Local news media outlets in New Jersey have been covering everything from the silly to the sublime this week.
Beyond diverting stories of a mayor getting a face full of dirt and a bear invading the garbage, local news sites have been tacking tough stories such as gun control and a murder/suicide. (more…)
Twitter was abuzz last night, live-tweeting “Superstorm Sandy: A Live Town Hall” — which featured live expert panels in New Jersey and New York and was jointly broadcast on NJTV, THIRTEEN in New York City, WLIW21 on Long Island, and WHYY TV in Philadelphia. See the “storified” tweets below, following the video. (more…)
The focus on continued reporting on the impacts of Superstorm Sandy will continue tonight, May 16, as multiple media outlets collaborate to televise and livestream “Superstorm Sandy: A Live Town Hall” on Thursday, May 16 at 8:00 p.m. The Town Hall will be broadcast on NJTV, THIRTEEN in New York City, WLIW21 on Long Island, and WHYY TV in Philadelphia. NJ Today’s Mike Schneider and a panel of experts will be “addressing the issues and questions raised as a result of the recent storm and recovery efforts” in front of live audiences at Monmouth University and the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center. (more…)
While major media were running wild covering Prince Harry’s visit to the Shore this week, one local media editor was less than impressed.
Jerry DeMarco of CliffviewPilot penned a bitter bit about Harry’s visit, writing that Harry “didn’t roll up his sleeves and try to help fix up any of the 360,000 or so New Jersey homes or apartments damaged by the storm” nor did he host or attend any fundraisers for Sandy recovery. DeMarco called the visit “a weekday publicity stunt” that yielded merely “pompous circumstance.” (more…)
NJ News Commons has been closely following coverage of the state’s rising heroin usage and trafficking, including the arrest of 26 in Central Jersey last month, the announcement of a heroin task force in Ocean County, a major heroin bust in Bergen County and stories in The Record profiling the new heroin user and the path to addiction.
New Jersey’s local news media are also on the story. (more…)
Pascrell pushes path to citizenship for those in the U.S. illegally (via NJ.com)
PATERSON — Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-9th District) said Thursday that Congress has to act soon to fix the nation’s beleaguered immigration system, speaking in front of a diverse audience at a Paterson forum on immigration reform. “Our current immigration system is broken,” Pascrell said. “It is…
NJTV Special Report: Live Coverage of the New Jersey Budget Hearings (via NJ Today on NJTV)
LIVE STREAM VIDEO:
This story is part of The Immigration Project, a collaborative reporting effort — spearheaded by NJ News Commons — involving approximately 10 reporters and news agencies in New Jersey to cover the under-reported topic of immigration in the Garden State, which ranks fifth nationwide in the number of foreign-born residents and third in percentage. Read more about The Immigration Project here. For more information or to participate, contact njnewscommons@gmail.com. (more…)
Former Net Jason Collins came out as a homosexual this week in an essay he penned for Sports Illustrated. Not local news, right?
Wrong.
When ESPN basketball analyst Chris Broussard condemned homosexuality and called Collins’ orientation an “open rebellion to Jesus Christ,” it became a local story for his South Orange neighbors. South Orange Patch posted Broussard’s comments here.
What’s interesting are the readers’ comments, where local residents wrestle with the town’s reputation for diversity and acceptance — how to embrace Collins’ orientation and Broussard’s right to expression simultaneously. (more…)
We don’t interview a lot of New Jersey hyperlocal news media entrepreneurs who have their own Wikipedia page.
But Bernie Wagenblast is different — in more ways than one. Wagenblast has a memorable name and one that many New Jerseyans have heard in their hour of need as they navigate the congested highways and byways of our infrastructured-challenged state. For the past few years, Wagenblast has been the voice of NYC metro traffic and transit reports for Total Traffic. Every Saturday, listeners can hear Wagenblast’s reports on 1010 WINS and on NJ 101.5.
But now, after a career in transportation communications and operations, Wagenblast is coming full circle in his career — back to the more varied reporting that he learned at WSOU when he was a student at Seton Hall University and that he practiced at WJDM in Elizabeth.
Wagenblast has started Cranford Radio — it’s kind of a misnomer, says Wagenblast, since there is no actual radio involved, just audio. Cranford Radio consists of audio reports posted by Wagenblast chronicling arts, education, civics and more in Cranford.
Wagenblast is no stranger to startups. Wagenblast started his transportation broadcast career with Shadow Traffic then left on-air reporting from 1986 to 2009 to work on the other side of transportation communication. He helped create TRANSCOM, a coalition of transportation agencies in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. After 10 years in the public sector, he returned to the private sector, including working as NYC Director of Operations for SmartRoute Systems. In 1998, he started Transportation Communication Newsletter, which “grew into something large enough to quit my job and work on on a full-time basis” — at least for a time until Wagenblast craved a new challenge.
Now, Wagenblast is looking to branch out again on his own with Cranford Radio. (more…)
Years ago, I created a radio documentary about my grandparents coming to America. For
months, I sat at kitchen tables holding microphones in front of elderly relatives, and asked
them to tell me their stories. Later, back in Chapel Hill, N.C., where I was in graduate school, I listened through hours of thick Russian accents and transcribed it all.
One of my favorite stories was a short one. Tante Leah — my Zadee’s sister — had just arrived at Ellis Island, and Zadee was escorting her back to Shenandoah, Pa. by train. My grandfather had settled in the anthracite coal mining region of Pennsylvania, where he could sell goods to the miners.
As Leah told it, the train passed by Paterson, and her brother pointed out the window –
imparting one of his first lessons to her.
“Silk factory,” Zadee said. And you have to fill in the thick accent here. “Silk good. Factory no good.”
Except for my father, all the people I interviewed for that documentary are gone. I don’t think my children ever heard those accents. The closest they came were the voices of Boris and Minka, who appeared in a Passover episode of Rugrats. It is very easy, in the space of a few generations, to completely forget that you came from people who spoke an entirely different language, left their parents forever, and made their way in a strange land as “greenies.”
When you think about immigration in America these days, you largely think of Texas and
California, of border fences rising out the desert, of starving and dehydrated Mexicans being smuggled into the country in the back of trucks. At least I do.
You don’t necessarily think of New Jersey. But according to statistics from the Migration Policy Institute, New Jersey ranks fifth in the country for the number of foreign-born residents and third for the percentage of foreign-born residents.
A few weeks ago, inspired by the 86-journalist collaboration by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, we put out a call to action to do a collaborative reporting project in New Jersey. Last Monday, 10 of us gathered for a brown-bag lunch in Schmitt Hall, on the campus of Montclair State University, and decided on immigration as our subject.
We agreed on what has become obvious to me after six months of compiling a daily news
curation of New Jersey: immigration is an undercovered topic in New Jersey journalism. (more...)
The NJ News Commons, based at Montclair State University, is an initiative to strengthen journalism in the state of New Jersey.
