News stories about Washington’s Eastern Market filled the DC media yesterday, describing the restoration of the South Hall of the historic building, gutted by fire last year. Coverage noted that exterior work is largely complete, and renovation of the interior of the building has begun.
Except for an excellent report by NBC4’s Tom Sherwood and perfunctory throw-away lines by ABC7 news and the Examiner, though, stories omitted the fact that the market itself has been open for business and functioning for over a year, across 7th Street, SE, in the “East Hall.” Even a WAMU-FM radio story that included an interview with one of the merchants– Melvin Inman of Market Poultry — omitted this fact.
Eastern Market florist Anglie Brunson told Tom Sherwood about the drop in foot traffic since the fire, and the economic cost of this for merchants, farmers and vendors. If other news outlets continue to neglect the existence of the living, functioning Eastern Market fresh food marketplace, things will not improve.
The DC Government press advisory and news release from the Office of Property Management (OPM) didn’t help. OPM manages the property for the District and hires the market managers, but neglected mentioning on-going East Hall commerce, concentrating on photo ops of Mayor Fenty walking around the empty South Hall in a hard hat.
Perhaps reporters at WAMU-FM and the Washington Post included facts about the functioning East Hall when they filed their articles, but were ill-served by their editors. Certainly Post and Examiner readers, public radio listeners, Channel 7 viewers, residents of Capitol Hill, and the merchants of Eastern Market were.
Top image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit to Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
July 18, 2008 at 9:56 am
UPDATE: Page five of today’s Washington Post Weekend section has a brief note by Amy Orndorf about Eastern Market and the East Hall, with a photo of a Mary Belcher watercolor.