Will you pay to read The Asbury Park Press online?

It’s been a day since Gannett announced that they are going to start charging to read the news on their websites, including app.com, the site of The Asbury Park Press.

APP has yet to report that news.  Maybe they didn’t get the memo.

Will you pay to read APP.com?   Vote in the poll:

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Gannett to start charging to read its websites

Gannett, publisher of The Asbury Park Press and 79 other community newspapers throughout the country, announced today that they will emulate The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal by charging their readers to access their websites, according to multiple news outlets, not including The Asbury Park Press.

Readers will be able to read between five and fifteen articles each month before being charged, according to Forbes who covered the investors conference where Gannett announced the news.

The company also announced that they will shed $1.3 billion in cash, distributing it to shareholders through dividends and a $300 million stock buy back.

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Diversify The Media

UPDATE:

Star Ledger reporter Ginger Gibson, a member of the Statehouse press corps tell me she is Mexican:

 I saw your piece about the diversity of the press corps. I just wanted to let you know, I’m Mexican. So it’s not all white guys in the press corps, there are some minorities. Just wanted to make sure you knew that.

I never would have guessed that, given Gibson’s fair skin and last name.  Another lesson about assumptions.

Yet the point of my piece still stands.  The press corps is far from 40% minority, and the Ledger editorial board is still FOS.

On Saturday The Star Ledger published an editorial calling on Governor Chris Christie to appoint minorities to the State Supreme Court.

The Ledger is lamenting the fact that since Christie took office both minorities who were on the court, Justice John Wallace and Justice Roberto Rivera-Sota,  have left the bench.  For the first time in twenty years there are no minorities on the court. “And yet more than 40 percent of the state’s population is black, Hispanic, or Asian.”

The Ledger took the diversity theme a bit further this morning with an article that sites a Star Ledger analysis which concludes Governor Christie is favoring white middle class senior citizens in selecting communities to host his Town Hall meetings.

This got me thinking about the diversity of the New Jersey Media.  Is the New Jersey press corp comprised of 40% of African Americans, Hispanics and Asians?   Not even close.

From my experience, without doing an extensive MMM analysis like the Ledger did of Christie’s Town Halls, journalism may be the least diverse industry in New Jersey.

The State House press corp?  Overwhelmingly white. 

NJ.com, The Star Ledger’s website?  Only one African American columnist who writes almost exclusively about Newark. 

Giving credit where it is due, Gannett’s papers have a diverse group of reporters, on the local levels.  They have an African American Executive Editor, Hollis Towns, at The Asbury ParkPress.  Their Statehouse Buerau?  Five white guys.  They would be wise to make Jane Roh part of that team.

News12 has a diverse staff. 

So what is with the progressives at The Star Ledger?  Should they be telling the Governor to take the speck out of his eye while they have a log in their own?

Are the folks at The Ledger hypocrites or has Gannett scooped up all the good minority writers?

I don’t know for sure, but I tend to think they’re full of poop.  They’re attempting to set the agenda for Christie’s Supreme Court appointments by using the race card.  As part of the vast progressive conspiracy, the Ledger likes an activist court that requires billions of dollars to be flushed into urban schools that produce morally unacceptable results in educating minority children.   If they can convince the public that race should be a criteria for selecting a Supreme Court Justice, rather than scholarship, judicial temperment and a philosphical committement to interpreting law, rather than writing it from the bench, The Ledger figures they can thrwart Governor Christie from “turning Trenton upside down” anymore than he already has.

The Legislature is very likely to remain in Democratic control after the coming election, which limits severely the reforms Governor Christie can make over the rest of his term.  Given the legislative map, a second Christie term will most likely also have a Democratic legislature.    That he will have the responsiblity to appoint the majority of the court in his first term, to reshape the court as he promised, will result in the real legacy of the Christie administration.

The Star Ledger’s lip service for diversity is nothing more then getting ready for that coming political battle.

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Day 2 Since News Of Pallone’s Influence Peddling Broke, Still No Gannett Coverage

By Art Gallagher

The Kansas City Star thinks it’s newsworthy that New Jersey Congressmen Frank Pallone and Steve Rothman, along with Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez were found to have exerted pressure on the FDA to approve a knee patch that had insufficient scientific backing to be approved for patient care, prompting the FDA to rescind its approval of the project.

The Bergen Record covered the story.  So did phillyburbs.com , who ran the Associate Press coverage.

Nothing from the Asbury Park Press or MyCentralJersey.

Someone(s) from Gannett visited MMM 16 times today.  They read my story about the lack of coverage and the Little campaign’s  press releases about it. At least we know that someone at Gannett knows about it.  Maybe they’ll cover it tomorrow.

They’ve been busy writing about the fact that someone started a website to draft Governor Christie to run for President, even though Christie repeatedly says he’s not running.  What’s newsworthy about that? Anyone can start a website.  I even did it! 

They’ve also been busy writing about a few people (28 out of 40,000) who complained about getting Gerry Scharfenberger’s reverse 9-11 call too late in the evening.

I can understand how the fact that a 22 year incumbent congressman who is up for reelection was found to have inappropriately influenced the federal agency that is charge with guarding our food, and assuring the safety of our medicine and medical devices, in exchange for campaign cash, might slipped by them.  Now that we know that they know, I’m sure they’ll cover it.  Don’t you think?

The Gannett papers wouldn’t let their bias influence what news to report, would they?   Especially after writing a scathing editorial earlier this year about Rupert Murdoch donating $1 million to conservative causes.  The wrote so eloquently about how hard legitimate journalists work to be unbiased.

I’m sure they just haven’t gotten to Pallone’s graft and putting the health of thousands of Americans at risk yet.  Now that they know about it, I’m sure they’ll cover it.  Don’t you think?

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