Star-Ledger 
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Thu Feb 10, 2011 at 12:00:08 PM EST
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Star-Ledger announced some news of the own last night. They're doubling their staff at their statehouse bureau to cover Gov. Christie, the legislature, and the NJ Supreme Court. And, for their part, Politicker is launching their State Street Wire March 1. More coverage isn't necessarily better coverage. And we compete with both, for readers and to provide context for those readers. But I'm glad to see this happen in commercial news coverage because they've taken a lot of hits over the last few years, and both the Ledger and politicker have, and I read them both.
Three years ago, Star-Ledger laid off 40% of its newsroom staff, which the New York Times noted at the time was one of the largest reductions in a single move by a major American paper. The Times had just had its own round of editorial layoffs - a first for the Times - and was soon to lay off another 100 newsroom staff, and the national paper of record no longer covers New Jersey news as closely as it once did. Across the country newsrooms were and are hurting; advertising down, and costs up - from bedrock papers like the Times and Ledger to smaller, locally-essential weeklies. The Delaware Valley News, which covered the river towns along the New Jersey and Pennsylvania banks of the Delaware, closed three years ago too - the first paper I ever worked for. Around the same time, Politicker's national expansion took a dive, shutting down 12 state sites. (Juan Melli, who became Associate Editor at politicker.com 3 years after founding Blue Jersey, was out with that round of layoffs).
With massive shifts in editorial staffing have come changes, new ventures like newjerseynewsroom.com, formed out of the ruins of the Star-Ledger layoffs by journalists whose experience "adds up to over 1,000 years". And into the reporting void, hyperlocals are springing up to catch news a new way, in very focused geographical areas. Citizen's Campaign's new NJ Hyperlocal News Association is helping hyperlocals develop, an effort Blue Jersey is involved in, in our own small way.
The latest bad news for newspapers came in a one-two punch over the last few days. It was the last day at work for nearly half of Gannett's editorial staff with job losses at Courier News, Home News Tribune and Daily Record. One of those let go, Daily Record's political columnist Fred Snowflack, who outed himself as a Democrat on his way out the door. And - bad timing - that bill that would allow municipalities to post legal notices on their websites rather than requiring them to pay newspapers for the service. Newspapers, the Star-Ledger in the lead, are charging that this is less a cost-cutting option for government and less an effort by government to control their content and cripple them financially. Jury's still out on that one, for me.
So, I'm liking new reporting muscle at the state house. Good luck, Star-Ledger. Politicker too. Good luck.
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Sun Jan 02, 2011 at 01:52:30 PM EST
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Some days I'm just happy Star-Ledger exists if only to transcribe conversations between governors emeritus Tom Kean & Brendan Byrne. As very often happens, Gov. Byrne makes the slapshot:
Q: Gov. Christie and Lt. Gov. Guadagno were both out of state when the blizzard hit this week. Should an effort be made to have at least one of our executives in-state at all times?
BYRNE: I never thought we needed a lieutenant governor, but we've got one, so we have to live with it. And maybe living with it means we need to anticipate what's coming up. Still, (then-Acting Gov. Stephen) Sweeney has done a masterful job.
KEAN: Luckily, we had no big problems as a result of the storm. But, like any corporation, either our No. 1 or No. 2 person should always be on duty.
BYRNE: I think 30 inches of snow is a big problem.
KEAN: I meant we didn't have any major problems beyond the snow. ... nothing that would have required the presence of the governor.
BYRNE: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
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Wed Dec 01, 2010 at 04:12:19 PM EST
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The title of this diary is a quote from an email from CIA officer Jose Rodriguez, former head of clandestine services (sounds sanitary, no?), who destroyed tapes of interrogation of high-value detainees - terrorism suspects - in Thailand early in the Iraq War.
Rush Holt, Chair of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel & senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, spoke out when the Justice Department closed a 3-year investigation into the destruction of those taped records, without filing criminal charges.
Over the weekend - I'm catching up with it now - Tom Moran published an excellent Q & A with Holt about this, as usual Moran asked a lot of the right questions. I won't reprint it all here, just the first couple questions, and I'll direct you to Moran's post at nj.com for the rest:
Q. What do we know about the contents of the tapes?
A. Evidently, they showed practices that any reasonable person would call torture, practices we would never want carried out against Americans.
Q. Why did CIA officers destroy them?
A. It was not for lack of space in their storeroom. They destroyed them because they contained things they didn't want anyone else to know. In particular, so that Congress would not learn about them.
