Maybe the City Is Sleeping?

NYC is often called "the city that never sleeps." I used to think this motto was pure hyperbole until I visited, and even lived in, some other cities. 

In so many other cities, their downtown areas shut down tight around 6 PM. Stores close, the flow of people in and out of office buildings ceases, pedestrians on the sidewalks vanish, and the traffic flows to a trickle. At night, and on the weekends, these downtown's are ghost-towns. Oh, the local sports arena or concert hall might get a crush of people for a game or a show but these are the exceptions -- and once the game or show is over, the people flee. Otherwise, when you walk or drive around these cities at night, they are empty, almost completely devoid of human activity, shells of civilization. Coming from NYC, whose downtown is bustling with people every night all night, visiting such cities feels like entering some kind of post-apocalyptic hell scape.

It's just plain weird.

And because NYC at night is so busy, most major papers have had, for decades, overnight  newspaper reporters. They would monitor police scanners and rush to crime scenes. If something big broke overnight, about anything, there were a cadre of hacks ready to "get the scoop" and write the story cold, in the moment. The cry "Stop the presses!" is the legacy of overnight reporting, in order to get a hot story into the morning papers. 

And, like so many things about old NYC, the overnight reporters are vanishing. Few are left, and the Daily News now has none. Basically, overnight NYC isn't being covered anymore, there are almost no such reporters left. We might have a 24/7 cable news and social media but the legit overnight hacks are vanishing -- becoming ghost town of its own -- and the city's newfeed and lifeblood is the lesser for it.

It seems like NYC might becoming the city that sleeps after all.