Several weeks ago, this was the headline for a press release:
Mayor Bloomberg announces New York City's air quality has reached the cleanest levels in more than 50 years.
That's quite a claim. Most media outlets reporting this story cut and pasted from the press release; few bothered to delve into the report Bloomberg was citing, much less provide any meaningful perspective on its findings. I asked students in my urban environmental journalism class at CUNY to look beyond the headlines and place the story in a larger context. Below are their dispatches.New Yorkers are Breathing Cleaner Air Because of Natural Gas By Shannon Ayala New York City is a cleaner place to live because of fracking. Or at least a recent report from the Bloomberg Administration seems to indicate this. The mayor touted results from a fairly new city program called Clean Heat, which at its inception in 2011 ...
