Silverstein Attacked! (Again)

Here we go: writing an article about an article about an article, but we cannot resist because the subject of that last “article” is Larry Silverstein—who is, according to a Columbia Journalism Review blog post, the media’s favorite developer.

“The FT’s story, it turns out,” Elinore Longobardi says of last month’s Financial Times panegyric, “is only the latest and worst example of a galling genre: the profile of Silverstein as a gutsy underdog, the can-do developer in a hurry who would have had the World Trade Center rebuilt by now if not for evil, foreign insurance companies, bungling bureaucrats, and unnamed powers that be.”

It’s true, the press loves Mr. Silverstein’s story about cutting the morphine when he was laid up in the hospital, but his orneriness has proved useful of late: he and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey recovered $4.55 billion from those evil insurers last May and JPMorgan Chase showed in June that the World Trade Center area, if not Mr. Silverstein's buildings, is a worthy business destination.