The Star-Ledger’s NJVoices — the first attempt I know of to create a local group blog along the lines of HuffingtonPost or Comment is Free — brings together an impressive series of perspectives this week from outside and inside the newspaper on the brutal shooting of four young people in Newark last weekend.
Ken Walker, a blogger at DailyNewarker.com, writes this at NJVoices:
After so many years languishing in drugs and poverty, many of the city’s deep wounds are finally showing signs of healing.But when three college students were murdered at gunpoint against the wall of a West Ward elementary school, they were the latest in a death toll that is on pace to match last year’s — the highest in over 10 years. It points to a violent criminal element that still has a tight grip on our city . . .
I think it’s the contrast of this audacious lawlessness against the backdrop of Newark’s progress that makes these killings so shocking.
Violent crime is the single largest obstacle to any hope of the city’s recovery; promising crime statistics and development ring hollow to residents and outsiders alike who fear for their lives inside city limits.
Ryan Haygood, who heads a youth group in Newark with his wife, a school principal, writes:
Each of us, to some degree, has accepted a Newark that much of the country looks upon with disdain.We have, each of us, agreed to silently and passively take Newark as it is: with an unacceptably high murder rate and unacceptably low graduation rate, where once beautiful streets and lots are littered with garbage, and where hope is often hard to find.
Clement Price, a professor who lives in Newark, said the crime “marks the nadir in Newark’s contemporary spasm of violence.”
I do not know of a tragedy in the city’s recent past that is analogous to it, especially with respect to the wrenching sadness that is sweeping the city. There has never been such a civic outcry, such a galvanizing of emotions against Newark’s all but ritualistic episodes of young people snuffing out the lives of other young people.That the victims were exemplary citizens, college bound kids, may explain the depth of civic pain and outrage by a cross section of the public. Indeed, over the past few days more than a few people have told me of their exceptional anguish on hearing of these killings.
Bryan Miller, an anti-gun activist, used the platform to say:
No, my anger is toward the handgun industry and the gun lobby that enables and protects it. This dangerous duo deserves your anger, too.
Jim McQueeny, a former reporter, has much advice for Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
(Full disclosure: I advised the Ledger on NJ Voices. So I’m glad to see it working.)
Hey Jeff, thanks for the linkage. NJ Voices looks like an interesting project, and I’m looking forward to seeing it evolve.
It’s encouraging to see so much attention paid to these tragic events in Newark. I hope the efforts of NJV and TDN can help sway public opinion that Newark does matter, and needs the support of the whole state to create a better future for this city
Ken
The Daily Newarker
http://dailynewarker.com
There is an ocean of stubborn, fearful and reluctant editors operating in newsrooms who see bloggers as a primary threat to their jobs. And if this is the only example of a newspaper doing anything like this, then it shows how rooted this fear is.
Editors probably have no idea just how many voices are at work in their communities — because it can be very difficult to map and locate them.
One problem, the main one, is that most editors are looking for bloggers who are writing about the same things their reporter’s cover, so they tend to focus on those bloggers who make city desk sense: neighborhood writers; politics, real estate, crime, issue-of-the-day.
But most local bloggers are focused on the experience of living in a community, what their lives are like, and it’s in this work that you can glean the riches of insight from people who seek to understand, and not just report, what is happening in their community. This group is off the newsroom radar. Newspapers completely tune these writers out because their definition of what constitutes community journalism is too narrow.
Many local blogging communities have created outlets for these writers. The Newark newspaper, from my perspective as a local blogger, is breaking no ground except, perhaps, in its industry.
Bloggers in my city, DC, have many outlets for reaching broad audiences independent of local newspapers. The local newspaper, in many cases, will be a late comer.
This lack of attention by newspapers — to their own blogging readers — is one of the reasons why dynamic blogging communities are tuning newspapers out.
The Daily Newarker, I suspect, will gain traffic, loyalty and new readers by embracing some of its local talent. I wish them success because their city truly needs what these writers can bring.