Streetsblog Adds Two Reporters in Huge Investment in Local Coverage

Now it’s personnel.

Streetsblog has added two new reporters to a four-person staff that is already punching way above its weight on coverage of safe streets and livable communities. The new staffers are investigative reporter Jesse Coburn and reporter Fiifi Frimpong.

Coburn is no stranger to metro-area news junkies. For roughly the last five years, he’s worked at Newsday, covering transportation and other topics (most recently writing about how rarely Long Island drivers get punished for killing pedestrians and cyclists, a topic he will obviously be welcome to continue covering!).

He’s also written for publications including the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, Harper’s, and Cabinet. Before that he was an editor at the architecture and urbanism magazine ARCH+. You can find him on Twitter at @jesse_coburn. His Streetsblog email address is jesse@streetsblog.org.

Frimpong earned his M.A in journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY (aka CUNY J School) in December. Before that, he was a researcher at National Geographic and a multimedia journalist at Avant-Youth, an Atlanta-based newsmagazine. He also wrote for the Co-op City Times in the Bronx, where he lives. You can find Frimpong on Twitter @fiififrimpong. His Streetsblog email address is fiifi@streetsblog.org.

Streetsblog Editor Gersh Kuntzman was excited at the new troops, who join existing street legends: reporters Dave Colon and Julianne Cuba, Community Editor Eve Kessler, mayor’s race correspondent Christopher Robbins and national reporter Kea Wilson.

“Other news outlets are laying off people or otherwise failing to rise to the challenge of covering one of the most important beats in town: how people get around and how our government officials fail them,” Kuntzman said. “So obviously I’m overjoyed that Streetsblog Publisher Mark Gorton has put his money where our keyboards are and invested in allowing us to cover one of the central equity issues in our broken city. Whether it’s the placement of street safety improvements, the failure of the de Blasio administration to prioritize buses or the NYPD’s continued inequitable policing strategies, our team of, now, eight reporters will continue to keep these issues at the very forefront of the political and policy debate.”

Kuntzman added that he was optimistic that this story would end up in Mayor de Blasio press clippings tomorrow.

“He should know what’s coming,” the editor said.