"The scenery has been upgraded, with laptops and iPads now replacing more cumbersome computer terminals, and the phalanxes of daily tabloid and weekly magazine reporters reduced to a handful, their ranks replaced by staffers from online organs whose pedigrees barely stretch past the de Blasio administration. Still, the big "Pee Here" target, a prop from independent candidate Bo Deitl's protest over de Blasio's downgrading of the penalties for public urination, must have been hanging on the wall in the back corner of the room"
"The personnel have, likewise, been refreshed. But then when I covered my first budget-for the late, lamented Village Voice, during Ed Koch's third term-City Hall was still a genuinely public building. It was easily accessible to any New Yorker with a grievance, many of whom could be found holding forth on its steps at almost any hour of the day or night."
Mamdani begins his term maintaining a strong sense of political theater while modernizing press operations. The press room shows updated equipment like laptops and iPads and far fewer tabloid and magazine reporters, replaced by online staffers linked to the previous administration. A long-standing protest prop still hangs in the room. City Hall staff were refreshed, but public access has shifted since earlier eras when City Hall was genuinely open to public grievances. Security tightened after 9/11 requires visitors to pass checkpoints and X-ray machines to reach City Hall Park, reducing outside political theater even as the internal architecture of city government remains recognizable.
Read at The Nation
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