This is a postscript to an article I wrote earlier this week, NYC TAXI MEDALLIONS: THREE DAYS, THREE ARTICLES ... WADDABOUT MICHAEL COHEN? (Wed., May 22, 2019). In that article I speculated that the reporter must know something about Michael Cohen and taxi medallions in New York City because he wrote hardly anything about Michael Cohen in three days of articles about selling, buying, and taking out loans to get taxi medallions in New York City.
The reporter's name is Brian M. Rosenthal. In a later piece, he revealed that his reporting sprang from the FBI's raid on Michael Cohen's office and the many documents, cellphones, laptops, and other things and devices that were seized in the process. See Brian M. Rosenthal, How We Investigated Taxi Medallions, New York Times, Wed., May 22, 2019, p. A2 (the New York Times may charge for online access).
The newspaper assigned five reporters to investigate Cohen's information that was seized by the FBI. A sixth reporter, Mr. Rosenthal, took a look instead at the predatory loans that immigrants signed up for in order to buy taxi medallions in New York City.
In order to report this story, Rosenthal needed a database. New York City "did not have reliable digital data on medallion sales, so I used paper records to build a database of all the 10,888 sales between 1995 and 2018," he writes. (Obviously he had the help of the newspaper's financial and human resources in this expensive and time-consuming task.) This gave him quick access to the financial records submitted by medallion buyers, which the city taxi commission "had never analyzed" as he did.
Brian Rosenthal's reporting revealed that NYC taxi medallions were purchased with the help of predatory lenders who had little if anything to fear from regulators. As he put it himself, his stories "barely mentioned Mr. Cohen at all." See Brian M. Rosenthal, How We Investigated Taxi Medallions, New York Times, Wed., May 22, 2019, p. A2 (to say again, the New York Times may charge for online access).
An example of reporting at its best. Without Rosenthal's dogged insistence the story of predatory lending would never have become widely known.
Still, any stories about taxi medallions and New York City are incomplete without mentioning Michael Cohen's involvement. I still think that this reporter knows something that we are not being told right now.
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