The Daily Newarker

The Mayor’s State of the City speech is tonight (Tuesday at 6:30pm)! Watch TDN for updates…

Last I stepped out from behind the curtain at TDN, it was to let you know that the Digest had launched to try to automate some of the effort of blogging. After a few months of running the site on near-autopilot, I thought I’d share some observations.

The results of the Digest were good and bad. On the one hand, it created a regular post of the day’s news, press releases, and tweets. Just a few clicks in my Google Reader and a handful of hot, toasty links were served up for your consumption. Blogging was drop-dead simple.

On the other hand, the Digest created some overhead that, at first, cut into blogging, then displaced it, and then overwhelmed it altogether. The results of which, faithful readers are all too aware, was that after a few months of solid digests, they got sporadic, then they got consistent again — consistently bad.

Having daily posts on the blog was great, but the Digest never offered the kind of engagement that I wanted. Rather than remove the effort informing you, dear reader, it shifted the burden of translation to you, leaving you guessing what I’d meant by choosing the links that I did, what theme there was between them, and if their order mattered at all.

Part of the reason for that was because, at times, it really just felt like that I Love Lucy episode where Lucy was working at the chocolate factory: feverishly trying to keep up with the conveyor belt of chocolates whizzing by. Quality suffered in the process of keeping up with the automated post deadline.

Well, suffice it to say that I’m taking the site in a (yet another) new direction.

Today, TDN features a new theme that encourages more conversation: every comment you post on the site shows up right under the post on the home page. As I said back in August, the reason I got into blogging was to connect with my neighbors and consider together how to make this city great again (well, okay, that and the glamor).

Some of you have asked me about making this blog a more accessible place to share your thoughts, press releases, and insights. I’ll be announcing some changes here that will make posting really straightforward — stay tuned for those.

I attended a blogger conference over the winter and discovered that “hyperlocal blogging” is a crowded space: everyone from stalwart print publishers to tech startups to your shrill, foul-tempered neighbor wants to sum up your neighborhood’s wisdom on a webpage, bombard you to local ads, and cash in on the inevitable payola. The land grab for local content dominance has the allure of an accident on the Turnpike: fascinating and repellent, all at once.

The state of local journalism is a topic for another post, but I’ll share an insight one mid-size media guy confided: “None of us is going to Newark,” he said. “There’s no money there.”

He may be right: with a third of the city in poverty and unemployment stubbornly at double-digits, Newark doesn’t have an established income base of professionals that helped make, say, BaristaNet or Hoboken411 a sustainable business. Or, he may be underestimating a city on the cusp of urban renewal, awash in unrealized opportunity that marketers will be clamoring over in the next three years.

Time will tell. I decided some time ago that I’m not in this for the money: I’m ten years into another career that provided for my family during the worst economic meltdown since the 20s. And, while I respect and support the work of my friends at Newark Live, GlocallyNewark, NewarkSpeaks, and NewarkUSA, I think there’s still room for insightful and lively discussion about Newark by the people who live, work and study here.

I’m here because I love this city, and I can’t help talking about it — and I bet that that’s why you’re here, too. Thanks for reading.

Perhaps you noticed the Daily Newarker has been updating a little more frequently lately. This is in large part due to a new feature we launched this week called the TDN Digest.

In short, we find the most interesting stories, blogs and, yes, even tweets from around the web, every day, so you don’t have to.

We hope you enjoy it. If you want the “inside baseball” on how this feature came to be and how you can help make it better, keep reading.

The (Part-Time) Writer’s Dilemma

Maintaining a publication that’s both informative and timely is hard.  Even the guys who are good at it are struggling: with layoffs and mandatory furloughs at the Ledger, being an award-winning paper isn’t worth quite what it used to be.

I started TDN four years ago to build a medium for conversation—a place people can come share their ideas and experiences about our city.  Since then, media has continued to fragment; even newsmakers themselves are telling their own stories through media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

On the one hand, this makes the job easier, providing more content to discuss.  On the other, with commitments to family, workplace, and community, how could I possibly keep up with it all?

The Autopilot Experiment

One idea was to set up automatic feeds to update the blog. So I set up a Twitter account to try out that idea.

The popularity of @tdnfeeds took me by surprise, given it’s essentially a robot posting updates about Newark from all over the web.  Even Mayor Cory Booker has sent messages to this account through Twitter.  But, following @tdnfeeds is a little like looking for a needle in a perpetual haystack: you have to sift through dozens of updates to find something worthwhile.

A Happy Medium

Experimenting with Twitter this way helped me appreciate the value of editing.  I know you trust TDN with your limited time and attention, so I spent a few days writing some software to find that happy medium: highlighting the stories that matter, and leaving aside the ones that don’t.

