CUNY Interactive Journalism

There is never a lack of food to eat in New York City. Whether you’re a graduate student on a budget or gourmet food lover with your sights set on the bright stars of Michelin rated restaurants, you will find what you need to whet your appetite. In the bustling streets of Times Square, where tourists, workers and students need something tasty and fast, the wealth of street food is your answer for the New Yorker on the go.

Music: Smooth Theme by Teru

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Street vending is an integral part of the New York City landscape. According to the Urban Justice Center, the city houses more than 10,000 street vendors, ranging from food, to art, to clothes and music. I took to the streets of Manhattan to capture a small segment of the street vending community.
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According to a survey, a majority of J-school students don’t consider odors as a pest of New York City. When asked, 73% of them said that odors are one of the most pleasant features of New York City. Even among those who answered the contrary, they were not more than 18% to consider that it should be considered as a public issue.

However, everybody already had a very bad experience with odor in NYC. According to the survey, garbage in the street and the metro are the places that smell the worst. They gathered both 45% of the students who answered. 10% answered that the street was the place that smelled the worst.

Life in New York City offers a long list of annoyances to the city dweller. Metro fare hikes, disoriented tourists who block the flow of city streets, and the recent bed bug scare are some of the issues the CUNY J-school Class of 2011 notes as most cumbersome.

But as the irritating aspects of life in this metropolis are discussed, a popular urban topic is generally left out: crime and safety.

So I set out to find out if my classmates at J-School worry about crime and if they feel safe in their neighborhoods.

Of the 12 students who responded to the online survey about safety and crime in their borough, 58% were female and 42% were male.

Only three of the five NYC boroughs were represented, with 67% living in Manhattan, 25% in Queens, and 8% in Brooklyn.

Asked whether they feel safe walking alone in their neighborhood late at night (after 10 p.m.), 50% said they “always” feel safe, and 50% said they feel safe “most of the time.” No one checked the “sometimes,” “rarely”, or “never” options.

When asked if they knew someone who has been a victim of crime in the borough they (respondents) live, 25% said “yes.” However, 100% said they have never been a victim of crime in their borough, which may explain why none reported feeling at risk for crime there.

After all reported feeling safe in their borough, I was not surprised to learn that most do not keep track of crime in their borough: 75%.

Perhaps the New York Police Department’s report of the annual decrease in crime levels over the past 20 years has helped?

One annoying side effect of being a budding journalist at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is sleep deprivation. To combat the bleary-eyed blues we are consuming copious amounts of coffee. The coffee machine has even broken down a couple of times from being overworked. But just how much coffee are we drinking?

After conducting a survey on a whopping nine anonymous classmates, I found out a few things. For one thing, it seems, that they are all drinking coffee even if in small amounts. On average, students drank 2.62 cups per person, per day but the number of ounces ingested in total ranged from 40 to six. On average, however, students consumed 17 ounces per day.

It also seemed that the men, who averaged less sleep drank more coffee than women. Men, on average, got 5.75 hours per night in comparison to six hours for women. The average cups drunk per day for males was 3.25 compared to two cups per day on average for women. Overall, however, J-Schoolers drank less than the overall U.S. average consumption of coffee, which, according to the 2010 Harvard School of Public Health, is 3.1 nine-ounce cups of coffee per day.

I also found that the average age of participants was 27.37 years and participants ranged in age from 35 to 23 years of age. The average age of male participants was 25.25 years of age and 29.5 years was the average age of the female participants.

There is some good news however. Also reported by the Harvard School of Public Health is the indication that coffee drinkers may be at less risk for type two diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. These benefits might just be incentive to keep on drinkin’ – coffee that is.