New Jersey News is Weird

I subscribe to a small hyper-local newspaper because I like to see hyper-local news and I like to support newspapers and newspapering.  Sometimes hyper-local New Jersey news is really weird.

For example, there's the article titled, "Budd Lake fire chief arrested, accused of masturbating in ShopRite parking lot in Sparta."  In a nutshell, "Budd Lake Fire Chief Joseph Compano was arrested and charged with lewdness after he allegedly masturbated with his penis exposed while making eye contact with a woman in the parking lot of the ShopRite in Sparta."  Here's the chief under happier circumstances:

According to the article, "Compano told police that he was the only person driving the vehicle and that he went to ShopRite to get lunch and proceeded to eat it while parked in the lot .... Compano denied the allegations, stating had a tray of watermelon on his lap and was eating it with a fork, suggesting that may have been the masturbation motion the woman observed."  I don't know how you eat watermelon, but the way I eat it isn't easily confused with masturbation.  Anyway, the cops pulled the surveillance video of the store and the chief never went in to buy watermelon or anything else so he finally broke down and admitted that he was indeed masturbating in the ShopRite parking lot.  So don't buy groceries in Sparta.

Not to be outdone, a Bernardsville Planning Board meeting generated this headline: "Not quite the application: Nude scenes put end to virtual Planning Board meeting in Bernardsville."  Here's the gist of it:

Around 9:18 p.m., while board members were discussing testimony from a developer’s professional planner, the ‘N’ word was suddenly heard.  

Almost instantly, project site plan drawings on the screen were replaced by a series of scenes of naked men, most of whom were African American, having sex with each other or fondling themselves as loud, pulsating music with repeated use of the ‘N’ word all but drowned out the voices of planning officials. 

After a couple of minutes, the videos and music stopped and the meeting appeared to be back on track.

“That was interesting,” said one of the planners.

“That was more than interesting,” said another.

But then the videos and music returned, and after about six minutes the board opted to terminate the Zoom feed and start over.

When the feed resumed, the videos and music were gone but within a few moments they started up again. Board members and representatives for the applicant, straining to be heard above the noise, mutually agreed to end the meeting and resume at an undetermined date.

I'm not sure why the reporter felt the need to make the aside "most of whom were African American," but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was to provide context for the N word.  Board Administrator Frank Mottola asserts that this was "a professional hack by people who knew what they were doing." I agree that this was the not the result of people who didn't know what they were doing, but I doubt professional hackers spend their time concocting ways to disrupt Bernardsville Planning Board Meetings, choosing instead to concoct hacks that will make them money.  I bet it was a rival Planning Board, maybe Basking Ridge, trying to make Bernardsville look stupid.  Or maybe it was just some kids screwing with old people.

Jersey is weird!  But you probably already knew that.

Today's Headlines

Just scanning the newswire...

Lionel Messi to Sign With MLS’s Inter Miami, per Report

Wow! I was rooting for him to rejoin Barcelona, only because they were talking about this when I was in that town in March. But this seems fun, and another drawpiece for MLS games.

Someone should write a post about this. Someone on the team who writes about "footy."

Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin

Double-wow! Alien spacecraft has been retrieved and analyzed for many years! Let's make a theme park out of it! This is fascinating. 

Francis casting a vote

Someone who write about science should so a separate post. Maybe someone who posts about things like the Large Hadron Collider. 

Pope Francis is getting a hernia-related surgery in Rome

Yikes! Pope-a Frankie's gonna need some papal ballots. 

Someone should write a post about such matters. Maybe someone who enjoys balloting and who had hernia surgery last year. Wait, that's me. Never mind.

‘Very last warning’ for 82-year-old German convicted of dealing drugs

A German court says it is giving an 82-year-old man a “last warning” to avoid jail after he was found guilty of drug dealing, despite 24 previous convictions.

That's just playing the odds now, right?

Gheorghe: The Blog founder rob Turns 53

Saving the best for last, let's give it up for the man behind the mastery here, the guy who puts the dip in the dipshittery!

Happy Birthday, buddy.

Virtual Newsrooms and the Dehumanization of the News

Our man in the OBX worried that we're growing weary of his narrowly-focused insider baseball news content. He needn't fret, especially when he offers a phrase like, "a cornerstone of newspapering is being able to humanize the day’s activities" and helps me consider yet one more thing I hadn't. Also, as I told him, the internet's leading forum for dipshittery absolutely needs a media critic. And so, on with the criticism.

Apologies for dragging this particular dead horse into the yard for another flogging, but I believe it bears mention and repeated attention. Today’s micro-outrage involves local newspapers and shops with which I’m familiar.

