Gallagher Named To Top 100 NJ Media List

MMM publisher Art Gallagher has once again been named to InsiderNJ’s Insider 100 Media List…just barely this year, coming in at #99 after being number 47 in the inaugural list in 2017.

Thanks to Editor Max Pizarro for the recognition and especially for using better picture of Gallagher this year.

Congratulations to all the journalists, columnists and bloggers who made the list.

Special thank yous to U.S. Senator Cory Booker and Kivvit  for that ads congratulating all the recipients.

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MoreMonmouthMusings and ShoreNewsNetwork Join Forces

Update: MMM and ShoreNewsNetwork ended their affiliation after the 2018 election.

Two Jersey Shore local news sites are joining forces in an effort to provide Monmouth and Ocean County residents informative alternatives to legacy media outlets.

Phil Stilton, publisher of ShoreNewsNetwork.com and Art Gallagher, publisher of MoreMonmouthMusings.net announced today that they have created a strategic alliance and content sharing agreement.  Together, the two publishers expect to reach 300,000 Monmouth and Ocean County readers per week through their websites and social media platforms.

“Phil has built and impressive audience in Ocean County,” Gallagher said. “I’m looking to expand my reach in northern Ocean County and southwest Monmouth County. Teaming up with ShoreNewNetwork makes perfect sense.”

“The legacy media in New Jersey offers readers filtered and often slanted reports on what goes on in our community,” Stilton said. “For almost 10 years, we have offered our readers the news without the mainstream media spin.”

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Anatomy of a Media Fabricated News Story – Gannett Style

By Tom DeSeno

This morning (March 2^nd 2016) people in the shore area in the central part of New Jersey woke up to an editorial in the Asbury Park Press, the only daily newspaper that serves two large counties, viciously attacking Governor Christie and demanding his resignation.

“Wow” the people of Monmouth and Ocean counties must have thought.   “This editorial staff must have really put a great deal of independent thought into this, to be this hard on the Governor,” they must have thought.

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Christie appeal may postpone “harm” past primaries

By Mark Lagerkervist, NewJerseyWatchDog.org

Choosing political ambition over transparency, Gov. Chris Christie plans to appeal a Superior Court decision that ordered him to reveal a key cog in his taxpayer-funded publicity machine – a multi-tiered, high-tech list of 2,500 media contacts.

In court papers, deputy attorney general Daniel M. Vannella asked Judge Mary C. Jacobson to grant a stay pending appeal, claiming release of the record would cause the governor “irreparable harm.”

Jacobson had ordered the governor’s office to provide New Jersey Watchdog with a copy of the list by Monday and pay for its attorneys fees.

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“Unlike” News12

By Art Gallagher

News12 New Jersey has effectively fired reporter Sean Bergin for telling the truth.

In a report about Jersey City Police Officer Melvin Santiago’s murder, Bergin went off script and closed the segment by saying, “The underlying cause of all of this, of course: Young black men growing up without fathers. Unfortunately, no one in the news media has the courage to touch that subject.”

News12 executives responded by proving Bergin’s point about the spineless media. They suspended him and then offered him a one day a week job, for $300 per week, covering fluff like broken fire hydrants or other inane subjects.  They covered their asses by saying the discipline was for breaking company policy.  Bergin turned them down and quit.

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Two River Times Is Sold

Domenic DiPiero, the new owner of the Two River Times. photo via uhnj.org

RedBankGreen is reporting that the news weekly, The Two River Times‘s, ownership has changed hands.

Domenic DiPiero, founder and president of Newport Capital Group bought the paper from Mickey Gooch, founder and president of GFI Group under terms that have not been disclosed.

DiPiero is a lifelong Two Rivers area resident, according to an announcement of the paper’s sale posted on it’s website on Monday.

“I look forward to continuing the great tradition that The Two River Times has built. I want the newspaper to continue to be a source of pride and news in the community,” DiPiero said, according to the TRT announcement.

Gooch, and his now ex-wife Diane, bought the paper from Geraldo Rivera in 2004.

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Patrick Murray is emphatic that his next poll will be negative for Christie

By Art Gallagher, [email protected]

UPDATE 4:15PM:  Murray says Magyar/NJSpotlight mischaracterised his analysis.  Read the next chapter here.

Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray already knows that his next poll about Bridgegate and the Mastro Report, will have an negative outcome for Governor Chris Christie.

Murray is quoted by Mark Magyar in a NJSpotlight piece posted this morning saying emphatically that his next poll will have negative results.

“The Mastro report raised more questions than it answered about what is going on in the Christie administration,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, noted. “Now, the release of the memos has raised even more questions, including questions about the credibility of the Mastro report itself.”

Murray said he could not imagine what Christie and his top advisers were thinking when they settled on their current legal and political strategy. “Every time they put something out, they undercut their credibility,” he said. “Everything they do provides fodder that keeps this investigation alive and keeps this story alive. The report was overly protective of the governor, and now everyone is looking through the memos to see what the report left out. Nothing gets settled, everything looks worse.”

