May I Be Your "Star" Blogger?

An anonymous commenter on my “Shoutout to Mark” post predicts the demise of the Courier News and declares it “hasn’t been the same” since I retired.

As flattering as that notion may be, I caught just as much hell over my coverage of the city as any other reporter. Over 16 years, I heard complaints that I only reported bad news, that there should not be a white reporter covering a predominantly black city, that this or that politician wanted me fired for making them look bad, and so on.

Being a beat reporter means (or meant) that people think you have the power to create rather than reflect the image of the city. People often called me to request coverage by saying they had a “positive” news story, suggesting that if I did not cover it, I was choosing evil over good. Well, sometimes a story was half-baked and other times an editor had another assignment that took precedence. In recent years the paper began the “Get Published” initiative to give everyone a chance at getting published, which let reporters off the hook for those “cover this or else” types.

A point in my favor was that I actually lived in Plainfield while covering the city, something I don’t think was true of even the legendary Jack Gill. Certainly none of the four who followed me on the beat lived here, although Mark “got” Plainfield right away and I think the majority of Plainfielders understood his sincerity and interest in the city.

The idea of starting a newspaper to counter the Courier News came up at regular intervals over my 16 years on the beat, but nobody actually carried it out. Indeed, after I left the weekly Plainfield Today, the Johnsons changed the format to a broadside paper covering the African-American community exclusively in Union and Essex counties and began using columnists more than reporters.

So now we are in an age where everyone can be a publisher. Blogs do away with the most problematic parts of publishing, such as production and circulation. No more paste-ups or delivery routes, it all happens electronically! Even advertising (or monetizing, as Google calls it) can happen with no effort to the blogger. All the blogger has to do is produce content. And because most blogging is an uncompensated labor of love, even the content is free.

Compare that to a newspaper, where people must be paid to write, edit, assemble and deliver the goods, whether in print or online. Yes, dear anonymous commenter, the Courier News is not the same since I left, as publishers are increasingly facing challenges that did not exist before. The Courier News may indeed fold as an entity as the industry turns increasingly to regionalization. When I left, the paper had a readership territory spanning more than 50 municipalities. With the merging of the Courier News and the Home News Tribune (itself a merged operation), the readership area is even more broad and, some would say, thin. Even when I was there, one publisher complained that the expanded coverage was a mile wide and an inch deep. Plainfield will never again have the coverage it used to have in the days when I might have five byline stories on A-1.

In high school back in the 1950s, I attained “star reporter” status on the school newspaper. It was nice of my anonymous fan today to refer to me the same way in wishing me back on the job. Thanks for the compliment, but in the news biz today there are no backsies and the future is murky. For the moment, I am glad to be a blogger, "star" or otherwise. Thanks for reading.

--Bernice