Parking ring rage: the rumors are true! (streetinfo.org)

Park Slope residents are fed up, and this time it's not about those ice cream pushers in the park.

The Brooklyn Paper, in an act of investigative derring-do,  has confirmed what residents have long suspected—a secret parking spot-saving scheme run by the doormen of pricey buildings on Prospect Park West.

The parking ring, long alleged by enraged local residents, is the real deal, the paper reports. Doormen hog parking spaces on street sweeping days, intentionally leaving unparkable half-spaces in front of and in back of cars, then shift the cars around for returning residents.

“I just use my car to hold a spot for them,” Vick Narain, a doorman at 44 Prospect Park West, told The Brooklyn Paper. “The minute there’s a space, it will be gone within five minutes; someone’s always looking for parking around here.”

Sneaky!

Mr. Narain also confessed to saving spots by standing in the road when alternate-side parking rules are enforced.

Other doormen denied involvement in the nefarious spot-saving parking ring, although they admitted to moving residents' cars on occasion.

Naturally, residents who must go it alone on the mean streets of Park Slope, without the aid of a doorman, are outraged by such tactics. Street sweeping makes parking miserable enough without unfair advantages.

“Sometimes you spend 30 or 45 minutes driving around looking for a spot,” resident Carolyn Byrd told The Paper. “It gets really contentious.”

Police say that such tactics are not illegal, but some residents have decided to take justice into their own hands, issuing homemade parking "citations" to space-wasting cars.

In true Park Slope form, the citations are two pages long.

kvelsey@observer.com

The Brooklyn Paper

In addition to teaching the craft of journalism, Mr. Kuntzman will oversee its practice on The Local-Fort Greene, CUNY's hyperlocal online news collaboration with The New York Times.

Prior to joining Paper in 2005, Mr. Kuntzman was a longtime columnist at The New York Post and Newsweek, and wrote books on baldness and Chrismukkah, as well as an off-Broadway play, SUV: The Musical.

Mr. Kuntzman had no comment on his successor, but applauded the work of his fellow editor Vince Dimiceli.

"The idea that The Brooklyn Paper could fall into bad hands is just a fallacy," Mr. Kuntzman said.

photo by Wired New York

The Great Media Thaw brought journalism job-hopping back in style (for the time being), but one outer-borough publisher is taking a stand.

On July 13, two weeks after Daniel Bush, a 20-something news editor and reporter for the Brooklyn Downtown Star and Queens Ledger, announced he’d be hopping to the Brooklyn Paper, his publisher Walter Sanchez filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against him, citing a six-month noncompete agreement in Mr. Bush’s contract.

Mr. Sanchez’s motion included a restraining order, which kept Mr. Bush out of the newsroom of his new employer—and in an unpaid limbo.

Although noncompetes are commonplace in the media industry, they’re rarely enforced, especially in a job market that’s flooded with unemployed hacks, and when reporters hold so few trade secrets.

When contacted about the move, Brooklyn Paper editor Gersh Kuntzman replied with a hint of sarcasm. “I’m unable to talk bout this vital aspect of journalism,” he said. (The Paper is owned by the tight-lipped News Corp.)

Yesterday Mr. Bush settled with his former publisher. He agreed to pay $2,200 for the right to begin his new job and to send an email to his former colleagues promising not to have any contact with them until October. In addition, he agreed to send another email to his news sources, explaining his departure and that he did not see “eye-to-eye” with the Ledger.

In the small world of community weeklies, Mr. Sanchez said, there simply isn’t enough room to hop around without diluting the brand, confusing sources and disadvantaging one’s old employer. “I had no choice,” he said of enforcing the agreement. “If I didn’t do it, all my other reporters would be like, ‘Why did I even sign this thing?’”

Mr. Bush, who won a New York Press Association award in 2010 for his investigative coverage of the Gowanus Canal cleanup, declined to comment. Perhaps he’d signed a nondisclosure as well.

Maybe he was right!

Today The Brooklyn Paper trumpeted: "We win--again! More awards for your Brooklyn Paper!"

The article continued,

The Brooklyn Paper has done it again — winning a trifecta of top awards at this weekend’s Independent Free Papers of America annual conference just outside of Chicago.

In a clean sweep, The Paper took home the coveted Vic Jose Award for General Excellence, the IFPA’s top honor.

That the paper has won the same award even under Mr. Murdoch is somewhat comforting. The fierce little paper under a big corporation still wins the same award it did as a fierce independent!

“We’re now a part of the most powerful newspaper family in the world," Kuntzman told the Observer on his staff's last night at their old Dumbo offices. "You can’t underestimate how excited we are!”

Cue the cameras! Mr. McLaughlin will be chronicling his search for love and shelter in a new weekly video segment called "The Search."

"It's a classic New York story," said his boss, Gersh Kuntzman.

Note the comments:

And it seems like the pageant organizers are keeping up with the times despite their 16-year lull. They’re “looking for someone outgoing and fun with spunk and spice to her. [A woman] who doesn’t fit the mold of Miss America from the 1960s and ’70s.” They’ve even gone and created a MySpace page! Although their Web site is looking a bit 1995.