NYC NOW - November 15, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Police are investigating after they found a 19-year-old dead last night on an E train at the Sutphin Boulevard/Archer Avenue station in Jamaica, Queens. Meanwhile, New Jersey's First Lady Tammy Murphy announces her bid for the Senate seat embattled Bob Menendez currently holds. Construction is officially underway for the new LGBTQ+ Museum at the New York Historical Society. Plus, several of the women who came forward accusing film mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and harassment, call the legal process to get payouts unjust and in need of change. WNYC's Samantha Max reports. Finally, every year, New York-based company Vimeo chooses its favorite staff picks and for those lucky enough to be selected, its life changing. WNYC’s Ryan Kailath has more.

NYC, Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Wednesday, November 15. Here's the midday news from Lance Lucky. Police are investigating after they found a 19-year-old dead last night on a subway train in Queens. Police say he was found around 9 p.m. between two cars of an E-Train at the Sutton Boulevard, Archer Avenue Station in Jamaica. officials believe he had been fatally struck by something on or around the moving train

as he rode between cars. They do not suspect any criminality. The teen's name hasn't been released pending notification of his family. New Jersey's first lady will make a run for the U.S. Senate. Tammy Murphy announced her bid for the Senate seat Bob Menendez holds. He's resisted calls to resign after being federally indicted on corruption charges. In her first campaign video released this morning, Murphy says she's ready to tackle the biggest issues facing the country like gun violence, climate change, and abortion access. We have big, complicated issues, and solving them won't be easy. But you know what? Nothing worth doing ever is.

As First Lady, Murphy has also put a spotlight on issues like maternal mortality in the Garden State. U.S. Representative Andy Kim of South Jersey is also vying for Menendez's seat, and so is Larry Hamm of the People's Organization for Progress. Construction is officially underway for a large new wing at the New York Historical. Society, the 70,000 square foot complex on Central Park West will serve as a home for the new American LGBTQ Plus Museum. Planning for the museum has been underway since 2017, and the wing is set to open in 2026 to celebrate America's 250th birthday. It's 50 right now, partly cloudy, maybe 52 this afternoon, sunny and 62 tomorrow. This is WNYC.

On WNWNWNWNWC, on WNWNWN. Michael Hill. In 2017, dozens of women stepped forward to accuse the film mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and harassment. Their accusations gave rise to the Me Too movement. Now, several of the women say the legal process they went through to get payouts was unjust and should be changed. W&MIC Samantha Max reports. In 2021, dozens of Harvey Weinstein's accusers agreed to a settlement worked out in bankruptcy court that divvied up $17 million between them. The majority of women supported the deal. But the settlement protected Weinstein's executives from future lawsuits, and neither they nor Weinstein admitted a wrongdoing. Now, some women say they felt cheated out of a more meaningful

chance at accountability. I didn't want to take it. Former model and actor Zoe Brock says agreeing to the settlement felt like an incredible loss. It felt like I was being robbed again of something. like the chance to face these people and hold them accountable. Brock remembers driving in her car at the day she called her lawyer and told him she was going to accept it. I had to pull over on the side of the road because I thought I was going to throw up. And I cried and I cried and I cried. And then I put it all in a little box in my soul and moved on because there was nothing else to do. Experts say it's become increasingly common for companies and nonprofits to use bankruptcy as a tool to protect powerful people from paying for misconduct.

Pamela Fowie at Cardozo Law School says that reduces the incentive for organizations to monitor staff behavior and quiets the voices of people who get hurt. They end up losing a lot more than the little they gain by getting what might be a quick payout of a small amount. of money. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide in the coming months whether these types of settlements are legal, particularly when they shield company executives from lawsuits. The ruling could determine whether the strategy the Weinstein company used will continue. Samantha Max, WNYC News. Attorneys for Harvey Weinstein and its studio did not respond to requests for comment. The New York-based company Vimeo has been in the online video business, since 2004, when it started as a sort of YouTube competitor.

But as WNMYC's Ryan Kyloth reports, there's a secret corner of Vimeo's business that's been a long-time haven of creativity and opportunity for people in the world of film. It's not featured on their homepage, and it won't pop right up if you Google them. But at a party Vimeo threw in Tribeca recently, everyone knew exactly what they were there to celebrate.

Please raise your hand if you have a staff pick. It's the 15th anniversary of Vimeo's staff picks. Since 2008, this video hosting site has been picking their favorite videos that people upload, kind of like the staff pick section in a bookstore. Except these staff picks have helped create entire careers, for people who make the film and TV we watch today. Last year's Hitman, David Lowery, Herever, John Wilson, Savannah. Last year's triple Oscar winner, Everything Everywhere, All at Once?

Vimeo recognized the directors with a staff pick back in 2010 and has picked seven of their short films since then. When you get picked, you go from being one of millions of people who makes videos on the internet to being Vimeo approved, a badge of quality, kind of like winning a film festival. My name is Charlotte Wells. I wrote and directed the film after some which came out last year, and my short film lapsed in 2017 was a Vimeo's staff pick premiere.

Ten years ago at NYU Film School, Charlotte Wells had never heard of staff picks. And then as I went to film festivals, the presence of Vimeo just kind of grew and grew and grew. And then you hear about colleagues in years above getting staff picked, and it's a really big deal, and so many more people watch their film than you ever thought possible. The most popular picks have millions of views, and even the ones with a few hundred thousand. Those views come from the most important eyeballs in the industry. I remember the very first one we got, we spent a good week or two planning a strategy with like red string connecting things on a board. Andrew Hutchison founded the production company Voyager, award-winning feature films and commercial work, for companies like McDonald's and Kia.

He says in Voyager's early days they would ask agencies and development companies, people who might hire them. Where do you discover filmmakers? And the universal thread between all of them was, oh, we watched Bimio staff fix. So this coveted badge with the power to launch careers, how is it granted? What room full of cigar-smoking executives is secretly controlling the world of film and TV? I don't feel that we secretly control anything. Exactly what a secret controller would say. We just are out finding the great stuff and celebrating it, and that's what our platform is for.

Lead curator Megan Aretsky has been at Vimeo almost 10 years, one of two full-time staff attempting to watch basically the entire internet. Everyone on the team watches two or three hours of videos a day, logging it all across more than 50 spreadsheets, paying sports. special attention to the ones that make them feel something. I love curating so much that when I'm sharing a film with someone and I'm really excited to share it with them, my fingers kind of hurt. I'm like, ah, just so excited that it manifests itself into this physical feeling. Staffpicks can seem like a relic from a simpler time when the Internet was good. The Tumblr, Etsy, Kickstarter era, when the promise of democratizing creativity online rang more true. 15 years in, staff picks is still true to that promise.

It's not a core part of Vimeo's business, but Vimeo keeps staff picks going as the industry's little secret. Ryan Kailoff, WNYC News. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll be back this evening. Thank you.