{"id":1278,"date":"2021-01-15T16:13:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T21:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=1278"},"modified":"2021-01-15T16:13:37","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T21:13:37","slug":"queens-man-impeached-a-paper-gives-trump-the-local-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=1278","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Queens Man Impeached\u2019: A Paper Gives Trump the Local Treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A series of headlines have brought attention to the Queens Daily Eagle, a small outlet in the borough where the president was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Queens Daily Eagle gained traction on social media for its impeachment coverage on Wednesday.Credit…The Queens Daily Eagle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Katie Robertson<\/a> January 14, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trilogy is now complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after the House of Representatives impeached President Trump<\/a> and charged him with \u201cincitement of insurrection\u201d on Wednesday, the Queens Daily Eagle, an outlet that covers the borough where Mr. Trump was born and raised, offered its readers a decidedly local spin on the news: \u201cQueens man impeached \u2014 again.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opening paragraph continued in the same vein. \u201cA Queens-born real estate developer made history Wednesday when he became the first U.S. president ever impeached twice by the House of Representatives,\u201d it read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Queens Daily Eagle had gone with local-angle treatment twice before in its coverage of major Trump news. \u201cQueens man impeached\u201d<\/a> was the headline for its Dec. 19, 2019, article on the first impeachment. On Nov. 7, 2020, the paper did a callback \u2014 \u201cQueens man evicted<\/a>\u201d \u2014 to note Mr. Trump\u2019s election loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All three exercises in dry newsroom humor drew wide attention, bringing recognition to a two-year-old publication that got its start when the local news industry was in crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople love it,\u201d said David Brand, the Queens Daily Eagle managing editor. \u201cIt\u2019s a self-parody of local news, and I think people get that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the idea of casting the president as just another onetime borough resident came up in a 2019 meeting with two former staff members, Jonathan Sperling and Victoria Merlino, both of whom have since left journalism. Mr. Sperling came up with the first \u201cQueens man\u201d headline.NEW YORK TODAY: <\/strong>Compelling daily stories, transit news and a glimpse at the lighter side of life in the city.Sign Up<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just wanted to add a little humor into what had been a couple of rough years,\u201d Mr. Sperling, 23, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He called the response to the first \u201cQueens man\u201d story \u201cmind-blowing,\u201d noting that Rachel Maddow had highlighted it on her MSNBC show<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDoes it really matter that he\u2019s from Queens?\u201d Mr. Sperling said. \u201cMaybe not. But the point still stands \u2014 there\u2019s always a local angle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ve seen enough.https:\/\/t.co\/UcCGHl1m08<\/a>\u2014 Queens Daily Eagle (@QueensEagle) November 7, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Trump was born in the borough\u2019s Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and grew up in\u00a0Jamaica Estates<\/a>, an enclave partly developed by\u00a0his father<\/a>, the real estate executive Fred C. Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first edition of the Queens Daily Eagle was printed on June 25, 2018. The only English-language daily newspaper in Queens, it is a sibling publication to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a paper that started in 1841, closed in 1955 and was revived in 1996<\/a> by Dozier Hasty, the owner and publisher of Brooklyn Heights Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Hasty is a co-publisher of the Queens Daily Eagle with Michael Nussbaum<\/a>, a longtime public relations executive, political consultant and former publisher of the Queens Tribune. The Queens Daily Eagle, which also has a website, gets by with a bare-bones staff. The managing editor, Mr. Brand, said he was one of two newsroom employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Sperling said he was excited to see the latest \u201cQueens man\u201d headline gain traction on Twitter, with 4,000 retweets and more than 17,000 likes, but he added that financial support would do more good than social media engagements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf 1 percent of the people who like this tweet gave $5 a month to the Queens Daily Eagle, it would be enough money to pay a single reporter for a year,\u201d he said. \u201cQueens has a variety of cultures and languages and ethnicities and over two million people, and we just don\u2019t have the news representation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Brand, 33, said Wednesday\u2019s headline had helped raise the profile of a paper that covers Queens courts, transportation, neighborhood politics and social issues. \u201cPeople come to the website because it\u2019s gone viral, because some celebrity has posted it,\u201d he said, \u201cand they see, \u2018Oh, they actually do really substantive writing as well.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper\u2019s impeachment coverage held the local note throughout the Wednesday article, stating toward the end that Mr. Trump was the third president to be impeached by Congress \u2014 \u201cand the first from Queens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katie Robertson is a media reporter. She previously worked as an editor and reporter at Bloomberg and News Corporation Australia.\u00a0Email:\u00a0katie.robertson@nytimes.com<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0@katie_robertson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A version of this article appears in print on\u00a0Jan. 15, 2021, Section\u00a0B, Page\u00a05\u00a0of the New York edition\u00a0with the headline:\u00a0Local Paper Chronicles Travails of \u2018Queens Man<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A series of headlines have brought attention to the Queens Daily Eagle, a small outlet in the borough where the president was born. The Queens…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8VBh7-kC","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":784,"url":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=784","url_meta":{"origin":1278,"position":0},"title":"Hate crimes rose the day after Trump was elected, FBI data show","author":"Donnie","date":"March 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"By\u00a0THE WASHINGTON POST By Aaron Williams,\u00a0The Washington Post PUBLISHED:\u00a0March 23, 2018\u00a0 Nicholas Kamm, AFP\/Getty Images US President Donald Trump speaks about the spending bill during a press conference in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House on March 23, 2018. \u00a0WASHINGTON \u2013 Reported hate crimes with racial or ethnic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Domestic Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Domestic Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?cat=17"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gopplaybook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-25_10-22-35.jpg?fit=703%2C484&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gopplaybook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-25_10-22-35.jpg?fit=703%2C484&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gopplaybook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-25_10-22-35.jpg?fit=703%2C484&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gopplaybook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/2018-03-25_10-22-35.jpg?fit=703%2C484&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1196,"url":"https:\/\/www.gopplaybook.com\/?p=1196","url_meta":{"origin":1278,"position":1},"title":"In His Own Words, Trump on the Coronavirus and Masks","author":"Donnie","date":"October 2, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"During the pandemic, the president has expressed confidence that the virus would quickly go away and skepticism over the effectiveness of face coverings. 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