Rachel Maddow Takes Chris Christie Scandal to Washington Post w/ Op/Ed on Local Reporting

[Hissyspit]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rachel-maddow-nj-bridge-scandal-proves-the-need-for-dogged-local-journalism/2014/01/15/56ba6ab0-7c77-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html

Democracy needs dogged local journalism

By Rachel Maddow, Published: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 8:55 PM ET

If you type “Shawn Boburg” into your Web browser address bar, a strange thing happens. Boburg is a reporter for The Record newspaper, in Bergen County, N.J. But ShawnBoburg.com sends visitors to The Record’s rival, Newark’s Star-Ledger.

The man who bought the rights to Boburg’s online name — and who presumably engineered the nasty little redirect — is David Wildstein, who last week became the country’s most high-profile political appointee. After his high school classmate Chris Christie was elected governor of New Jersey in 2009, Wildstein was appointed to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for a highly paid position that, conveniently, had no job description.

- snip -

Christie’s spokesman forwarded to Wildstein an e-mail exchange with a Star-Ledger reporter who was inquiring about the scandal, calling the reporter an “(expletive)ing mutt.” After a request for comment came in from a member of the Star-Ledger editorial board, the governor’s spokesman erupted to Wildstein, “(expletive) him and the S-L.”

While the Christie appointees at the Port Authority asserted “no response” over and over to reporters’ requests for information, the governor publicly belittled journalists who had the temerity to ask him about the scandal. “I worked the cones, actually,” Christie scoffed in December, referring to the purported traffic study. “Unbeknownst to everybody, I was actually the guy out there. . . . You really are not serious with that question.”

- snip -

The first reporting on the scandal was by the local traffic columnist in The Record, John Cichowski. The week of the traffic tie-ups, Cichowski was already calling bullpucky on the Port Authority line that some sort of “study” was to blame. He pointed to political retribution as a more likely explanation. A steady stream of local reporting followed until, ultimately, Shawn Boburg’s scoop last Wednesday in The Record: the governor’s deputy chief of staff e-mailing Wildstein, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.

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[crazylikafox]

1. big kick

[warrior1]

2. she's right

All politics are locate. Thanks to intrepid reporting and not afraid of the bully in NJ. From what I've been reading there are a lot of them.

[calimary]

3. Keep putting it out there, Rachel!

Keep spreading the word! The more vehicles the better - for your shrewd analysis, wisdom, keen insights, and a really marvelous ability to connect dots! Too bad there are so few like you out there.

[George II]

4. Boburg and the Bergen Record deserve a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of this scandal.

Don't know why Rachel Maddow is getting all the credit for this.

[athena]

5. The most important part of the piece

is at the end:

It’s annoying to pay for information — I know. But if you don’t subscribe to your local paper or pony up to get behind its online paywall, who’s going to pay reporters to cover the news where you live? A free press isn’t that kind of “free.” An accountable democracy doesn’t work without real information, gathered from the ground up, about people in power, everywhere. Be inspired by the beleaguered but unintimidated reporters of Chris Christie’s New Jersey: Whatever your partisan affiliation, or lack thereof, subscribe to your local paper today. It’s an act of civic virtue.

(Emphases mine)

[Sienna86]

6. Great thanks also to Ken Ward Jr. Of the Charleston Gazette

For his excellent reporting on the chemical spill affecting West Virgina.

These folks are real journalists!

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. knr

[JDPriestly]

8. Rachel Maddow's point is that we should subscribe to our local newspaper.

Be inspired by the beleaguered but unintimidated reporters of Chris Christie’s New Jersey: Whatever your partisan affiliation, or lack thereof, subscribe to your local paper today. It’s an act of civic virtue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rachel-maddow-nj-bridge-scandal-proves-the-need-for-dogged-local-journalism/2014/01/15/56ba6ab0-7c77-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html

The Los Angeles Times is, I suppose the local city newspaper. There are others, but that is the big one. It did not report honestly or fairly in the run-up to the Iraq War. In my opinion, it pretty much just mouthed the lies of the larger, national newspapers. I was poorly served. I have not forgiven that newspaper yet.

Worse than no reporting at all is the presentation of lies as truths. Some of our local newspapers have a problem with that.

So I prefer to read the local, local newspapers, the tiny freebies that have reporters present in the local, local meetings that I occasionally attend.

We need more of the kind of conscientious local reporting that Maddow describes. But it takes a lot of courage to do it. Not all local newspapers are worth subscribing to in my opinion. Some just are not.

[athena]

10. The problem is that many people don't think about the cost of news.

I've heard people brag about how they never pay for news. Not paying for news is the same as not valuing the first amendment. Nothing is free.

If your local newspaper is not good, subscribe to the NYT online ($3.75/week), which does a lot of good investigative journalism. I would also recommend subscribing to The Nation ($18/year for an online subscription), a weekly independent magazine that does in-depth investigative journalism and often is the first to break important stories.

[JDPriestly]

11. I subscribe to Mother Jones. Someone gives me copies of the NYT.

[Cha]

9. Rachel's dead serious on exposing CChristie and his Culture of

Bully Politics.. that turned potentially deadly.

thanks Rachel and Hissyspit