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The BQE Media Synergy Dozens of media properties
BQEMedia is a company with long standing, well-established media properties in Brooklyn and Queens. Since 1873 the flagship Queens Ledger has been delivering the news every week to the DELIVERING NEWS SINCE 1873 Queens community. We now have SIX weekly newspapers along with related web sites which cover distinct areas of Queens - which now has 2.3 million residents. The Greenpoint Star, first established in 1881 still lives.We have TWO weekly newspapers in Brooklyn, which boasts 2.5 million residents. We’re not just newspapers, TV show, websites, magazines & mobile news.
BQE Media owns and operates: • EIGHT weekly-community 48-page newspapers; State Holds K. Bridge Hearing in Greenpoint Page 3 APRIL 27, 2007 VOLUME 5 NUMBER 3
35¢
Greenpoint
Star
PRST STD U.S. Postage PAID Flushing NY Permit No. 652
& Weekly Northside NEWS
Demo Work the Real Thing Judge won’t stop demolitions before hearing; protest argues action remains premature
This Week Rubber Pellets Deadly? PA Wants New Park Turf Studied p. 21
Borough Border Gets New Train Station
B Y N ORMAN O DER The Atlantic Yards project took another step forward in the past week, but questions remain about its timetable and its future. State Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden last Friday refused to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) that would have blocked developer Forest City Ratner (FCR) from continuing demolitions of properties it owns within the 22-acre Atlantic Yards site before a preliminary injunction to block further demolitions can be argued in court on May 3. The TRO had been sought by Develop Don’t
Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) and the 25 other neighborhood and civic groups challenging the legitimacy of the state’s environmental review of the project. Success in court would not stop the project but would force the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) to reopen the environmental impact statement-which would lead to delays, at minimum, and possible changes in the project. In response, DDDB and allies organized a protest Monday morning, arguing that the demolitions are premature, given that FCR cannot build the project until the environmental lawsuit,
as well as a pending eminent domain challenge in federal court, are resolved. More than 80 people gathered on Flatbush Avenue near the corner of Fifth Avenue, carrying signs that criticized Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Governor Eliot Spitzer for creating blight, and urged Spitzer to fulfill his reformer’s pledge by turning to Atlantic Yards. While Forest City cannot indeed build the Atlantic Yards arena and the surrounding five towers in the project’s first phase until the lawsuits are resolved, an executive for the developer argued in court papers that an intricate schedule had been established in which certain buildings would
be demolished first, leaving time for demolition of buildings to be acquired later by eminent domain. That would get the arena built by its scheduled 2009 opening date, a crucial deadline, given that the New Jer Continued on page 24
Park It Right Here
ExxonMobil’s
p. 25
Developer Picked to Transform Old Navy Brig Site in Wallabout p. 27
People will often do as the weather dictates, and with temperatures rising recently, why not follow Mother Nature’s marching orders for a bit? This past weekend, flocks of folks were sighted venturing to McCarren Park for some outdoor relaxation, including strolling, sports-playing, sunbathing, and sitting on a blanket with friends and loved ones. And considering that it’s not even May yet, it seems a safe bet that there’ll be plenty more pictures like this in the near-future. (Photo by Phil Guie)
Read us on the web at www.greenpointstar.com
Greenpoint Man in Tagging Threesome Three Brooklyn men, including one from Greenpoint, have been charged with vandalizing an “L” train subway tunnel and two Long Island City buildings, incriminated by their own videotaping of the crime. The three men were identified as Miles Wickham, 22, (a/k/a “RESKEW,” “RSKW,” and “RW”), of 404 5th Street; Michael Baca, 22, (a/k/a “2ESAE” - pronounced Too Easy), of 545 Meeker Avenue; and Raul Mendez, 35 (a/k/a “DRO”), of 1738 East New York Avenue. All three are variously charged in a 43-count indictment, including criminal mischief, making graffiti and criminal trespassing. If convicted, each of the defendants faces up to seven years in prison. According to papers filed by the Queens District Attorney’s Office, the tagging trio entered an L subway tunnel be Continued on page 3
front page week of March 22 2007
ALL-GIRL'S PUBLIC SCHOOL MAKES WAY IN ASTORIA- see page 23 QUEENS
35¢
Queens Ledger, Greenpoint STAR, COPS Brooklyn Downtown STAR, Glendale REGISTER, BELL CHARGED INCASE Forest Hills / Rego Park TIMES, Leader / Observer of Woodhaven, Long Island City / Astoria JOURNAL, Queens EXAMINER Maspeth • Middle Village • Woodside • Elmhurst • Ridgewood & Greater Queens www.Queensledger.com
Founded 1873 I
Queens eensLedger I
Vol. 134 No. 33
DETECTIVE MICHAEL OLIVER
DETECTIVE MARC COOPER
Newspaper Group
Your Award Winning Weekly Community Newspaper
DETECTIVE GESCARD ISNORA
MIDDLE VILLAGE - MASPETH CIVIC GIVES, RECEIVES PRAISE
See page 27
MIDDLE VILLAGE RESIDENT EDWARD SHUSTERICH (SECOND FROM LEFT) AND HIS WIFE PAT (TO HIS RIGHT) HOLD AWARDS GIVEN TO THEM BY THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL AND THE MIDDLE VILLAGE MASPETH CIVIC ASSOCIATION LAST THURSDAY. THE AWARDS ARE IN HONOR OF EDWARD’S WORK BEAUTIFYING PULLIS CEMETERY. STANDING WITH THEM ARE COUNCILMAN DENNIS GALLAGHER (FAR LEFT) AND MVMCA PRES. JOE CIMINO (FAR RT).
