Steven Thrasher

A Young Men's Initiative ad at a bus stop

​Last summer, Mayor Bloomberg rolled out the Young Men's Initiative, a "public-private partnership" that patted the mayor on his back for wanting to "help" young black and Hispanic men. The Voice and others pointed out that the initiative did nothing deal with the actual levers at the mayor's control to help such New Yorkers -- his locking up records numbers of black and Hispanic young men for weed arrests, his suspending record numbers of brown and black youngsters in schools, and his refusal to follow federal court orders to integrate the FDNY.

The Voice's report seemed to at least embarrass NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly to at least pretend to reign in illegal weed arrests due to stop-and-frisk, although we now know they largely continued.

Still, since his initiative was so widely mocked after a big roll out, we've heard little about it. When would the Mayor start spending his largesse on "helping" these men? Where would the big bucks go?

Now we know: to CEMUSA, apparently.

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via DJ Unicorn Thunder Hearts

Mayor Bloomberg visiting Occupy Wall Street.

​Yesterday evening Mayor Bloomberg visited Occupy Wall Street for a while, walking through the park and viewing the inhabitants (we missed him by about five minutes). What he saw combined with complaints from Brookfield Office Properties, which owns Zuccotti Park, has led the city to demand that the protesters clear the area Friday so it can be cleaned. Brookfield sent a letter to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly arguing that the conditions in the park have become "unsanitary and unsafe" and pose a danger to the occupants and their neighbors:

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Last week, we had the opportunity discuss our Voice feature story "The White Mayor's Burden" on Brian Vines's BCAT show Intersect. Vines invited us to join Dr. Noel Anderson of Brooklyn College to talk about Mayor Bloomberg's Young Men's initiative.

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​Despite Mayor Bloomberg's warnings, officials at Con Edison don't believe they will have to enact a preemptive shutdown of power systems tonight. Power cables suffer more damage from saltwater when they have current running through them, but according to the New York Times, tonight's storm and possible flooding won't result in them shutting down substations. Con Ed spokesperson Chris Olert told the paper, "we are not doing any shutdowns today, unless something erupts."

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​Bloomberg referred to Wal-Mart as "one of the great corporate citizens in this country" during a press conference yesterday to announce the company's four million dollar donation to New York City's Youth Employment Program. The donation will create 3,400 jobs, and Bloomberg says that's all that matters. While many are suspicious that this donation is part of Wal-Mart's campaign to open up a NYC location, Michelle Gilliard, a representative for the company's philanthropic division, insisted that the money was simply part of an ongoing effort to help children and "make a difference in the lives of New Yorkers."

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​Bloomberg View, the forthcoming editorial page at Bloomberg News -- under the umbrella of the media and data company Bloomberg L.P., founded and owned by Michael Bloomberg, New York City's three-term billionaire mayor -- has finally released its list of high-powered editorial board members and columnists. It's so impressive! Some of them have worked for U.S. presidents, some for Ivy League schools and the rest have written important books. The View, which includes marquee names like Peter Orszag, Jonathan Alter, Ezra Klein and Jeffrey Goldberg, will put out two unsigned editorials every day. Predictably, though, most of the people signed on are white men, leaving us a little bit disappointed considering the opportunity at hand: building a team of anyone, from anywhere, for a highly influential company that made $7 billion last year. Find out exactly who's involved in a Friday edition of our media column, Press Clips, plus more on Michael Arrington and the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.More >>

​Front and center in today's edition of the New York Times is an article entitled "In Dossier, Portrait of Push for Post-9/11 Attacks," a piece that uses this week's WikiLeaks document dump about detainees held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay to tell of terrorist plans never carried out. The article is one of many Guantanamo angles so far this week, not only from the Times, but other domestic news organizations like the Washington Post and NPR, along with international outlets like Britain's Telegraph and Guardian, which are culling the raw classified documents and repackaging them as news stories. But are American outlets being more deferential to the U.S. government than their international counterparts by highlighting the danger of the detainees instead of the well-documented innocents held uncharged, the abuses they suffered and the flawed system of interrogation? Let's explore in Press Clips, our daily media column. Plus: the Village Voice has a new Metro columnist!

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​Tim Hetherington, the director and producer behind the Academy Award-nominated film Restrepo about his time spent as a journalist in Afghanistan, was killed on Wednesday in Misurata, Libya, while working as a photographer during the conflict. Chris Hondros and Guy Martin, also journalists, were critically wounded, though Hondros, on assignment as a photographer for Getty, was not killed as was initially reported when the news broke. (Update: The Times reports that Hondros, too, has passed away.) Michael Christopher Brown, a fourth photographer, was also injured in the mortar attack, though his wounds are less serious, according to the New York Times' C.J. Chivers, who is also stationed in Libya. Hundreds of Libyans have been reported dead in the area, which "has been cut off by land from the rest of the country by military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi," according to Chivers. More on Hetherington and the heartbreaking details inside a grave version of our afternoon media column, Press Clips.

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​At a press conference this morning, Mayor Bloomberg announced the appointment of Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott as Cathie Black's replacement as schools chancellor. Black, who was not present at the press conference, met with the mayor this morning and offered her resignation. In Bloomberg's words, "The story had become her, and it should be about the students." She had served just 3 months in office and was highly scrutinized for her lack of education experience.

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​Everybody knows that today is Valentine's Day. But did you know that it's also Mayor Bloomberg's birthday? Today he is 69 (Hey you, in the back of the class, what's so funny?). We contacted his press office to find out what 'ol Mikey will be doing, but they never got back to us. Don't worry, we've taken it upon ourselves to guess how he might be celebrating:

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