Results tagged “peterjennings”

No more naming streets like Joey Ramone Place, Peter Jennings Way, Bob Marley Boulevard, or Jerry Orbach Way. If one City Council member gets his way, the commemorative naming of streets would stop because it's too much of a time waster for the council. James Oddo, the council's minority leader from Staten Island, wants to give the Department of Transportation the authority to approve new street names. Currently, the City Council has to approve the names after they are approved by local community boards. We find it shocking that a politician wants to give away power.

There's Joey Ramone Place and Peter Jennings Way. But getting a street named after the city's arguably most famous TV detective who was also a Broadway legend is no easy task. The NY Times has the full story about the quest for Jerry Orbach's name to grace a street corner. Specifically the corner of West 53rd and 8th Avenue, where he and his wife Elaine Orbach lived.

READING: The New School's wonderful public lectures and reading series are back in swing as the school year revs up, and tonight, the ethereal Mary Gaitskill will discuss her book (a National Book Award finalist) with moderator Jeffrey Renard Allen. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras

Yesterday saw the unveiling of Peter Jennings Way on West 66th Street (outside the ABC News headquarters). Jennings became an American citizen two years before his death, lived on the Upper West Side, and love the city dearly. Even WNBC 4 mentioned the street naming last night!

Rachel Sklar, co-editor and writer of FishbowlNY

Peter Jennings, the ABC News anchor up until this past April when he announced he had lung cancer, died last night at his Central Park West home. The NY Times obituary describes him as "urbane", which definitely rings true: Of the Big Three anchors, Dan Rather was blunt and straight-talking, Tom Brokaw was more paternalistic, and Jennings was simply smooth. Jennings was an international journalist at heart, relishing the opportunity to report from overseas, notably being the first bureau chief for an American station in an Arab country (Lebanon, 1968). Other parts of Jennings' personal background were interesting to the public: The fact that he was Canadian, how he was a high school drop out, and his three marriages. This morning, Tom Brokaw calls Jennings his and Rather's "prince," as the three anchors were good friends. It really is the end of an era of news anchors; the only ones we can think of these days are Brian Williams (we watched a lot of MSNBC in our day) and Bob Schieffer (he's been around forever).

While Gothamist hasn't been watching much Dan Rather lately (we do love David Letterman's montages of various Ratherisms), we are a bit sad. When we were little, we'd watching the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather with our parents, and afterwards, we'd play "pretend anchor" with pages and pages of scribbles. Dan, we'll miss you.

For our money, we're enjoying the pictures of Ron Reagan, who interviewed Michael Moore, taking the future of America on a pub crawl, via MSNBC's Hardblogger. Gothamist is sure someone is live-blogging the convention. Also, since Gothamist thinks it's going to be a little slow in NY, news-wise, for the next month, as everyone gears up for the Republican National Convention, so expect more posts on animals!

Elizabeth Spiers

From both the "hee-hee" and "ew!" lobes of the brain, Gothamist brings you Lloyd Grove's piece about the mis-captioning on ABC News:

Gothamist saw funeral mourners starting to gather outside of St. Patrick's Cathedral today, to remember David Bloom. We were surprised that the police were setting up barricades, as David Bloom, while a popular journalist, was not the most famous. But, as parts of his funeral was covered on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, it's clear that he symbolizes something bigger than just journalism: a passion for his work, rapport with the audience, the public's desire to connect with an event...