USPS 452-580
March 22, 2007
QUEENS DISTRICT ATTORNEY RICHARD BROWN READS INDICTMENTS AT PRESS CONFERENCE ON MONDAY.
‘Compromise’ Indictments Anger Both Sides
BY NIK KOVAC Out of the now notorious 50 shots fired last November on Liverpool Street, 42 were fired by two men, police officers Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora. Isnora fired first, but it was Oliver’s bullets that killed Sean Bell on the morning the Queens native was to be wed. It is those two - and not the other three officers who squeezed off an additional eight rounds between them - who have been charged with felonies in connection with the death of Bell and the serious injuries to his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield. The indictments - made public this Monday at the Kew Gardens office of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown - were issued by a Grand Jury last Friday. Both Oliver and Isnora were charged with felony manslaughter and assault, and misdemeanor reckless endangerment. They each face up to 25 years in prison, if convicted. A third officer, Marc Cooper, was charged only with misdemeanor reckless endangerment. He fired four shots, all of which missed, and one of them went so astray that it crashed through a window of the nearby elevated Air Train station, coming within a few feet of hitting a passenger waiting on the platform. He faces up to one year in prison. (The two other officers, who fired three shots and one shot respectively, were not charged with any crimes.) Continued on page 3
CHECK US OUT - www.Queensledger.com
• A quarterly regional glossy 72-page magazine called It’s Queens • A “LIVE” 1 hr. TV show the 3rd Tuesday of each month at 8PM, called “The Independent” - which we cohost on QPTV.
BQE Media - Brooklyn/Queens EMedia Group - Main Office: 69-60 Grand Avenue, Maspeth, NY 11378 - 718-639-7000 5/10
• Eight hyper-local “New York Press Association Award Winning” news websites (same names as newspapers) with web based Community Marketplace for businesses. (giving search engine optimization to clients by building sites for them) We have eight “award winning” (web 2.1) news websites (one for each of our regional weekly papers) with stories, video, calendars of events, sports, twitter feeds, blogs and a Brooklyn/Queens business directory with 35,000 listings. The site is updated all day long, seven days a week. The sites are highly intelligent, interactive sites which allow readers to post their own blogs, events, place free classified ads, comment on stories and interact with all the members/readers and business customers of our Queens Ledger/ Greenpoint Star family. That makes much of the information ‘user generated.’ Business partners and customers become more involved with BQEMedia through our web sites. We offer search engine optimization and a business web site development plan which includes metatags, google map finding, video, classified ads, e-commerce, short texting, mobile landing page coupons and more. We build websites for businesses and make them part of our family of our news websites – which affords a healthy online business presence - all searchable.
• 8 Mobile Web Sites / short texting & client mobile landing page development platforms The proportion of US cellphone subscribers using smartphones jumped to 20% recently. - up from 7% in 2007. According to Forresrter Research data, more than 50% of smartphone owners have bought something over their phone not mobile related over the last six months. So mobile is a viable and important advertising platform for short texting and mobile landing pages..
Mobile Device Sites & Short Texting For Customer Branding & Targeting: Our business advertising customers are given the opportunity to target patrons through short texting (mobile texting through our master account), in order to create a one-to-one marketing tool. We send ‘short text’ mobile device customers coupons, messages and alerts from our clients. This enables you to collect the mobile information of your customers. Readers / customers who ‘opt-in’ are your best customers. We have a neighborhood local news alert service whereby if you text the name of your town (in our coverage area) ie: ForesHills to the short text 21-321, you are subscribed to our Forest Hills community short text system and will get news alerts for your town. GUESS WHAT: We also include local advertising in that news alert.