The TDN Digest enables me to edit on the fly and boil hundreds of articles, blog posts, and tweets down to the dozen-or-so that are worthy of your attention each day.  That gives me time to focus on more thoughtful aspects of blogging, like writing, podcasting, and connecting you with Newark products and services.

Thinking Ahead

I think this service adds a lot of value to the blog, but I want to hear from you.  Leave a comment, drop me an email, or leave your opinion anonymously in our online poll.

[polldaddy poll=1853433]

There are lots of great ways we can develop this format, and I’m excited to announce those in the coming weeks.

One Last Thing…

If you’re enjoying TDN, I’d encourage you click one of the ads at the bottom of this post.  Had I contracted out the work to build this new feature, it would have cost somewhere between $500 and $1,000 to create, but you get to benefit from that work for free—pretty sweet deal.

The ads are brought to you by Google, which gives me a very small cut of the revenue paid by the advertisers below.  If you click on one of these ads every day or two, it would be a tremendous help.

As always, thanks for reading the Daily Newarker.

The TDN Digest is a daily update of the important stories and conversations about Newark from around the web. We highlight the articles, news reports, blogs, and yes, even tweets, so you, our attractive and discerning readership, can keep in touch and up to date about the city you love.

We’re just trying this out, so if you have questions or suggestions about the TDN Digest, we’d love to hear them.

Stories

Articles, reports and news items from major news agencies such as the New York Times, the Star Ledger, and ABC 7 News

Conversation

Twitter updates from city residents and newsmakers alike

The TDN Digest is a daily update of the important stories and conversations about Newark from around the web. We highlight the articles, news reports, blogs, and yes, even tweets, so you, our attractive and discerning readership, can keep in touch and up to date about the city you love.

We’re just trying this out, so if you have questions or suggestions about the TDN Digest, we’d love to hear them.

Stories

Articles, reports and news items from major news agencies such as the New York Times, the Star Ledger, and ABC 7 News

Opinion, thoughts and experiences from blogs around the web

Conversation

Twitter updates from city residents and newsmakers alike

WBGO’s Newark Today, a monthly call-in show co-hosted by Mayor Booker has been awarded the Public Radio News Directors award two years running. They appreciated the actionable nature of the show content, driving City Hall or the caller to resolve issues.

It’s really stunning to see how the Mayor’s office has made a discipline around transparency in every medium they can leverage for their message. Booker doesn’t just walk the walk, but includes and involves others to join whether through his in-person office hours, call-in radio show, and, yes, even Twitter.

More from the Mayor’s communications office:

I am happy to report that the Mayor’s monthly radio show we created in 2006 has garnered national recognition for the 2nd year in a row.

PRNDI Awards – Division B (Public Radio News Directors Inc. handed out its national awards on June 13th in Portland Oregon.)

Call-In Program: First Place: WBGO “Newark Today”

Newark Mayor Cory Booker never fails to light up the phones and this edition of “Newark Today” is no exception. The judges liked hearing Booker interact with his fellow mayor from Jersey City – the conversation was more about action than opinion. One judge praise the ample amount of listener takeaway from this entry. The program quickly goes beyond “oh wow” excitement to “what do we do now.”

Max Pizzarro for Politicker NJ reports that Booker is reaffirming his commitment to Newark and not running for lieutenant governor in 2009. Booker insists Obama administration aware of ‘the urgency of Newark’

The appearance of a Star-Ledger story this morning describing Obama allies worried about the gubernatorial election prompted an afternoon gutcheck with Newark Mayor Cory Booker outside an afterschool facility in an old, converted firehouse serving children impacted by AIDS.

Already publicly commited to pursuing a reelection bid for mayor next year and adamantly disinterested in running with Gov. Jon Corzine as a candidate for lieutenant governor, Booker denied that anyone part of the political arm of the Obama administration wants to see him running for statewide office in 2009.

“They know I am more valuable to what they’re trying to do – here, rather than running for lieutenant governor. They are keenly aware of the urgency of Newark,” said Booker, moments after emerging from the Academy Street Firehouse, where Dr. Terry Zealand and his wife, Faye, and son Kevin, run an after-school program for children either infected or affected by AIDS, a facility that fits into a larger housing effort to care for children and families fighting the disease.

We’re glad to see our neighbors at GlocallyNewark.com take off with such success. They’ve scheduled a launch party next week to kick off the official launch of their blog after having grown to a 7,000 unique readership-per-month blog: 07102 Launch Party – Be invited!

