Consolidation of Free Papers amNewYork and Metro Spells Bad News for Local Journalism

Rob Kim/Getty Images

New York has a new paper — or rather, two already existing papers have been bundled together to make one.

Monday marked the launch of a free daily commuter tabloid called amNewYork Metro, the result of amNewYork and Metro, which were recently acquired by the local news conglomeration Schneps Media, having been consolidated into one publication. Schneps, which owns several newspapers in New York, including Queens Courier, Brooklyn Paper and Bronx Times, purchased amNewYork from Newsday Media Group in October and Metro’s New York and Philadelphia assets within the past couple of weeks.

The high-profile acquisitions are a coup for Schneps, which in recent years has been expanding its presence in New York.

“This is an exciting next step for our entire organization,” CEO Joshua Schneps, who runs the company with his mother, Victoria Schneps-Yunis, said in a statement announcing the new paper, “offering a unique opportunity to strengthen our position in the daily newspaper market and increase our readership to over 2.5 million readers in print each week and many more online.”

The newly created paper is in a somewhat rarefied position. If it wanted to, it could try to compete with the city’s major tabloids, the New York Post and New York Daily News, whose long-term fate has been in question since Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that has a reputation for strip-mining newspapers around the country, acquired a sizable stake in Tribune Publishing, which owns the News.

But those who are familiar with Schneps Media’s managerial practices say that such competition is unlikely — and that the acquisitions are, on the whole, bad news for the future of local journalism in New York.

Since amNewYork’s acquisition last fall, when all but two of its editorial employees were let go, the paper has been hollowed out, according to a source with knowledge of what transpired at the paper. That has meant forgoing investigations and substantive coverage of transit, among other things, in favor of lighter fare, such as puff pieces on businesses.

The coverage diminished in quality so greatly, the source said, that readers called in to say they would be switching to Metro — which was launched in 2004, a year after amNewYork hit the streets.

Now that Metro is gone — its New York staff was laid off on Friday, though Joshua Schneps told the Post that he intends to rehire some of those employees — there are limited options for readers who relied on the free print newspapers on their commutes to and from work.

“I don’t respect their news judgement,” a former editor at a Schneps newspaper who was laid off within the past two years said of amNewYork Metro’s owners. “I think in general their approach toward the news is very conventional, mainstream, uncreative and uninteresting.”

The former editor added that the Schneps are “really about cutting costs to the bone.” For example, in an effort to save money, Schneps Media outsourced much of its production work to Ukraine during the editor’s tenure, which often led to communication issues as well as errors being printed.

Joshua Schneps did not deny that Schneps outsources some of its production to work to Ukraine but said in an email to Mediaite that “the majority of our creative is done in house.”

“The quality of our journalism, our continued investment in print and digital media, our diversification through events and broadcasting and our success speaks for itself,” Schneps added. “You can’t be successful in media at this time without being creative and appealing to your readers. It’s unfortunate that a former disgruntled employee seeks to smear our company by making completely false statements.”

The first issue of amNewYork Metro, though full of ads, is plagued with production issues, with a period missing from the first sentence of the first news item announcing the consolidation. Even “Schneps Media” is misspelled in that story, as “SchnepMedia.” There are also random paragraph breaks and a story on Josh and Benny Safdie, the directors of Uncut Gems, that ends mid-sentence.

Several of the stories are from the Associated Press, while others appear to be syndicated from Schneps’ stable of papers. The paper’s editor is Robert Pozarycki, previously of the Queens Courier.

“Integrating two companies is never easy and we are proud of the first issue of the combined newspaper,” Schneps told Mediaite.

“What makes the Schneps so pernicious is that they print blow jobs and soft features sprinkled with one or two news articles a week that don’t really challenge the other two categories,” Gersh Kuntzman, who runs Streetsblog and previously edited Brooklyn Paper before it was purchased by Schneps Media two years ago, said in a phone interview with Mediaite.

Vince DiMiceli, a former longtime editor at Brooklyn Paper who worked for two months under Schneps ownership before being laid off, agreed.

He told Mediaite that, during his time working for Schneps Media, he was asked to write favorable articles about business owners who were friendly with the Schneps. He was also instructed to write positively about local judges, who decide whether lucrative legal notices get published, he said.

Schneps Media was founded by Victoria Schneps-Yunis in 1985, when she launched the Queens Courier. Since then, the company has grown into a local news behemoth, with a vast stable of newspapers and magazines and a thriving events business.

Schneps Media’s success as a business operation has not mirrored that of New York’s local news industry, which has struggled to survive. The Daily News, for instance, is a shell of its former self, having endured a slew of layoffs and ownership changes over the past few years. In 2018, the Village Voice was shuttered, and in 2017, DNAinfo was shut down after its editorial staff attempted to unionize. The New York Times’ metro coverage is often substantive but not what it once was.

Some bright spots include a relaunched Gothamist under the WNYC banner and The City, a nonprofit news operation dedicated to local policy issues, though such examples are rare.

It remains to be seen if amNewYork Metro will prove to be a valuable news source for New Yorkers, but early signs are not promising. “Over all, it really does look like a pennysaver to me,” the former editor who was laid off from a Schneps newspaper within the past two years said of the inaugural issue. “They might have more daily circ than the News or Post, but it’s not on par with them as a paper or a good read.”