content of those mailings, though the first one, especially, was deeply deceptive. For example, the flier (right) quoted gushing praise for the plan attributed to the New York Times, as if it were the newspaper's editorial voice, rather than identifying it as a statement from then-architectural critic Herbert Muschamp.


Firm history


In a 1/7/02 New York Observer article headlined "Cuomo Gets Young Turks For 2002," WNYC's Andrea Bernstein reported that Josh Isay had formed a firm with Dan Klores--founder of the dkc firm handlings p.r. for Forest City Ratner.


KnickerbockerSKD emerged later, and an April 201 merger produced the new firm.

The 2/22/11 profile in Capital NY, How former liberal operative Josh Isay became the default paid-media guy to the New York establishment,stated:

Both the corporate and the political clients ostensibly benefit from the same essential asset: Isay’s knowledge of how reporters, politicians and regulators process information.

Here's the bottom line regarding Isay's choice of political clients, which likely applies to corporate clients, as well:

Certainly, he will not feel constrained by any sense of partisan duty. (As one of Isay's consultant friends put it, "Josh is highly motivated by making profit, which is fine.")

As I wrote 10/16/06, there was another connection: Belated Boyland filings show she outraised Montgomery, used same firm as Ratner.

Overdue campaign finance filings from 18th Senatorial District candidate Tracy Boyland, who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent (and Atlantic Yards opponent) Velmanette Montgomery, show that the former City Council member, despite a candidacy launched two months before the September primary, indeed raised more than the $100 she reported at election time.

Was Boyland, in fact, the "Ratner candidate," as some charged? Not exactly, but there were some signficant intersections. As predicted by a source in the Crain's Insider, Boyland indeed used the same consulting firm--Knickerbocker SKD--that FCR uses for its deceptiveAtlantic Yards mailers. (As noted, Boyland told the Brooklyn Papers that she's friends with FCR's Bruce Bender, a former top City Council aide.)

Boyland spent $37,000 on Knickerbocker SKD's services. The candidate, who made virtually no publicly scheduled campaign appearances and avoided questions from reporters and newspaper editorial boards, inundated voters with mailings and also had campaign workers put up numerous posters and hand out literature outside polling places.

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"Posing for holy cards": how the press gets reminded of team/arena civic virtues, but misses more questionable issues

“News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising,” the British publisher Lord Northcliffe famously said, and while that may be sweeping, it's a good frame to analyze how and when certain press coverage emerges.

As I wrote 3/10/13, If the New York Times says so, then you know it's true: Nets Make Full Effort to Fit Into Brooklyn.

That article, focusing on an unspecified donation to a Brooklyn Boys & Girls Club by Nets/arena CEO Brett Yormark, surely was generated by a p.r. pitch. (Remember, his longtime strategy was a press release a day.)

In other words, advertising. (The story's now on Patch, since the dedication event is tomorrow.) Also advertising-like is the coverage of principal owner Mikhail Prokhorov's expression of happiness that the team would make the playoffs.

By contrast, consider the non-coverage of the news that the lowest price for Nets tickets next year will rise to $25, from a much-hyped $15 in the inaugural season.

To report that would mean not relying on the Nets' shorthand that prices, overall, would rise 8 percent, but to do a little work--to compare the charts for each season. Actually, it would require not much work, since a spreadsheet-savvy Nets fan did it himself.

The need for "antimanipulation"

It all makes me wonder how often people in the news business remind themselves of the need for "antimanipulation," that deliciously apt topic in a progressive Russian school, as described in Clifford Levy's 9/15/11 Times Magazine article My Family’s Experiment in Extreme Schooling:

New Humanitarian had standard subjects, like history and math, and Danya had many hours of homework a week. But Bogin added courses like antimanipulation, which was intended to give children tools to decipher commercial or political messages.

One example of such antimanipulation--completely routine in execution, but unusual since it went against the tide--was the 2/15/13 DNAinfo.com report Most Barclays Center Jobs Are Part-Time With No Benefits.

It was so unusual it made the back page (see bottom right) of a recent issue of the New Republic, as a staffer tallied "compelling" recent reading.

Another example: the Brooklyn Eagle's anomalously skeptical coverage, in January 2012, of developer Forest City Ratner's failure to hire the promised Independent Compliance Monitor for the Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement. That story could be written yet again, given the developer's flat statement last month, without regret, that there's no plan to hire such a monitor.

But the big news today, as the Daily News cover at left suggests, is that MTV's Video Music Awards show is coming to Brooklyn.

"The show last aired from New York in 2009, when it took place at Radio City," the Daily News reported, featuring enthusiastic quotes from Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Borough President Marty Markowitz about the boost to the local economy and the borough's image.

To the Post, MTV President Stephen Friedman cited "[t]The vibrancy and cultural prowess that's now coming out of Brooklyn – whether it’s the music scene, sports scene or food scene" and noted that many staff members live in Brooklyn.

“There is a lot of local pride with the young people who work there,” he added. “You don’t get that at a lot of other venues.”