It’s exciting to see the level of discourse rise in the city, and I’m excited to see what they’re up to next.

On June 25, 2009 Glocallynewark.com will formally launch with our first event in downtown Newark!
This event will be like NO other – check out the details…

• 400+ Attendees
• Exclusive Invite-only event
• Open Bar
• VIBE Magazine Lounge
• Performances by Hal Linton (http://www.myspace.com/hallinton ) Apollo Heights (http://www.myspace.com/apolloheights ) and Micah Gaugh (http://www.myspace.com/micahgaugh )

Check out the full press release after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry →

Though having been found unenforceable by the state Supreme Court in 1982, the law was most recently used in 2007 against a homeless man who was “loitering” in Newark Penn Station. That case is now pending judgement in U.S. District Court: Newark repeals anti-loitering law.

The city council repealed the ordinance in a 9-0 vote on May 20, some 27 years after a state Supreme Court ruling made it unenforceable and various law enforcement agencies mistakenly used it.

The old ordinance, which had defined loitering as “spending time idly, loafing, or walking about aimlessly” was considered unenforceable, Neals said, because a Supreme Court decision, State vs. Crawley, in 1982 said the state’s criminal code supplanted it.

Neals also said the repeal of the law is not in reaction to a lawsuit against the city and NJ Transit police that was filed by Richard Kreimer. According to his suit, a transit police officer told Kreimer, who is homeless, to stop loitering in Newark Penn Station in October 2007. Kreimer was not issued a summons, according to the lawsuit.

Transit police officers used the city’s anti-loitering law to get him to leave, said George and Lydia Cotz, a Mahwah husband-and-wife law firm representing Kreimer in U.S. District Court in Newark. The case is before Judge Susan D. Wigenton.

Kreimer gained notoriety in 1991 after winning a $230,000 settlement from Morristown after he was barred from the library. Library officials asked Kreimer to leave the Joint Free Public Library because of his hygiene and his behavior. The library eventually settled the case.

Since then, Kreimer has run for the mayor of Morristown, sued the city of Woodbury in southern New Jersey and moved briefly to Colorado.

I believe in Newark’s revival, but part of that process involves revealing some awful darkness that has long been hidden. This NY Times story about an indicted Newark attorney who is alleged to have revealed the names of witnesses to killers or used strong-arm tactics to keep them from speaking sent chills down my spine: Bergrin, a Lawyer and Ex-Prosecutor in Newark, Is Charged With Murder.

He spent a decade as a top prosecutor, trying murder cases in New Jersey, drug cases in federal court and a wide range of offenses in the military justice system.

He went on to become one of the state’s most prominent defense lawyers, representing clients as varied as Abu Ghraib defendants, the rap stars Lil’ Kim and Queen Latifah and members of Newark’s notorious street gangs.

But federal authorities charged Wednesday that the success their former colleague, Paul Bergrin, had in defending drug dealers and gang leaders was based on a brutal calculus that he had boiled down to a phrase he repeated like a slogan: No witnesses, no case.

Booker has delivered at least seven commencement speeches in the last three weeks. The Ledger investigates why the Mayor is such a popular speaker for these kinds of events, and his speech-writing process: Mayor Cory Booker is popular choice as commencement speaker.

I think one other aspect of Booker’s strategy that wasn’t disussed in this piece is recruitment for Newark’s civic institutions. The Mayor may not specifically be asking people to come and invest themselves in our city — although I’ve heard him deliver that speech as well — but his appeal for students to reach for achievements in life that matter has, I think, a strong appeal to students who feel the weight of their own potential and are looking to really do something with it.

This city is a fantastic place to channel that energy, and I think having Booker speak at their commencement might give some young people pause as they take the next steps in their early career.

Like most successful politicians, Newark Mayor Cory Booker loves the bully pulpit. He has spoken fervently in his State of the City addresses and used his words to inspire civic pride and rake in political contributions.

And with graduation season drawing to a close, he has continued to dominate another of his favorite inspirational venues. In a frenetic three weeks, he has delivered seven college commencement addresses.

More info: see Booker’s Brandeis University Commencement 2009 speech.

Mayor Cory Booker has jumped on the social media bandwagon, in a big way.

@CoryBooker has been using his Twitter account to share his thoughts and agenda for the city, as well as the occasional personal insights on the web. Booker, who had been blogging for over a year, has taken a more comprehensive approach to his online persona by using the microblogging service to highlight issues he’s written about on his blog and point residents to content of interest on the city website.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker rapidly gains following on Twitter

In recent weeks Booker has dramatically increased the number of messages, or Tweets, he posts through the social networking website — in some cases sharing his thoughts more than two dozen times a day. That has translated into a legion of new followers who subscribe to the mayor’s feed, reading his Tweets on Twitter.com or on cell phones.

