Now Hear This, by Joe Enright

On January 23rd, Mayor Eric Adams, frustrated by news outlets refusing to install his cronies as City Hall reporters, announced that from now on, gosh darn it, he is going to deliver the news directly to the people with all the technology he can muster.

“It’s just not fair,” the Mayor explained, wandering off-script at a press conference called to announce the appointment of Emily Hernandez, who sat next to the Mayor in 3^rd grade, as the new Deputy Under Assistant Director for the Chief of Staff of the Mayor’s Office of Redundancy Elimination for Sunsetting Redundant Offices.

“I mean, I referred Jesse Gigantica to the Times City Desk. Jesse had four solid years of experience at the Midwood Argus, covering the Midwood high school community he was attending, and then transferred those skills to a better position at the Brooklyn College Vanguard. Not only that, he had a number of brilliant letters published in the New York Post. Yet the sanctimonious New York Times rejected him outright, without so much as an interview. Imagine if I conducted myself like that? Heck, all my friends would be out of jobs!”

When asked how this new form of communication will take place, Adams deferred to his IT staff in attendance. The Mayor’s well-known fascination with cutting edge cyber-y stuff like crypto and AI led some reporters to speculate about holograms and chatbots, particularly after Jonathan Salomons, Adams’ Executive Director of Innovation and Emerging Markets declared, “We’ll use every tool not yet invented to get New Yorkers the info they need, by gum!” Not to be outdone, the Chief Technology Officer at the Office of Technology and Innovation, Matthew Fraser, weighed in with: “We’re more innovative than that other Innovation guy. I mean we do INNOVATION and TECHNOLOGY,  while he does Emerging Markets and Innovation. Bor-ing. It’s clear emerging markets can only be a distraction here and sends the wrong message.”

Asked by increasingly agitated scribes what exactly the innovative approach will be, Executive Director Salomons replied, “We’ll be sending emails.”

“That’s it? Emails?” one of the reporters asked amidst the usual chorus of titters, chortles and smirks from his brethren.

Chief Fraser quickly jumped in. “The emails will contain links to press releases written by cronies and, to entice people to sign up for the emails in a dozen different categories, we will send you a color photo of the Mayor doing the Bola Wrap thing back when he was lobbying for rope as an alternative to handcuffs or whatever the fuck that was.”