How To Use Gotham Gazette

Gotham Gazette is an online publication about New York City that serves several functions -- as a news digest, a news operation, a policy magazine, and a reference resource.

It offers a daily digest of news about New York City, with Today's Lead summarizing the most important story of the day, and links to articles from the city-wide English-language dailies as well as a variety of weeklies and monthlies.

It is also a news operation itself, with original articles by our staff and contributors about what is happening in the city in a range of issues. Our focus is on the doings of City Hall; our City Government section offers the only regular report on the City Council's bi-weekly "Stated Meetings," where final votes are taken, turning bills into laws. Our Topic Pages report, analyze and/or comment upon the latest developments in the arts, education, the environment, housing, immigrants, and so forth. (There is now an e-mail newsletter for each topic page)

Our aim is to explain what's going on. Our article entitled Issue of the Week puts a story making headlines into context, providing the kind of background and explanations that are too often missing from daily newspaper and television coverage, with links for more in-depth study. Also check out our quizzes and games, which attempt to explain issues in an entertaining way.

Gotham Gazette is also a policy magazine. We have offered original analysis and Commentary by some of the city's leading urban academics, advocates, policy makers, journalists, public officials, labor leaders, ministers and even a movie star (Bette Midler). Since 2004, we also each weekday have offered a Today's Report, summarizing and linking to in-depth analyses from government agencies, universities and think tanks. And starting in September, 2005, we launched Wonkster, a blog that directs you to the views and spews of editorial writers, bloggers and other opinionated New Yorkers the way Gotham Gazette since 1999 has directed you to the news.

Each feature in Gotham Gazette -- Today's Lead; Issues of the Week; Commentary/Feature; Topic Pages, etc. -- has its own archives, almost all of which are available on our archives page. There is also an Index that lists Issues of the Week and Feature/Commentary articles alphabetically by subject matter and author.

Gotham Gazette is also a portal site, offering one-stop shopping for those interested in doing research about New York City, with hundreds of Best NYC Links to useful Web sites.

Gotham Gazette is a reference tool for both beginning students of the city and serious researchers - as well as for those who wish they had the time to be serious researchers: One politician called it "a crib sheet on the issues for busy candidates." NYC Research Desk is our guide to libraries, and other resources for research,both in New York City, and on the Web.

Gotham Gazette has spawned four subsites. Gotham Gazette's City Government , which began as comprehensive coverage of the 2001 campaign, is now a guide to government and politics. Rebuilding NYC, now inactive, helped sort out the efforts to recover from the events of 9/11/2001.
Immigrants, also known as The Citizen, is a selection of articles from New York City's immigrant/ethnic press, as well as our own coverage of the immigrant communities of New York. Our Community Gazettes are a pioneering effort at creating New York's first completely interactive newspaper, covering every community in the city, and put together mostly by the members of each community -- in other words, by you.