Booker has opined on social issues, posted inspirational quotations, touted his beloved city, shouted out to his mom and invited folks to watch the new “Star Trek” movie with him. All of it in 140 characters or fewer.

In the past two weeks, Booker’s followers have increased sixteenfold, from just under 4,000 May 9 to more than 65,000 last night. That makes him more popular, Twitter-wise, than the likes of David Letterman, Tyra Banks, Stephen Colbert and Republican strategist Karl Rove.

“We’re growing pretty rapidly,” Booker said, predicting 100,000 or more subscribers by month’s end.

Mark DiIonno for NJ Voices shares yh story of a Weequahic high school principal who is making a difference in his students’ lives: Newark’s Weequahic High School is featured in film about gangs and the power of education

Young gang members, at heart, are still just kids.

As gang members, they may shoot, and be shot, deal and use drugs, menace corners with territory-marking violence. But in the end, the young ones, the smart ones, those still giving school a chance, are just kids. Kids who can be reached. Kids who can be convinced they have a future beyond life and death on the streets.

This is the over-riding message of hope in the new documentary “Heart of Stone,” a film about Newark’s legendary Weequahic High School, which is winning film festival awards from coast to coast.

The film follows former principal Ron Stone as he restores order and pride to Weequahic, with the help of concerned alumni. It is a marriage of the then-and-now cultures of a school that understands its proud history while fighting modern problems. Then, it was all about education. Now, it is all about education, too. But, as Stone says in the movie, “school has to be the psychologist, the parents, the police.”

“Newark taxis on the road to an upgrade”:http://www.nj.com/starledger/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-5/121471537449320.xml&coll=1

“Cabbies are the city’s ambassadors. They are the first people to greet people getting off the airplane or coming out of the train station,” said Sgt. Hector Corchado, head of Newark’s taxi division. “The ultimate goal is to satisfy the customer, and we have to do that by professionalizing the service we offer.”

The commission also wants a uniform graphic design for the city’s mishmash of yellow cabs, and by 2012, it wants most of its fleet to be composed of fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles. The makeover also includes making sure drivers have insurance. Hundreds were driving with expired insurance previously because no one was checking, Corchado said.

“There was a lack of accountability,” Corchado said.

My wife’s reply when I read the above quote, “They can start by running the meters.” Our experiences with Newark cabbies have always been weird, if not outright sketchy.

The most awful of them was coming back from a Broadway show with friends three years ago. It was late, and a homeless man held open the cab door for us outside of Penn Station. When he asked for a tip, I refused and he threatened to meet me in a dark alley with a baseball bat before slamming the door. The cabbie wanted to charge us $15 to go ten blocks, which we were able to negotiate down, but were treated to a meandering ride through the Ironbound — without the meter running, of course. It was an embarrassing and disheartening nightmare.

Since then, things have been markedly better — I haven’t had my life threatened again — but I’ve still found the occasional cabbie who can’t find his way to Broad Street Station from Penn Station (no tip for that one), or charges random rates for the same trip. It’s an open secret that the Gold Lincoln drivers on the Ironbound side of the station tend to be more reasonable and sane if you don’t mind practicing your Spanish.

The GPS is also an important feature for a job that can sometimes be very dangerous. Newark cab drivers have been the victims of numerous violent crimes, some of which have been fatal. Being able to pinpoint a location once they hit the panic button will be an important way to deter these sorts of crimes.

All that to say, I welcome the changes and am looking forward to climbing into one for a quick ride across the city without fearing for getting cheated or worse.

Read the rest of this entry →

“Google Maps”:http://maps.google.com Street View, if you’ve not played with it, provides a street-level view of a given address or intersection — they get this information by literally driving a truck with a 360° camera down every street in the city.

This is an amazing blogging resource of which we’ll be making a lot of use here. I was able to find my apartment and my car very clearly — it was apparently an alternate side parking day. Below is a shot of Market and Broad Street.

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View Larger Map

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Here are some additional city highlights:

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• City Hall
• NJPAC
• Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart
• Prudential Arena

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(Got some more to share? Feel free to drop some links to your favorite Newark sites in the comments.)

Clearly, Parnell and Samburg had it right: “Google Maps is the best! / True that, double true.”:http://www.hulu.com/watch/1397/saturday-night-live-snl-digital-short-lazy-sunday.

Not sure why just yet, but a news helicopter that’s been floating over Ferry Street at Congress Street has been joined by another. They both appear to be facing Penn Station. Updates as more info becomes available.

