As De Blasio Surges Past Quinn in Mayoral Poll, NY Times Starts to Take Belated Notice

For months we had to put up with the Manhattan New York Times providing Christine Quinn with endless inches of news print: what she wears, who influenced her life, how she overcame her drinking problem.

The Times' coverage of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio? Not so much. (And William Thompson, Jr. gets even less.)

While the job of City Council Speaker may be considered more newsworthy than Public Advocate, the amount of coverage should have evened out over the past year, when all were running for Mayor.

The numbers, however, tell a different story:

Counting the number of articles on Quinn in the Times vs the number of articles on de Blasio and Thompson (since the Times started keeping track online), we found that in the past year, as all were campaigning for office, Christine Quinn had 204 stories published in the Times -- while de Blasio got only 116. Thompson got only 70 stories. (Rough figures.)

Quinn: 204  vs.  de Blasio: 116 vs. Thompson: 70

Altogether over time, the NY Times has published 620 articles about or substantially mentioning Quinn. Bill de Blasio has been mentioned only 229 times. Thompson got 482 mentions, but much of those covered the previous Mayoral election, not this one. (Rough figures.)

Quinn: 620  vs.  de Blasio: 229
vs Thompson: 482

Over the past few weeks, as it became apparent that many influential people feel that de Blasio's honesty, vision and mastery of the issues far outstrips Quinn's, the Times has belatedly  provided more de Blasio coverage. (Not so much for Thompson.)

On Tuesday, de Blasio leapt ahead in the polls in the Quinnipiac University survey. Expect the Times to start falling over itself to provide come-from-behind coverage.

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