Chicago-based Tribune Publishing, my former employer, announced recently that it planned to close the offices of the Capital newspaper and Maryland Gazette in Annapolis, Md., also a former employer, along with several other papers, among them the New York Daily News and Orlando Sentinel. Those papers will still publish, but staff must work from home or make other arrangements.

Capital-Gazette staffers planned to meet at the offices on Labor Day to clean out desks and to bid farewell to the newsroom. Trib Publishing got wind of the plan and locked staff out of the building. Understandably hacked off, reporters and editors convened in the parking lot and then drove to the city dock for an impromptu rally.

Tribune executives couldn’t be reached for comment, according to one report, but a labor relations executive texted that the proposed Labor Day gathering “raises important Covid-related health concerns.” This would be laughable, were it not galling. We’re supposed to believe that a newsroom full of reporters and editors who have spent the past six months covering the pandemic wouldn’t follow safe practices for gathering and interaction. We’re also supposed to believe that a corporation that’s whacked staff and strip-mined newspapers across the chain suddenly is focused on worker safety and well-being.

You might remember that the Capital was where five staffers were shot dead in the newsroom in 2018 by a man who held a long-standing grudge about how he was portrayed in coverage. The paper won a Pulitzer Prize for its work in the aftermath of the killings, and security and materials were bolstered to make the offices safer. Temporarily, it turns out.

The decision to close the offices in Annapolis and elsewhere is a real estate and bottom line move, company officials say, exacerbated by the pandemic (funny how the pandemic became a convenient corporate excuse for everything from furloughs and layoffs, to mandatory attendance by “essential” workers). Not coincidentally, one of Tribune’s primary investors and influencers is an outfit called Alden Global Capital, a vulture capital firm that I’ve mentioned in this space. AGC has spent the past decade acquiring and wangling a seat at the tables of newspapers all over the country and siphoning off money through staff cuts and various meat cleaver practices. The Trib, and by extension Alden, pulled a similar move with the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. The Trib essentially merged the Newport News Daily Press, my old haunt, with the Pilot. They sold the Pilot’s longtime downtown Norfolk office building for $9.5 million to a real estate developer, and forced Pilot staffers to work from home and travel to Newport News in the event of office functions.

Shuttering newsrooms, sending everyone home and selling the space is one more way to wring every last nickel out of newspapers. The pandemic has shown that many companies are able to function without a central office culture. I’ve argued in the past that newspapers are different and cannot be run like traditional businesses. Newsroom culture is vital to the newsgathering process, especially at smaller papers. As others have said, a newsroom is often a community’s eyes and ears, and on good days, maybe its conscience. Reporters and editors lean on each other for feedback and ideas. There’s incredible value in being able to walk a few steps and have face-to-face contact with peers, given that a cornerstone of newspapering is being able to humanize the day’s activities. Without a newsroom, there’s still interaction, but when everyone’s separated, phone calls and emails and social media contacts are inadequate substitutes. Everyone benefits when it’s done well.

(A few words about anonymous sources, if I might, which have gotten a lot of play lately after a recent piece in The Atlantic about the president’s alleged remarks of disdain for war dead and ceremonial tributes: Newspapers and news organizations have done a piss-poor job through the years of explaining the how and why and value of anonymous or unidentified sources in breaking stories. Reporters and editors always prefer that sources go on the record and identify themselves. Sometimes, given the nature of information or someone’s position, that isn’t an option. They have jobs and mortgages and families to feed. Sometimes, identifying oneself can compromise their position or that of colleagues. Retaliation can be swift and brutal. Just ask Alexander Vindman. Though they are anonymous to the public, people in the reporting chain know who they are. Reporters, editors and, depending on the sensitivity of information, sometimes lawyers carefully weigh whether to run stories dependent on unnamed sources. Stories rarely run at legit news organizations if sources aren’t deemed credible. I’ve never written about national security or government shenanigans, but I’ve written stories where the unnamed source or sources were the subjects themselves. He or she had no comment for print, but confirmed details off the record or what reporters call “on background.” Then, you flesh out stories with other sources. People on social media gave me gas for linking to The Atlantic piece. “Anonymous.” “Not credible.” “Your bias against Trump is evident.” “You never would have run that story in your old newsroom.” “If somebody isn’t willing to ID themselves, you don’t run it. Journalism 101.” Yes, by all means, explain Journalism 101 to me.)

Getting locked out of an office that’s getting ready to close is a minor indignity in the assault against newspapers. But it also drives home that there’s no act too small or petty that those in charge will not use to reinforce their position. There was no reason not to permit staffers to take a last lap around the newsroom, a place where many have given their heart and soul and do work because it’s important to their community. Likely, they did so for the same reason that too many others in power act: Because they can.