Tommy Karr

This week, The New York Times published a story in the Real Estate section chronicling one NYU student’s desperate and harrowing search for peace and quiet away from the raucous noise of the campus dorms.

I have two issues with this article.

1.  While I do have some sympathy for Vanessa Csordas-Jenkins’ condition (according to the article she suffers from a sleep disorder), I find it hard to feel full compassion for those individuals who are, as best as I can tell, so entitled and who have been, as much as I can surmise from the article, so pampered by their parents.

Does Ms. Csordas-Jenkins know how many people in New York would be thrilled to have access to ANY home, much less a ground-floor studio on Sullivan Street… or as she calls it “a dark little hole.”

According to the Coalition for the Homeless, as of June 2013 there were an all-time record 53,270 homeless people, including 12,701 homeless families with 22,625 homeless children.  And research shows that the primary cause of homelessness, particularly among families, is a lack of affordable housing.  So, while these 53,270 people can not afford the $1,795/month studio that Ms. Csordas-Jenkins found hovel-ish, I’m sure they’d be happy to have a roof and four walls of ANY kind.

The second apartment she looked at was on East 25th and 2nd Avenue but it “was too far from campus” and “She knew she would fret about rising early enough for class.” I live in Brooklyn and my commute, door to door, is roughly 45 minutes. I have to get up early and I have to walk a fair distance to get to my train that then takes me to midtown.  I’m not jealous of her ability to pick and choose her walkability.  I just find her attitude lazy.

She then found a studio in a Pre-War building in Union Square. “She texted pictures to her parents, who also liked what they saw, and agreed to the rent of $2,100 a month. ‘I am grateful for my parents because I know how expensive my tuition is,’ Ms. Csordas-Jenkins said.”

So not only are her parents paying her rent but it sounds like they are also paying her tuition. Again, kudos to her for coming from a family that can and will support her. But that’s a privileged life and not one, I’d suspect, that a good swath of college students are familiar with.

My point being, Ms. Csordas-Jenkins is in for a rude awakening when college is over and she is paying her own way to survive in the city while she pursues her acting career.  Let’s assume she gets her Equity card right out of school. According to Actors’ Equity’s 2012 statistics, less than half (42.6%) of Equity actors were employed during the year and those actors only worked an average of 16.1 weeks!  The Median Member Earnings? $7,256. Talk about a hard knock life. Do some excel at it? Sure do and I wish Ms. Csordas-Jenkins the best in her endeavors.

2. I’m also frustrated that this is what passes for news. Yes, written by Joyce Cohen, this is part of an ongoing piece in the Real Estate section of The New York Times but still, I honestly thought it was an Onion article when I first saw the headline in my Facebook newsfeed.

I wrote to thehunt@nytimes.com and also to the person who, by searching “Editor Real Estate” on the Times website, I assumed was responsible for approving the article.  Admittedly heated, I wrote:

I am appalled that you wasted time and money writing an article about a spoiled little girl who didn’t want to succumb to the everyday “perils” of plebeian life in the dormitory.  I’m even more appalled that I fell for the trap… I had assumed that a New York Times Real Estate article would have something substantial to say. Is real news so hard to come by? Or does this young woman have an uncle at the Times who owed her a belated birthday present?  If the latter, he’s done her no favor by giving the public a reason to plaster her face across social media with a fervor and vehement loathing for her privileged attitude. Is this really “All the News That’s Fit to Print?”

I received an email back from Penelope Green, the woman who, by virtue of the Times search engine, I understood to be the editor of the Real Estate section. I would later find out that this information was incorrect.  Ms. Green wrote:

hello, i didn’t write this piece! respectively, penelope green, reporter, home section

I would normally be satisfied that someone had acknowledged my letter and had given it some thought, but that was not the case here and I felt the need to reply. I explained that I felt her dismissive attitude to criticism from her readers was as appalling as the article in question. I also pointed out that “respectively” was misused in her reply.

Ms. Green apologized and explained that she was not the editor nor did she mean to be infer any tone. I explained to her how I had found her in the Times search system as the Editor for the Real Estate section and suggested she ask that this error be corrected in their database.  In the meantime, Louis Lucero II, Assistant to the Senior Editor for Standards, also replied to my email.

Dear Mr. Adkins,

Thank you for your initial email. We appreciate feedback both good and bad on our coverage, and we’re always interested to know when our readers are deeply disappointed (or, alternately, very disappointed.). Personally, I think the story you refer to was a perfectly fine piece about a phenomenon in New York City living with which I was previously unfamiliar. The role of a newspaper is not to celebrate the subjects of its coverage, nor to castigate them: Its role is to report on them, which is precisely what the writer did here.

In the future, please direct all comments on New York Times coverage to nytnews@nytimes.com. I’m not sure what search results you encountered that led you to contact Ms. Green, but she could not be more unaffiliated with this story, nor is she the person to contact with complaints.

Furthermore, I’m unsure how you could have possibly interpreted her 12-word message as “condescending,” “flippant” and “dismissive,” but I suppose that’s water under the bridge now.

Mr. Lucero’s reply was possibly more offensive than the article that I originally had a problem with.  I replied:

Dear Mr. Lucero,
I appreciate your response but I still hold firm to my belief that this story does not abide by the standards that The New York Times is generally known for. Unless the focus of the story was to compare prices of dormitories and off-campus options, this is not news. To fill your Real Estate (section and actual space) with a story about an entitled college student whose standards are unrealistic is simply, to put it mildly, an offense to The New York Times of yore.

And just as I can interpret your statement, “I’m unsure how you could have possibly…” as being supercilious, I can interpret Mr. Green’s response as dismissive since she originally only said “hello, i didn’t write this piece! respectively [sic], penelope green”. If she had any felt any value for The New York Times and its readers, Ms. Green could have instead responded with something like, “Thank you for your response. Unfortunately I am unaffiliated with this article. Your message would best be served by contacting….” So yes, it was dismissive. And if you consider this “water under the bridge” then I suppose you also consider losing a reader “water under the bridge” as well. There is very clearly a lack of concern for the thoughts of your readers, whether you agree with them or not.

In regard to how I connected Ms. Green to the story, that was done through a search on your website’s search feature as I keyed in “Editor Real Estate” and her contact information was provided. So, that’s why she received my letter. Once again, information that The New York Times provided was sadly useless. I suggest you have your database checked for other erroneous information.

Now that I have Mr. Goss’ email address, provided to me by Ms. Noel Millea, I’ve copied him on this message so that he can read and do with my thoughts what he will.

I can only surmise from my communications with Times staff thus far that your standards, and readers, can consider themselves damned.

In the end, I doubt anyone at the Times cares one way or another about my thoughts on their ridiculous article or how they’ve helped paint Ms. Csordas-Jenkins in such a negative light.  A search on Google or Twitter will give you a quick glimpse at the level of eye-rolling going on. Gawker and Brooklyn Magazine have both mocked the Times.  Even Someecards has posted a diatribe, mocking the Times for this asinine piece.

And on Twitter, a number of posts have appeared like the ones below:

https://twitter.com/BrianMontopoli/statuses/429349662126919680

Both points make me sad for New York.  The fact that this type of young adult is becoming so much the norm in the city (and elsewhere no doubt) and that the Times considers it news.