The Unbearbable Dishonesty of Being the News Journal
The News Journal Editorial Board has decided to weigh in again on the Recovery Package — against FTR — and to do so in a way that serves not only as a symbol of the real lack of basic economic knowledge of folks in the media, but also is an example (one of many) of how awful this paper continues to get. To wit:
- They complain that the package does not follow economists’ guidance of being “quick, temporary and targeted.” The OMB, of course, tells us that 65%+ of the House Bill will be spent in 2 years (the stated goal) and 75%+ of the Senate Bill will be spent in the next 2 years. If you read the bill at all, you’ll note that the multiple hundred pages of these bills is a targeted list of spending priorities and none of them comes with a perpetual spending provision. Additional money to the Recovery program pools would need to be authorized by Congress in subsequent budget years.
- Their only stated measure of the quality of the bills is the total price tag — so that the Senate Bill ends up being better than the House Bill because it is cheaper. If you are going to invoke economists’ guidance for the shape of the bill, you’d think that they’d do that to assess the quality and effectiveness of the bill.
- The NJ Editorial Board makes this remarkable claim: “spend a lot of money on favored groups and pet projects across the country. ” You’d think that an outfit overseeing a real reporting organization would have , you know, done some reporting on this to back it up. But, there aren’t any stories done by NJ reporters that have produced any detailed analysis of the bills, sorting out the pork from the stimulus. And if they ever really knew the difference between the two, I wouldn’t hold my breath on them ever producing this reporting or analysis.
- Related to that, it seems to me that if these items are political payoffs — as this editorial claims — that there ought to be some killer reporting to be done in tracing the connections between these items to the politicians who promoted them and what else may have transacted in that process. So where is this reporting, NJ?
- Taking both parties to the woodshed for name-calling is weakly noble, but doesn’t exactly mask this Editorial Board’s real intent here: “the average American needs more of his or her own money to stay in his or her own pocketbook.” So they are advocating for more tax cuts. And again, without invoking the economists’ views that they selectively invoked for the shape of the bill. And those views are that tax cuts don’t provide much stimulus. But you’d also think that a group of people calling for more tax cuts would have actually produced some reporting on the effectiveness of tax cuts AND what said tax cuts might mean for the budgets of the state and municipalities in Delaware.
(more after the jump.)
This editorial is a bad audition for the completely tin-foil hatted WSJ Editorial Board — fact-free, pushing an ideological point, faux high-mindedness in the service of that ideological point. The difference, however, is that the reported part of the WSJ is still one of the best papers in the US, still trying to do serious reporting. And the NJ? They are just pretending that they are attached to a real newspaper.
Tags: News Journal
Jinkier and jinkier.
Nailed it again Cassandra! Thanks for keeping us tuned in to this.
Plus, they’re wrong about the price tag. The House’s bill is $819B and the Senate bill is $838B. I’m sick of the braindead reporting on the stimulus package.
They have gotten almost as lazy as WHYY’s Delaware Tonight — the pinnacle (or nadir) of journalistic laziness.
One, in all my watching and reading I can’t find where Rs have really, really, really been pressed for an alternative. It’s too big, or the New Deal didn’t work, or not enough tax cuts, or we’re headed towards socialism.
I believe if a gun were held to their head, they would admit their alternative is still to do nothing and let the market right itself.
Also, Obama delivered a pretty withering smackdown to Joe Biden during his news conference — he almost has marginalized his VP already. Mr. Message Discipline whacks Perennial Foot in Mouth. Another story unreported by the hometown rag.
The NJ is just looking for a Newspaper Bailout.
What is the best way to help shut this sad excuse for a newspaper down? Gannett is already tired of throwing money at the problem and thier website is atrocious. Maybe we should approach the Inquirer about making a section devoted to delaware and then running the NJ out of town.
That’s an idea. Watching it slowly decompose is stomach turning.
I love that idea, Phantom! Especially since we just decided to cancel our subscription.
I am so very close to whacking our daily as well. May keep Sunday, though, as all that fluff stuff we do check out. Plus, it gives some coin to the delivery person, which I don’t mind. Coupons, baby!!! Wow, that was sad.
Why would the Inquirer want to lose even more money?
I like communitypub.com… they are pretty good lately. For example this meeting with Coons in Brandywine with more than 100 people attending:
Of course, their article on Charlie Copeland was vomit-inducing.
But all in all, good coverage and a good read.
Cape Gazette is pretty good too…
Rsmitty, the INquirer has better coupons on Sundays
Really…is anyone really satisfied with the INQwaster, either? When I worked in Philly, I thought it was a waste then.
The manufacturer coupons are available on the Internet… supermarket coupons usually come in the mail… classified ads are all online for free… what’s left?
I don’t know if everybody gets this, but in my neighborhood I get the News Journal “Crossroads” broadsheet with supermarket circulars in the mail (we are not NJ subscribers). I guess they don’t have enough subscribers to attract advertisers unless they promise to mail them for free.
Actually the feature articles in Crossroads are pretty good.
I read the sports of the Inquirer..that’s it. NY papers for the news on Sunday
The Inquirer had quite an excellent Delaware section in the 1970’s – with big-time journos like Vernon Loeb, Andy Wallace, Rolf Rykken, Jack Croft, Rick Edmonds, Bill Giese, Sara Engram and others. It was designed as a second read, assuming that its readers had already consumed the weekday N-J. It made money, but was designed to beat the Bulletin for ad dollars, not the N-J Once the Bulletin went down, the Inquirer scaled back its Delaware operation.
anon @ 3:22 wrote: “I don’t know if everybody gets this, but in my neighborhood I get the News Journal “Crossroads” broadsheet with supermarket circulars in the mail (we are not NJ subscribers). I guess they don’t have enough subscribers to attract advertisers unless they promise to mail them for free.”
For clarification… it has nothing to do with subscriptions to TNJ. Crossroads is an example of what’s called a TMC product, for Total Market Coverage. It’s fairly common so newspapers can offer advertisers deals to cover the entire area, even reaching people who don’t read the daily paper.
Some papers use all canned syndicated content, while others use local copy or repurpose stories from the daily paper (like TNJ). Sometimes they mail them, sometimes they throw them in peoples’ driveways, where they either rot or the plastic bags snag on sticks and rocks and look like complete ass.
It’s worth noting that TNJ killed its Kent & Sussex Crossroads sections last year because they weren’t making enough money. Now it’s a page inserted in the daily paper. The NCC stuff continues to make money, I guess.
Phantom, pandora and RSmitty –
The best thing you could do would be to get a group of investors together and make an offer. Gannett would sell in a heartbeat.
“Gannett would sell in a heartbeat.”
Highly doubtful. WNJ has long been one of the chain’s top earners. It would make no business sense at all to peel it off and sell it separately.
Geezer,
Gannett is having some serious problems right now. None of its papers, even TNJ, is bringing in enough dough to get the obscene profits that the corporate folks want. And no one has a plan for a turnaround. Check out gannettblog.blogspot.com for details. Trust me… they’d jump at a serious offer for ANY of their papers.