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Sat Nov 06, 2010 at 03:24:41 PM EDT
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Today's Quote of the Day comes from Edithe Fulton, a member of the NJ State Board of Education, appointed in 2007 from Ocean County. Her words were captured on video by Star-Ledger's Andrew Mills and featured in an article about the impact of Acting Commissioner Hendricks' absence at the 2010 NJEA convention, which concluded last night. Edithe Fulton:
I just was able to read the email [from Rochelle Hendricks, that she would not attend]. I've known Rochelle for 25 years, and I've always admired her work and her passion for education. And I just don't believe ... I know she signed it ... I question whether she actually wrote it. I think it was dictated or handed to her, and said 'Here's what you're going to do.'
As the teachers were meeting, Gov. Christie gave a talk to the kids in the Boys & Girls Club in Trenton, to inform them that their greedy teachers and union reps are the reason their schools are short on supplies.
What I don't understand is why the adult authorities at any school, Boys & Girls Club, or neighborhood association would allow Gov. Christie to have access to children, particularly when what he intends is to discuss with them his actions and their impact on their schooling and their futures. It's remarkably irresponsible that a governor - highest authority in the state - is talking to children and suggesting their teachers are not to be trusted, don't care about them, and want to take from them. Why any responsible adult would allow Gov. Christie to speak that way to children - without intervening and quietly escorting him from the room - is beyond comprehension.
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Wed Dec 10, 2008 at 09:29:57 AM EST
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So it appears that every two to three days, we'll have to go through this. After resetting the Farmer Clock on Saturday, we had to restart it yesterday (Tuesday). Unfortunately for the multi-vetted Star-Ledger writers, it is not the fourth time that Manzo has run for mayor, but the fifth.
In 1992, he lost a special election to Bret Schundler in a 19 candidate free for all special election, which also included Manzo's own brother, who was the Jersey City Democratic Chair
In 1993, he lost a rematch in a regular election.
In 2001, he was beaten by Glenn Cunningham and Tom Degise, which went to a runoff before a Cunningham victory.
In 2004, he was beaten by Jerramiah Healy.
In fact, it appears that the only consistant part of Manzo's record is that he has lost an election to every (elected) mayor for the last seventeen years. "Anyone but Manzo"?
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Mon Nov 24, 2008 at 02:00:56 AM EST
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Congratulations go out to John Farmer, who has been named as the new editorial page editor at the Star-Ledger. I've read Farmer's columns as long as I've been in Jersey, and I generally like the writing, even when I disagree with the thrust of it. I really don't like the thrust of his Q&A session with Kelly Heyboer.
Particularly, I don't like this answer to whether or not the newspaper industry can remain relevant: Well, I hope they're very wrong. I think a very strong case can be made for newspapers and the public need of them. The problem with information on the internet is that it is unvetted, unedited, it's raw data in half the cases. As it was described by one executive, it can be "a cesspool."
The difference is, what appears in newspapers, in both the news and editorial sections, has been researched, carefully edited, usually through more than one hand. It's dicey proposition and with all of that we still make mistakes. But we're a hell of a lot better than the internet.
Yeah, so much better than half of the newsroom just got cutback. And, as for that "carefully edited" line - care to explain the rash of verified plagiarism at the New York Times?
More than anything, the quote illustrates that Farmer doesn't understand the internet at all. Make the jump, please.
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Sun Nov 02, 2008 at 01:07:12 PM EST
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The Star-Ledger sees no reason not to vote, and makes the point by comparing to other events: Would you turn down free tickets to the seventh game of the World Series or a Bruce Springsteen concert because you heard it might be crowded? How about skipping a great sale because you know other shoppers will show up?
Actually, I'd take a pass on all of those. You get a better view of the game on TV. The last time I went to a concert I almost threw down with a security guard who kept blocking my view of the stage. And I do the majority of my non-grocery shopping online. I hate crowds.
But I plan to vote on Tuesday, if for no other reason than to vote against Mayor Healy's principled power grab. There's also an unopposed county office on the ballot. I'll write myself in because I hate gimme elections. Two good reasons for me.
But all of that is just a sideline to the main feature of the S-L post - their strange "recap" of endorsements. Make the jump.
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Fri Aug 01, 2008 at 12:38:25 AM EDT
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Here we go folks, the semi-weekly weekly countdown of the most important news of the week.