Sure, they've been trained to be cheerful and prideful. Surely they are--to a point. But they still don't have health insurance.

"Posing for holy cards"

Consider the coverage of a recent competition for fans to design Brooklyn Nets-themed sneakers, with judging by players and the hip-hop star Fabolous.

The Nets and the Barclays Center frequently host such "community" events. They have their value, but those reporting on them should remember what they're not being told.

A 3/17/13 op-ed in the Times by Michael Mudd, a former executive VP at Kraft Foods, headlined How to Force Ethics on the Food Industry, offered a reminder:

Next time you hear of a big food or beverage company sponsoring an after-school physical activity program in your community, you can be sure they’ll say it’s to show “our company’s concern for our kids’ health.” But the real intent is to look angelic while making consumers feel good about the brand and drawing attention away from the unhealthful nature of the company’s products. “Posing for holy cards,” as one of my colleagues used to put it.

The Nets, too, "pose for holy cards." The product isn't unhealthy, but there's a corporation trying to make money, distracting from more complicated issues like worker pay, the cost of tickets, leaking bass, and some sweet land deals.

Similarly, consider the feature coverage (NY1, Bleacher Report) of the Barclays Center's "cool" elevator and underground rotating turntable.

Sure, it's an innovation, but it doesn't work so perfectly. In fact, delivery trucks often idle on nearby residential streets, as noted on Atlantic Yards Watch. They must not send out the right press releases.

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A history of Barclays Center giveaways: a year of free event tickets (yes) vs. a free suite for a year (not quite)

The Barclays Center got some positive publicity this past week for a giveaway, as in a Daily News article yesterday: She’s 1 in a million! Barclays Center celebrates its one-millionth guest:

Allison Barlow scored big at the Brooklyn Nets game Friday when she became Barclays Center’s 1 millionth customer — earning her two free tickets for every event there for a year.
...Jaws dropped, lights flashed and streamers exploded in the air as the modest mom passed through the turnstile for her second Nets game at the arena — leaving her husband and friends who accompanied her stunned.
...Barlow arrived at the arena around 7:30 p.m. — a 20-minute walk from her Park Slope home — and was promptly whisked away by Barclays owner Bruce Ratner.
...“All night long, people were saying congratulations,” she said. “Even before this happened, the center won me over. It’s great to see how Brooklyn it is.”

I suspect she was referring to the food, not the tax exemptions, financing scheme, public evasiveness, and Culture of Cheating.

Different promises and deceptions

The cost to give away two tickets to each event is surely acceptable, compared to the publicity value, especially if arena operators make it back on concessions.

Consider a previous promise that would have hit the bottom line, as explained in a 5/5/08 article in Crain's New York Business headlined Nets hold court on luxury suites:

Next week, the Nets will debut a prototype of their Frank Gehry-designed, $300,000-a-year Barclays Center corporate suites at a splashy party in their New York Times Building showroom.
To entice 185 of New York’s top CEOs to attend—and buy—the organization delivered a series of gifts over the past month, including a Tiffany key chain with a key, one of which will open a door to a free suite for the team’s inaugural season. 

Did arena operators ever announce a CEO who got a free suite? Nope. Surely they would have milked the publicity had it happened.

Consider how they milked the publicity of Jay-Z "buying" a suite--at least until it was revealed that he got it for free.

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PR Week salutes communications strategy behind Barclays Center and Atlantic Yards, cites "35 lawsuits"; Ratner's mantra: "We will figure it out"

In a 12/1/12 feature, PR Week reports, Game on at Brooklyn's Barclays Center: Leveraging Brooklyn's heritage and a celebrity superstar, the Barclays Center shoots and scores with effective comms. ("Comms" means "communications.)

They sure do, but that's partly because of a disengaged and manipulatable press. As a trade publication, PR Week chose to let the arena's spokesmen tout their successes, with nary a contrary word. Thus one major factual error was published, with other passages worth some skepticism.

There are some interesting tidbits:

But make no mistake, everything else in the reception area, including large poster-size historical images of Brooklyn and coffee table books celebrating the region's history, reminds you that your feet are firmly planted in downtown Brooklyn...
The receptionist is very patient. It's not the first time someone has called to speak to Brooklyn native Jay-Z, the celebrity hip-hop mogul who is a part owner of the team.
While his financial investment is relatively small, Jay-Z has generated a lot of PR buzz with his hands-on approach, participating in press conferences, famously kicking off the opening of the center with a series of sold-out concerts, and helping design the uniforms, logo, and brand identity for the new-look Nets.

Shouldn't a PR publication fact-check claims by Nets/arena CEO Brett Yormark that Jay-Z was "creator" of the logo, not merely a helper?

