Hey, not trying to pile on Lawrence Toppman, who for months has been pulling double-duty as the Uptown paper’s movie and theater critic, but good heavens!
Is he not aware that Stanford Financial Group honcho Allen Stanford has been charged by federal authorities with running an $8 billion Ponzi scheme? The criminal investigation of Stanford and other top execs is the proximate cause of the shuttering of the local Stanford office, which was the title sponsor — to the tune of $120K a year — of the Blumenthal Broadway Lights series Toppman spent about 70-inches of newshole hawking in today’s paper. (Aside: I though the paper needed ad revenue. Why give it away?)
Toppman’s readers were given no hint of Stanford’s legal trouble, not with:
The current economy has affected the new season in two obvious ways, one good and one bad. Season subscribers can now buy tickets with four equal payments, the last one not due until the season is underway. And the local branch of Stanford Financial Group, whose parent company has suffered brutal financial reversals, did not pick up its $120,000 option to back the Broadway Lights series after three years of sponsorship.
That darn, feckless economy! Not clear at all why you would leave out a factual detail in favor of an editorial judgment. Unless.
Unless the entire point of doing the 70-in. story was to “help out” the Blumie series because of its relationship with the now-tainted Stanford name. If that is the case, then I really have a hard time feeling sorry about all the layoffs at MNI Uptown. There is a real need and demand for local news. Local spin? We won’t miss it a bit.
