The Asbury Park Press is still struggling for relevance and their trying to get it by attempting to set Governor Chris Christie’s agenda and schedule. Their likelihood of success is less than that of Star Ledger Editorial Board Editor Tom Moran’s attempts to get Christie to improve his manners.
Back in May, APP ran an multi-part expose on the Lakewood School System. So few people read about it, cared about it or took it seriously that when Christie came to Freehold for a Town Hall Meeting the following week, no one brought it up. That prompted an front page editorial rant that bashed Christie, Congressman Chris Smith and others not directly responsible for the mess in Lakewood for not paying attention to the APP Neptune Nudniks.
Last week the governor visited a private school (publicly funded) in Lakewood that serves the developmentally disabled. The Nudniks responded with another front page rant and by getting the Lakewood Board of Education President to write an open letter to the governor complaining that he is not paying attention to them on their schedule.
Yesterday, the Nudniks sent a reporter to a Christie press conference in Hackensack about a new solar power farm to ask him about the Lakewood Schools and why he hasn’t visited:
Because The Asbury Park Press Is No Longer Relevant
The Asbury Park Press is outraged that Governor Chris Christie did not make the problems of the Lakewood school system a primary topic of his town hall meeting in Freehold yesterday. The Neptune Nudniks are also upset that Congressman Chris Smith hasn’t returned their calls for comment or held a press conference about the Lakewood schools since the paper and pay site ran their series CHEATED about the problems in Lakewood schools last week.
Christie spent much, if not most, of his town hall meeting yesterday talking about education reform. His focus was on tenure reform as a way to improve results in our failing urban schools and to stop paying “a Kings Ransom for failure” by flushing 15% of the state’s tax dollars into failing schools as New Jersey has done for decades.
If ever there was evidence that The Asbury Park Press has become irrelevant, it is their heavily promoted Cheated series, yesterday’s town hall meeting, combined with today’s rants by the Nudniks that Christie and Smith are not paying attention to them.
Why didn’t Christie talk about Lakewood yesterday to hundreds of residents in the APP’s coverage area? Because no one asked him. The governor was talking about education. The APP had just finished a “special series” on the Lakewood schools. Not one person in the audience of the town hall made the connection and asked the governor a question about Lakewood.