Number Three:
 Aaron wants you to know that some guys have all the luck (yeah, I know, that isn't a Springsteen song, but he's not even two - give him a break).
Fresh on the heels of our senior senior Senator dusting up the all-but-dead news-cycle, we find out that the Sports and Exposition Authority held a whole buttload of tickets in reserve for VIPs. One of the VIPs is an unnamed Broadway theatre employee (probably not in the chorus line) who promptly listed the tickets on Craigs List.
This isn't as bad as it could be - at least people were paying for the tickets: More than 150 tickets went to sports authority commissioners, including Michael Neglia, who bought a total of 52 tickets to the three shows, and Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura, who purchased 48 tickets for tonight's concert.
For the money quote of why Jersey is so screwed from stem to stern, we go to Gary Bongiovanni:
"You want to take care of people as much as you can, within reason," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar, a concert industry magazine. "It's just easier to say yes than to say no."
Wasn't that Sharpe James' re-election slogan? Which brings us to...
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Thu Aug 30, 2007 at 09:24:03 AM EDT
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( - promoted by Juan Melli)
From the diaries -- Juan
Let the "Scarlet Fever" begin. Ugh. So Rutgers football opens its season today against the esteemed Buffalo University. It's wall-to-wall coverage on Nj.com, including a piece in the package called "Ten things you didn't know about Buffalo." Seeing that I had an interesting little tidbit of my own about Buffalo, I thought I'd check out the article and see if we both included it.
Guess what?
We didn't.
After discussing the team's lack of winning in reason #1, reason #5 is where it gets interesting for me.
"5. They don't back down. Instead of scheduling other bottom-of-the-barrel teams to increase their win total, the Bulls faced Auburn and Wisconsin last season and will play Rutgers and Penn State this year."
You know why?
Because they get paid cash money to play good teams and lose. It's a fact that Nj.com and all its affiliated papers would seemingly like to forget (maybe because they make $crill off of selling lame-ass Rutgers "magical season" books) -- Rutgers originally paid Buffalo $225,000 to play them last year. Buffalo backed out, largely because they run such racket on this shit that they had too many other big-walleted suitors. But they agreed to play this year, for only $25,000 more. So this game -- and likely win -- will cost those beloved Scarlet Knights $250,000.
Ah, ain't victory sweet. I'm sure some of those laid off profs and adjuncts without health insurance hangin' around the county clinic for meds think so.
Cross-posted at JonWhiten dot com
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Sun Mar 25, 2007 at 02:20:49 PM EDT
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If you go shopping sometime this week, be sure to buy a nice big bag of marbles and send it to Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine. I don't know how many marbles he started with when he began his sinecure as Winger-in-Chief of the Ledger op-ed page, but on the basis of this genuinely freaky column he's definitely running short.
The springboard for Mulshine's musings is not, I'm relieved to say, something that happened in New Jersey, but could easily happen on the Turnpike or Parkway one of these days. Last month along an interstate highway in Michigan, 39- year-old Bernadette Houghton Headd found herself being tailgated by a lunkhead in a looming Dodge Ram pickup truck while on her way to work. Many of us have found ourselves in similar situations, and our reactions, depending on our nerviness and level of irritation, run the gamut from slowing down and frustrating the oaf to sending a salute up the one-finger flagpole. Ms. Headd chose a different course of action: She hauled out a 9 mm pistol and fired off a round at the road in front of the offending driver's tire, or so she told police.
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Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 11:43:09 AM EST
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Cross-posted from City Belt
The headlines screamed out, like manna from heaven for gas-guzzlers, McMansioners, and Bush administration "scientists" alike:
"Scientists: Global Warming Can't Be Stopped."
"Scientists Say There's No Way To Stop Climate Change."
This morning, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their widely-anticipated report on global climate change. The report (available here as PDF) found, among other things, that, "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level." The group of experts also said, with over 90 percent confidence, that human activity has been the main driver of said warming.
So what's New Jersey's largest news portal, home of the award-winning Star-Ledger, to do with such a drastic report?
If you guessed, "Misrepresent its findings," you're the big winner -- we've got a Hummer in the mail to you.
The Star-Ledger/Nj.com report, authored by Kitta MacPherson, leads by calling global warming "a runaway train that can't be stopped," before half-heartedly adding, "at least for a while." What the IPCC did in fact say was that we've fucked ourselves over for at least 30 more years of global warming as a result of our selfish actions, but, as the New York Times put it:
"The warming can be substantially blunted by prompt action."