A Quinnipiac Poll released last week showed that 56 percent of New Jerseyans regarded the report as a “whitewash” and only 36 percent believed it to be a “legitimate investigation.” Even more ominously, 65 percent of voters knew of the Hoboken case, and 57 percent of that group believe Zimmer’s allegation that the Christie administration improperly withheld Sandy aid from her city because she refused to support the Rockefeller Group development.

Murray said he expected to see similar results in his next Monmouth Poll. “It will be negative. This is not going to be positive,” Murray stated emphatically, asserting that the controversy over the Mastro report clearly resonated with voters. “The question now with Christie is, ‘Have we hit a floor where a certain percentage of people will defend him no matter what, and everyone else will attack him?’”  (emphasis added)

 

Murray enjoys a well-earned reputation for producing polls that most accurately match the results of elections in New Jersey.  However, his declaration of a poll’s results before he’s asked a question raises serious questions about his credibility as a political scientist and the perceived “independence” of his analysis.

In fairness I should point out that it is possible that Murray already conducted his survey and hasn’t reported the results yet.

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Are New Jersey voters (that would be you) greedy jerks or just stupid and impressionable?

By Art Gallagher, [email protected]

New Jersey voters are either greedy jerks or stupid and impressionable buffoons if you buy The Star Ledger Editorial Board’s (Tom Moran’s) reading of the QuinnipiacPoll released on Thursday.  The poll reported that New Jerseyans favor wage freezes for state workers, by a 53-42 margin, and oppose an increase in the gasoline tax by a 65-33 percent margin.

Hundreds of middle-aged people looking for work at Brookdale Community College job fair. April 4, 2014

New Jersey voters are jerks. The new state motto: “Screw you, not me.”

That is how Moran starts off his rant. He finishes by cutting the poll respondents a break. Maybe we aren’t greedy jerks, maybe we’ve been led to think the way we do.

We’ll cut the folks responding to the Quinnipiac poll a break – they’ve been goaded in this direction. Despite widespread reforms to state workers’ pay and benefits during the past four years, not to mention budget cuts that led to historic layoffs of police, teachers and firefighters, Gov. Chris Christie used his annual budget address to continue to blame state worker compensation for our fiscal aches and pains.

Hmmm.  Moran’s frustration is showing.  As the editorial page editor of the state’s largest media outlet, Moran should be the most powerful opinion maker in New Jersey. How could his readers be so stupid?!

Insulting your customers (readers) is a interesting strategy to stop the bleeding of a company (media outlet) that is contracting rapidly and recently announced 167 layoffs which followed millions in concessions from the outlet’s unionized workers and a smaller round of layoffs.

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It would be great if The Star Ledger…

….put Cory Booker under a microscope like they have Governor Chris Christie and Rutgers Athletic Director Julie Hermann.

By Art Gallagher, [email protected]

photo via facebook

Star Ledger sports columnist Steve Politi has a column this morning that is part of his ongoing campaign to take down Rutgers Athletic Director Julie Hermann; Julie Hermann: It would be ‘great’ if The Star Ledger went out of business.

Politi has been trying to get Hermann fired since Rutgers hired her to turn around their Athletic Department last spring.  Something about alleged bullying and sex discrimination at a previous job and lying about whether or not she talked to the parent of a Rutgers student who alleged he had been bullied.

Turns out that Hermann doesn’t like The Star Ledger. Several weeks ago she told a journalism class that, “That’d be great [if the Star Ledger died]. I’m going to do all I can to not to give them a headline to keep them alive because I think I got them through the summer,” according to a Rutgers student alternative news site, Muckgers. (Note that Hermann didn’t actually say the words ‘if the Star Ledger died.’ She was responding to a student’s question that was not quoted.)  The Muckgers reporter broke the “news” of Hermann’s several weeks old remarks to a journalism class last Thursday, the same day The Star Ledger told 167 employees they would be out or work in September with severance pay.

As part of his pity party for his 167 colleagues, Politi wrote a column with a headline that implies Hermann threw a celebratory party to celebrate the coming hardship on those reporters, advertising execs, copy editors and clerks who don’t find work before their severance and unemployment benefits run out.

Forget, for a minute, what you think about the newspaper. It doesn’t matter if you think its Rutgers’ coverage stinks, or its news coverage is biased, or if its columnists are too smug for their own good.

What matters is this: The Star-Ledger employs a lot of people. And if the Rutgers athletic director thinks it would be great if it closed down, then she relishes the idea of seeing those people lose their livelihood, their benefits and maybe more.

I don’t know Hermann. Never talked to her.  But I’d bet that she doesn’t “relish the idea of seeing those people lose their livelihood, their benefits and maybe more.”  She probably just feels that way about Politi, who has been trying to see her lose her livelihood, benefits and more.

I don’t begrudge Politi taking his shots at Hermann.  I have no idea if his coverage of her career is accurate or not. I respect the fact that his bias against her is obvious.

But I think that The Star Ledger spending so much on an Athletic Director while giving a U.S. Senator a pass is disgraceful.

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Black Friday Political Roundtable on NJ TV

With Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vin Gopal and Republican strategist Steve Some.

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