Repairing the Asbury Park Press’ Conservative Insufficiency

By Tom DeSeno

The Asbury Park Press is the only daily paper targeting two New Jersey counties.  If that sounds small, consider those two counties have a larger population than eight U.S. states. They double the population of Washington DC. That makes the AP Press important not only as a courier of news, but considering its monopoly, as a sculptor of opinion in our great national debate.

Owned by media giant Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in America and parent of USA Today, there exists available resources to publish a product that mirrors the Press’ considerable responsibility (if Gannett is willing to open the spigot on resources, that is).

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Shake Up At The Asbury Park Press

Hollis Towns, APP’s Editor of the Future. Photo via facebook

Editors and writers at the Asbury Park Press are vying to keep their jobs in Executive Editor Hollis R. Towns’ “Newsroom of the Future.”

Gannett, the owner of the paper, announced on August 5 that it is separating into two publicly held companies.  APP will be part of a  publishing company that will be debt free and own the company’s newspapers including USA Today and 81 local daily newspapers and their affiliated websites.  The more profitable broadcasting  and digital divisions will be folded into a company that will assume the existing debt and consists of the 46 television stations the company owns or services as well as the websites Cars.com and CareerBuider.com.  The publishing company will retain the Gannett name.

The following day, Towns announced on app.com and the paper’s front page that he, along with the executive editors of four other of Gannett properties were charged with creating the “newsroom of the future.”  There will be fewer editors and more reporters who will hang out in coffee shops and delis hunting for stories that they will be able to post to app.com without a gatekeeper reviewing their work.  And there will be public events like the Sleep Con event they hosted with an advertiser earlier this month where readers could pay $10 to learn how to sleep better by buying a mattress from the advertiser.

What Towns didn’t announce publicly was that current Asbury Park Press employees had to apply to keep their jobs.  “To be hired into the Newsroom of the Future” is how is was spun in Neptune.

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Prosperity is dead

We might as well all just quit working, saving, investing and inventing.  Prosperity is dead. 

It must be true.  I read it in the Asbury Park Press.

Governor Christie killed it, according to the Neptune Nudniks in their editorial, A death blow for prosperity, by killing the ill conceived ARC tunnel project that would have boosted New York’s economy while New Jersey tax payers  paid the open ended bill. 

What a bunch of hyperbole.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that Monmouth and Ocean counties don’t have a reliable and trustworthy news organization to serve the region, the head Nudnik wants to export his special brand of propaganda throughout the nation.  Hollis Towns, the Executive Editor of the Neptune Nudniks was recently elected president of the Associated Press Managing Editors.

“I’m thrilled to be elected president of an organization with such a rich history and bright future,” said Towns, 46. “I plan to build on the successes of the past year by growing the membership, extending our reach and launching an important national reporting project with The Associated Press.”

Good grief.  Did the APME members read his rag before electing him?  This nudnik is going to launch an important national reporting project with the internationally syndicated Associated Press?

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