New Report Looks at New Jersey’s ‘News Deficit’
By Jon Whiten • Oct 7th, 2009 • Category: Blog, News
“The evidence indicates that as a result of the state’s chronic news deficit, the people of New Jersey know less about their state than people elsewhere in the country know about theirs. Lower levels of knowledge about politics have distorted campaigns and elections in the state and may be a factor in the endemic problem of political corruption.”
So says a downbeat report released earlier this week on the state’s news media from New Jersey Policy Perspective and the Sandra Starr Foundation. The report, titled “Less News is Bad News: The Media Crisis and New Jersey’s News Deficit,” argues that the ongoing shifts in media consumption and the corresponding problems plaguing the newspaper industry have joined a longstanding geographical problem to create a dire situation in New Jersey.
“New Jersey has long suffered from inadequate news coverage because of the domination of New York and Philadelphia news media that don’t give much priority to this state,” Princeton University professor and The American Prospect co-founder Paul Starr says in a statement. “Now, with the decline of newspapers in New Jersey, the state’s chronic news deficit threatens to become an acute problem. New Jersey needs new ways to finance journalism.”
Unfortunately, the report virtually ignores the situation in New Jersey’s largest cities, focusing on statewide and state house coverage and online news sites in wealthier suburban enclaves (though it does mention the job cuts at the Jersey Journal in passing). But, even so, it does include some interesting history, and is worth a read.
You can download the report here.
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Jon Whiten is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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