So, it turns out there actually is a way -- many ways, actually -- to stop climate change. While my fellow City Belter Elizabeth recently took An Inconvient Truth to task for saying as much, there are personal actions that, if replicated on a grand scale (perhaps incentivized by government), can help stem the tide of global warming. But she was right to say that our ever-business-friendly federal government deserves most of the blame, and it is indeed killing us.
Rather than giving up, and encouraging everyone else to do so, perhaps Nj.com should help us understand how we can create change. Perhaps with an afternoon to put it all together, the report in tomorrow's paper will be a little less cynical -- and a little more correct.
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Fri Jan 26, 2007 at 03:13:25 PM EST
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I was only a kid when the Newark race riots exploded during the summer of 1967, but even so, I still remember the pall of fear they spread across the state as other cities smoldered and sometimes ignited as well. Toward the end of the summer, the death of a relative required my father to head into Newark to straighten out some real estate business. The work required him to spend a lot of time going through old accounts in a pretty rundown office building somewhere in the city, and there were several times that I had to accompany him for one reason or another. Even though I was going insane from boredom, I was under strict orders never to leave the building. After a relatively quiet period, I was allowed to venture out to a nearby candy store, but twelve times never could I walk around the corner, out of sight.
As a white kid growing up in a dumpy bone-white suburban town, I didn't have the faintest notion of what caused the Newark riots, but I learned plenty years later when I read No Cause for Indictment, a blood-boiling work of reportage by Ron Porambo that excoriated the city power structure and the police for their manifold abuses of Newark's black citizens. The title grew from Porambo's decision to interview witnesses and reconstruct events surrounding 22 civilian deaths linked to police or Naitonal Guardsmen, cases in which the grand jury each time had found "no cause for indictment." Needless to say, Porambo found plenty of cause. The book remains the definitive account of the events that turned the Brick City into the Sick City, which would remain an economic basket case for decades.
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Sun Jan 21, 2007 at 03:52:51 PM EST
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Just to follow-up, the "How They Voted" column was back in the Star-Ledger today. It's in the "New Jersey" section, on page 26. I was extremely surprised, and am hopefull that it will be continued on a weekly basis. Thank you, so much, to all who wrote to the editor for the inclusion of this very important column. It was not so much for those of us who are computer literate, that I was so concerned, but for those who do not have access to the computer. Now, more than ever, it is crucial that we all be politically informed. For some, the newspaper is the only means of obtaining that information. The Star-Ledger does a real public service by publishing that information, and we should be most appreciative.
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Fri Aug 18, 2006 at 11:48:08 AM EDT
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You could almost hear the television networks scream in relief as the JonBenet Ramsey murder case reappeared, just in time to spare them the ordeal of covering actual news. It'll be AllDay JonBenet for the rest of the month -- what else would you expect?
But it's sad to see real newspapers join in the bottom-feeder frenzy, and particularly sad to see the Star-Ledger giving big play on its Web site to this grossly underreported and under-edited story about a crank from Nutley who did a "psychic sketch" of the murderer. This sketch, posted next to a photo of the man who just confessed to the killing, convinces me of nothing beyond the fact that this "psychic" -- who died in 1998 -- found a way to tap into the budgets of various police departments. (The Star-Ledger story says she bills only for "expenses," content to leave it at that. Expenses for what -- crystal ball maintenance?)
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 at 01:48:55 PM EDT
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If you feel you're being watched, it may be because Jackie Corley, known to some of you as the Bayshore Journalista, has just fired up her Jersey Blog Beat column at NJ.com. Her initial selection of links to demonstrate "the eclectic blogging community" in New Jersey lists heavily to starboard: the only avowed portside blogs are Sloppydawg and The Opinion Mill, both of which ran "Support Freedom of the Press" buttons when Jackie's old employer, The Courier, was getting guff from a property developer.
Meanwhile, we get five winger blogs, notably BenightedNJ, the anonymous GOP blog that spent the election pretending to have a videotape of Jon Corzine saying unspeakable things.
We also get a link to the estimable Baristanet, a legal blog that exhibits center-right tendencies (I'm open to being surprised on that one), Gigglechick and the "Jersey Side" blog run by the guy who recruited her. Nothing about BlueJersey, the smoking hot political blog that's about to make a killing in the T-shirt business, but I guess that's coming soon. Rght Jackie? Jackie? JACKIE??
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