• Sports Leagues for Kids & Young Adults & An Online Community Sports Network R
HEROES BASKETBALL
Hyper-local Sports Leagues. Online Local Sports Network: Since 1990, our company has been operating a basketball and baseball league for youngsters in Brooklyn and Queens parks. Participants range in age from 8 – 21. Heroes Basketball League and Heroes Baseball League has nearly 1,000 participants each year through May and June. Participants join as a team or as individuals and we provide uniforms (with sponsor’s names on them) referees, scorekeepers and for tee-ball we give instruction. This effort allows BQEMedia to send a copy of one of our weekly papers to each participant, affords us the opportunity to put game results and summaries in our newspapers and on the web sites and it creates a great buzz in the community. As ten and twelve-year-old boys and girls see their names in the paper and on web sites. It allows us to grow with our business model of looking at our readers as members of our club. At www.BQESports.com we allow leagues of all sizes to promote themselves and offer the opportunity to network with other leagues in a web site with user generated content & more. Our Queens and our Brooklyn Community Sports Network online is a true hyper-local information sharing site which offers advertisers a chance to target their message to a growing crowd of young people and their families. A typical reader of a community newspaper might not be under 40 year old, but our sports leagues and media following sports is for young families and younger children.
• A Group of Social Networking Sites For communities of Web Users Our Social Networking Strategy includes consistent local newsy twitter feeds to our followers, short text news alerts for our towns (text ForestHills to 21-321) to be a member of one our hyper-local town news alert subscribers. We are building our reach and brand on a Social Networking Web Site service platform for our readers/members/partners under the name ‘BQELife’ and ‘Brooklyn Life’ in Brooklyn neighborhoods, as well as ‘Queens Life’ in neighborhood throughout Queens. The sites, to be run by our members and readers, allowing hyper-local interaction between readers, users and businesses. These web sites grow organically because the hyper-local groups can easily interact with each other to communicate, prosper and be proactive. New people will join every day. www.BQELife.com Actually, with the proprietary software platform we have developed groups build and grow a social network on a web site of their own without even consulting us. It includes news feeds, ads, events, a local proprietary search engine and local news columns that we generate from our own sites. It also offers neat tools so that the members of the site have a great web experience and reach out to multiple groups within our family of web sites. People gravitate to sites which share their passionate interests. They search the web and eventually find the content they desire – and have the ability to get it delivered any way they want it.
Magazine: It’s Queens – the Magazine is a quarterly magazine which is available on 650 newsstands throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. It is distributed by Hudson News, MMR as well as our in-house delivery service. It features businesses, movers & shakers and interesting tidbits. It is also the first regional magazine in New York distributed electronically on a ZMag digital platform. Pages come alive right in front of the reader on a computer, ipad or mobile device. Your customers are reading magazines and newspapers this way already. We just did it first – that’s all. It’s called ‘paginated media.’ See www.itsqueens.com
DO YOUR HOMEWORK! – CHECK OUT THE OTHER NEWS OUTLETS IN QUEENS AND BROOKLYN. WE ARE SURE YOU WILL JOIN ALL THE TOP COMPANIES WHO USE US TO GET THE WORD OUT ON YOU. Join the likes of Home Depot, Con Edison, Port Authority, NYC Department of Transportation, Keyspan, JFK Airport, Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, Federal Express, Brooklyn College, Queens College. We also have clients which include The NCAA, Airtran, NYC Fire and Police Department, J&R Music, Time Warner, GHI, HIP & Affinity Health Plans – plus hundreds of other top local and national advertisers. They see the value in advertising with us, so should you.
Our Business Model Sets Us Apart As ‘new world information distributors,’ our model sets us apart. We have developed products within the new technology as a means to be invited by the consumer to enter their world – and their community of inbound information. If they want us on newsprint, we’re there (8 weekly community newspapers), websites, syndication feeds, on facebook, twitter, a digital magazine version, a calendar of events through their wireless mobile device, we’re there. We help our businesses clients stay connected to our community – even as their community evolves. We offer a social networking venue where we will come into their home. It’s how news companies will be effective in the 21st century. Now we will get readers together in social networks, by categories of their passions, engaging the people and grouping them locally. Businesses are included as they can find the social category to which they can provide a service. We become an important part of their lives by being a dear old friend and a mentor to our longtime passionate readers. We are that friend who travels the community and the world as a part of OUR daily lives to provide the comfort of informed and meaningful dialogue of new and consistent information to our readers, which they now require in their daily lives as part of their world. To many, it’s brought to them in social media methods. That’s what sets us apart. At BQEMedia we use our weekly newspapers, various social media, blogs, mobile device publishing platform and traditional news web sites to energize them and make our communities vibrant. Our properties focus on coverage of events, special sales, calendars of events, crime news, death notices, birth announcements, our opinions, our reader’s opinions, profiles of important people and stories on businesses.