The City Hall gadfly Rafal Martinez Alequin sends over the city press release that's the result of his long battle for press credentials despite not having a print outlet, or even a widely-read online one. (He writes for his own blog, Your Free Press, and is best known for asking unwelcome questions at press conferences.) The settlement, which will grant bloggers NYPD press credentials, is a fairly major moment in the breakdown of the distinction between traditional and new media, even in New York's hidebound system, though I'm not sure the current proposal will be hte final one.

Remember our tangle with the Bronx D.A.? Well, Senator Tom Duane and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal apparently do, and have drafted legislation to make sure it doesn't repeat itself:

New York State’s shield law, which protects the right of news reporters to refuse to testify about information obtained through newsgathering, would be extended to “journalist bloggers” under a bill introduced by State Senator Thomas K. Duane and Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, two Manhattan Democrats.

The Empire Center launched a very useful new database today, with employment details of more than 786,000 public workers -- city, state, and authority employees.

Brian Lehrer, weighing the year's scandals this morning:

"I'd rather have Vito Fossella loving two families than Hiram Monserrate attacking, allegedly, one girlfriend."

Oh my.

Via Gothamist.

I saw here that Joe Gentili's memorial service will be December 3,and wanted to express my regret at the passing of one of the great, mad mechanics of New York's old-fashioned, patronage-dominated Board of Elections.

I wrote about Gentili, a Brooklyn Republican, back in January of 2003 in the late lamented New York Sun, when his tenure asthe agency's acting chief -- which began with the sudden heart attack of his friend and predecessor, Danny DeFranccesco, two days after 9/11.

I like Alex Navarro-McKay's speculative list of replacements for Hillary, and particularly his Adolfo Carrion float, though I think I'd put Andrew Cuomo on top of it. But I've been getting some abuse today for another name I floated over at Politico today, and wanted to explain why Eliot Spitzer (!) should be seen as the dark horse here. 

This was not, I admit, my idea; it came from a well-known municipal troublemaker whose identity some will guess when they think about it. And I told him that it's crazy. And Spitzer doesn't seem to see himself as a candidate for anything. "[M]istakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past," he writes in tomorrow's Washington Post

Today's news that Bloomberg will seek a second term, and the prompt stamp of approval from the arbiter of the city's reform movement, the Times edit board, sent me back to the September 28, 2001 editorial titled "The Mayor's Dangerous Idea."

They wrote then:

Neither New York City nor the nation has ever postponed the transfer of power because the public was convinced it could not get along without the current incumbent. The very concept goes against the most basic of American convictions, that we live in a nation governed by rule of law.

State Senator Tom Duane -- responding to this site's battle to keep a blogger's identity from the Bronx District Attorney -- has introduced shield legislation that would give bloggers the same  protection that journalists now have, in terms of the anonymity of sources and -- in our case -- bloggers.

"New York has a proud tradition of having one of the strongest reporter’s shield laws in the country.  I was shocked to discover that in 2008, our law does not provide protections to journalist
bloggers – one of the fastest growing mediums for obtaining news.  This glaring omission must not be allowed to continue," Duane said, citing the Room Eight case.  "This is just one example of journalist bloggers threatened with civil and criminal penalties based solely on the content of their blog.  If we do not enact my legislation, I can guarantee that we will witness more
cases of journalist bloggers facing contempt charges and jail time. This will have a chilling effect on free speech and a blogger’s ability to aggressively report the news.  It is time New York’s shield law reflected the reality of 2008."

There were some comparisons drawn last year between David Yassky's run for Congresss in a black-majority district in New York, and Steve Cohen's similar (and successful) bid in Tennessee.

Anyway, the campaign against Cohen this time around makes Brooklyn politics look like softball.

Suddenly, these cases are popping up all over the place.

This Brooklyn case is less egregious, in a sense, than the Room Eight case, as it doesn't involve the use of subpoena power. But the details, as relayed by Curbed, are pretty shocking:

Last week, the Southern Brooklyn blog GerritsenBeach.Net, which has periodically reported on the Brooklyn Riviera developments, put up a post revealing the developer, Stephen Jemal, was being sued by a financial partner for $5.8 million plus interest.

This sounded a bit familiar:

The publishers of the MPD Enforcer 2.0, an anonymous underground police newsletter which has appeared in previous incarnations as a paper newsletter, a Geocities site, and is presently a Google Blogger site, are facing an attempt to out their identities from Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin.

Director Godwin has, under the color of the Uniform Depositions Act, sent a subpoena to AOL headquarters in Virginia demanding they reveal the name, address, billing information, and IP addresses associated with the site's proprietor, who goes by the pseudonym Dirk Diggler, a la Boogie Nights.

A possible development in the Room Eight subpoena case:

While the District Attorney has basically maintained his silence -- he issued a statement saying the subpoena we received wasn't politically motivated, but not much more -- Bronx GOP chairman Jay Savino told us, and the Village Voice's John DeSio -- that the subpoena's were part of an investigation into harassment of Bronx Republicans.  DeSio quotes from some quite scary-sounding letters Savino says one Republican received.

A generous colleague sends on some transcript from today in the Blue Room, where Mayor Bloomberg was asked to react to the Room Eight subpoenas. Bloomberg backed the freedom of the press, and expressed concern about Johnson's subpoenas, but also seemed to question whether blogs should have equal freedoms:

"That's sadly one of the things that's happened to us, where there were credentials and ways you could know who the journalist was and with bloggers it's a lot harder to do that," he said.

His full response:

I just don't know the details. You could call Ben Smith. I'm sure he'd be happy to give you some details on it. I don't know the details of what happened The government should never try to keep the press from performing the function that the reason that we give them special privileges and that is to keep everybody honest and to tell them what's going on.