The Dan Klores connection

PR Week reports:

The story that leads up to the building of the center began almost 10 years ago. Bruce Ratner, chairman and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, shared his vision of buying the then New Jersey Nets and moving them to a new arena he was going to build in downtown Brooklyn with DKC agency head Dan Klores. It would be the largest development project in the borough's history.
Part of the agency team assigned to work on the project was Barry Baum, who as a kid growing up in Brooklyn was rarely without a basketball in his hand. He was a ballboy for the New York Knicks and later a sports writer for theNew York Post. Ratner subsequently hired Baum from DKC to work with Forest City Ratner, the Nets, and Barclays Center at the end of 2004 after the sale of the team had gone through.

Shouldn't such a connection, however much Klores himself is no longer part of his eponymous firm, merit disclosure in the bio attached to Klores' September essay for the New York Times Sport section?

The reversible jersey gambit

PR Week portrays Baum as smiling about "promoting unique initiatives,” such as free reversible jerseys, with opposing stars, in 2009.

Baum acknowledges criticism, but says, "We needed to ride the coattails of other great players.”

But it didn't just generate criticism, it provoked derision.

Dealing with skepticism

PR Week reports:

The organization also had to contend with considerable skepticism surrounding the project. Brooklyn hadn't had a team since 1957 when the Dodgers left for the West Coast. There were concerns over traffic congestion, displacing residents, and Forest City Ratner needed to rethink some elements of the project when faced with the recession. Changes included swapping out original architect Frank Gehry with Shop Architects and Aecom. And every change necessitated proactive messaging.

So, says DKC Managing Director Joe DePlasco, "Our message was about why these changes were made and how they did not change the initial vision of Atlantic Yards or the commitments made.”

What about Bruce Ratner repudiating the ten-year timeline to build the project previously endorsed by his company and the state?

How many lawsuits?

The article states:

“Over nine years there were 35 different suits brought against us,” adds Baum. “A lot of people in the community were against the project. That's no secret. There were a lot of steps over the last nine years that were challenging.” Forest City Ratner was successful in 34 out of 35 suits.

That's incorrect on two fronts. There weren't 35 different lawsuits--rather, closer to ten.

There may have been 35 different legal decisions. However, if we're counting legal decisions, Forest City Ratner and the state lost at least four--all part of same case calling for a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to evaluate the community impacts of a potential 25-year buildout.

The Ratner strategy: "we will figure it out"

PR Week reports:

“Bruce was never going to relent,” notes Baum. “He was determined. Every Tuesday morning at a meeting with the top people at Forest City he would end the meeting with ‘Don't worry, we will figure it out.' He gave everyone a lot of confidence. You never stopped believing because of him.”

‘Don't worry, we will figure it out.' 

Credit Ratner with significant adaptability--not just the above-mentioned changes but 2009 renegotiations with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Empire State Development, renegotiations that relied in part on compliant agencies controlled by project-supporting politicians.

The recent media strategy

PR Week reports:

“The strategy from groundbreaking to the day we opened was bringing media in on a regular basis to make sure they understood the progress being made,” explains Baum. “We let people know what's happening here and why it's going to be great for Brooklyn and got a lot of coverage. Brett would use that as a marketing tool to drive sales, whether it was tickets or sponsorships.”

This is nothing radical, but it is explicit: positive coverage is a marketing tool.

There's nothing wrong with recognizing the positive, but those who offer cheerleading coverage, without recognizing the complexity, should know they're helping Yormark sell.

The early strategy

PR Week reports:

Early on, campaigns created a rallying cry around bring-ing a home team back to Brooklyn and focused messaging and activities around jobs, housing, and hoops. Players attended community events and spoke at schools. The arena entered into a community benefits agreement, a legal document that promises jobs and housing.

Those players highlighted earlier--notably Jason Kidd, Vince Carter, and Richard Jefferson, then even Devin Harris--are long gone. That "legal document" has many holes in it.

Arena hiring

DePlasco says the new arena staffers, most without experience working at such a facility, "did a phenomenal job."

Well, they have been trained to be very cordial, but not all of them are doing such a great job if the arena--as it seems--is already hiring replacements.

Arena food

The involvement of Brooklyn food vendors has turned out just as they wanted:

It was an important element in the arena's experience and Baum wanted the news to take center court – his sights were set on The New York Times. “My goal was to get a story in the dining section,” he says. “I spent a long time crafting that food program pitch.”
Baum arranged for a Times reporter to meet Ratner, but the icing on the black-and-white cookie from Beigel's was when Baum arranged for the reporter and Ratner to be escorted around the entire concession concourse with the vendors open, owners standing outside their restaurants, and staff on hand to serve.
The tasting tour was a three pointer in media relations. The New York Times ran the story online first on September 21 to coincide with the arena's opening, ran in print on September 26 on the first page of the dining section, and again online the same day.

What next?

The article closes:

“We are focused on the future and communicating that the other parts of the project are important, if not more important,” says DePlasco. “That involves housing and all the jobs that go into building it.”

Those are construction jobs--which Forest City claims (and I'd like to see an independent assessment)--would be in the same number for modular construction as for conventional construction.

The once-promised 10,000 office jobs, and even the several thousand office jobs slated for the flagship tower over the arena place, are not part of the "comms" strategy.

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