Credentialed Reporting

Slow news day so let’s look at the media.

David Wildstein is a blogger who everyone has settled on as the mastermind of Bridgegate. He now runs a blog that covers New Jersey and apparently just became a credentialed reporter, which some other credentialed reporters here are taking umbrage with:
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Wildstein has his own issues with the media (specifically the Star Ledger which these days is editorializing for antitrust exemptions to goose profits) and he points out the hypocrisy.

Pension News Explodes

There will be a Frontline episode tomorrow on the “role of state governments and Wall Street in driving America’s public pensions into a multi-trillion-dollar hole” concentrating on  Kentucky and examining “the broader consequences for teachers, police, firefighters and other public employees everywhere.” Here is the trailer:
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Though not a big fan of Wall Street money managers, they are minor players in the pension crisis. If anything, the outsized returns they provided allowed many zombie plans (like New Jersey’s) to appear healthier than they actually were. It was, in no particular order, politicians, unions, actuaries, government regulators, the mainstream media, and participants themselves to the extent they trusted the aforementioned that bear far more blame for bankrupting so many pensions.

The City Journal got much closer to the truth:

Pretty Low in NJ

John Reitmeyer of njspotlight hit it on the head during this week’s Reporters Roundtable program that otherwise examined in painful detail the Murphy campaign being a safe-haven for rapists and Menendez being accused by someone associated with the FBI* of vacationing in the Dominican Republic primarily for the underage prostitutes.
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I would only note:

Four Issues of Free Speech

I had blogs set to go on some news of the day – two of which are getting massive media coverage while the other two barely return a blip on bing searches – but decided to conflate the four since they are somewhat related on one issue and I have only brief comments on each.

PEW Reactions

I have been holding on to this youtube waiting for an opportune moment:
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That opportunity has come as it was reported that a study released yesterday* from The Pew Charitable Trusts found that “the New Jersey and Kentucky funds are in such perilous shape that they risk running dry.”

Reaction, first from Kentucky:

S5 Reporters Take

The only video reaction so far to the conditional veto of S5 is a minute from John Reitmeyer of njspotlight.com:
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The problem here….

Sitle Nails It

I was curious about newspaper circulation and the Wikipedia entry only went up to 2013 with The Star-Ledger coming in as the largest in New Jersey and number 16 nationally with a print circulation of 180,271 and digital circulation (whatever that may mean) of 160,507. In doing some searching I found a 2015 update that had The Star-Ledger down to 24 nationally with total circulation of 170,077 and in New Jersey now behind The Record which was at 242,567.

Coincidentally I just came across an article on the The Record’s website that explains the hypocrisy of the lame duck pension bill we will soon get.

Tomorrow I will post an original blog with some startling numbers on what the increase in pension contributions (especially for local governments) will be for FY19 based on the latest actuarial reports (participate in the poll at the end of this blog) but for now here is the full article by Charles Stile. This is the type of jurnalism we used to buy newspapers for.