Senior officials from two New York City mayoral offices were scheduled to sit down with community media outlets on Tuesday, March 17, for an in-person conversation about press access and city engagement, according to the event’s organizers.
The Center for Community Media and URL Media, which jointly convened the gathering, said the hourlong session was set for 2 to 3 p.m. at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, in Room 308 on the third floor at 219 West 40th St., between Seventh and Eighth avenues in Manhattan.
The organizers said the panel would feature Jagpreet Singh, first deputy commissioner at the Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement, and Samer Nasser, executive director of the Press Credentials Office at the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. According to the invitation, the two offices oversee, respectively, the city’s outreach to residents and the credentialing of journalists who cover City Hall.
Invitations were also extended to the commissioners and deputy chief engagement officers of both offices, as well as to the mayor’s chief of staff and other press office officials, the organizers said, adding that additional confirmations would be announced as they were received.
The Center for Community Media said the meeting built on a community media gathering it had held on January 28, though the invitation did not detail what was discussed at that earlier session. The Center for Community Media is based at the Newmark J-School and works with ethnic and neighborhood news outlets across the city, while URL Media is a network of Black- and Brown-owned news organizations.
The forum was billed as a chance for community and ethnic outlets to put questions about credentialing and city communications directly to the officials who handle them. Organizers asked attendees to RSVP in advance for the in-person event.
