Money

April is our money issue. This month Patricia Vaccarino writes about St. Mary’s Church in Yonkers, New York. Heralded as the “Cathedral on the  Hudson River,” and a symbol for the immigrants who built Yonkers, St. Mary’s might be headed for death row. This month Barbara Lloyd McMichael writes about numismatics, coin collecting for the coin-curious, as well as for the serious hobbyist. Astronomer Andrew Fraknoi writes about the coming eclipse of the sun that will take place Monday, April 8, 2024.

With the widening gap between the mega wealthy and everyone else, it is logical to conclude that much of the soft news that is reported in the media is placed there by people who can afford to pay the high price of P.R. There is no hard data to support this contention, but it is plausible that it is the wealthy among us—corporations, organizations, families, and individuals—who are paying for the services of an estimated 800,000 professional P.R. practitioners. If it is the rich who are paying for the legions of P.R. consultants and P.R. firms, then it can be unequivocally stated that the media has become increasingly the playground of the rich.