Update: ??7Online??: “Train troubles for NJ Transit & Amtrak”:http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=resources/traffic&id=6009718

Newscopter-7’s John Delgiorno was live over the scene.

NJ Transit is reporting delays of up to 60 minutes in both directions on all Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast and Raritan Valley trains through Newark Penn Station.

Eyewitness News has learned this is due to signal problems, just south of the station itself.

NJ Transit is working on the problem.

As of now, those NJ Transit lines continue to have 60 minute delays.

Seriously? You guys had to send a helicopter over and wake everybody up for 60 minute delays on NJ Transit and Amtrak? Must be a slow news day.

I know we’re all still waiting with baited breath to see if we’ve truly turned a page in Newark’s long struggle with homicides. But a brief mention in the “aforelinked”:http://dailynewarker.com/2008/02/20/new-york-times-in-newark-children-reclaim-a-playground%e2%80%99s-meaning/ New York Times article would seem to indicate another quiet, subtle milestone of hope in the city.

Billboards — “Stop the Killings in Newark Now” — that had been plastered around the city by the local teachers union have been taken down.

The “contentious ‘Stop the Killings’ billboards”:http://dailynewarker.com/2007/03/26/infuriating-2/ (paid for by the Newark Teachers’ Union) which were plastered throughout the city and drew national attention have started to come down. I’ve yet to see anything more cynical than politics in Newark, but even in the contentious relationship between City Hall and the Teachers’ Union, we’re starting to see a ray of hope.

Perhaps we truly are turning a page in Newark’s history.

h3. More Reading

??Associated Press??: “Newark homicides down, billboards too”:http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080216/NEWS03/802160351/1001/rss

For the first time in more than four decades, the killings in Newark have stopped — for the last month, at least — and the billboards are coming down as a result.

“I said when I saw some reduction, I would begin the process of taking them down,” said Newark Teachers Union president Joseph Del Grosso, whose organization paid for the signs. “To belabor the point wouldn’t be beneficial to anybody.”

As of Friday, Newark marked its 33rd day without an official homicide, a startling fact for a city that has averaged about two killings a week over the last few years and saw homicides spike 50 percent from 2002 to 2006.

??NewarkUSA??: “Murder Billboards to Come Down; WNET Showing”:http://newarkusa.blogspot.com/2008/02/murder-billboards-to-come-down-wnet.html

The Associated Press, in an article Gaetano alerted me to, reported yesterday that the @#!*% president of the Newark Teachers Union who put up billboards saying “HELP WANTED: Stop The Killings In Newark Now!” has decided to take them down, next month, in consideration of the steep drop in murders in the city. They should never have been put up, and for Joseph Del Grosso to suggest that they had anything to do with the drop is outrageous. It was a campaign willfully to hurt Newark, not help, and he should be voted out by Newark teachers at their very earliest opportunity.

??5Reasons??: “Delfatso Will Remove The Signs”:http://www.newarkspeaks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7490&highlight=teachers

Delfatso also used NTU resources to print up anti-Booker recall looney “news.” It’s been a bad month for this clown. First, the recall crazy brigade fade to black without a comment and now murder has gone a full month without rearing its ugly head. Some scam artists just can’t catch a break, right bro?

The signs were wrong. The politics of murder was cruel. The leadership is stuck in the past. I’m glad they failed. Newark is a better place because of it.

It’s been reported that Bon Jovi will be playing ten shows to open the new Prudential Center Arena as opposed to the one show “previously reported”:http://dailynewarker.com/2007/05/02/bon-jovi-to-open-for-prudential-arena-newark-will-never-be-the-same/. The dates will be: Oct. 25, 26, 28, 30, Nov. 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, and 10. All ten go on sale to the general public on Saturday, June 23, 10 AM and are expected to sell out quickly. Order tickets “through TicketMaster”:http://www.ticketmaster.com/cgi/outsider.plx?CAMEFROM?GLIVE_TJOVIEWR102507006&GOTO=http://www.ticketmaster.com/bonjovi.

From the press release:

“”AEG”:http://www.aeglive.com/ is proud to announce that Bon Jovi will make history when they rock ‘The Rock’, opening Newark’s world-class Prudential Center,” says Nick Sakiewicz, President of AEG New York/New Jersey. “The Bon Jovi shows will get this venue off to a great start, and play a major role in the revitalization of the city. Newark will never be the same.”

“We are going to light up the Prudential Arena with a blaze of glory,” said Newark Mayor Cory Booker. “The oldest and greatest city in New Jersey will open the newest and greatest arena in the nation, energized by the talent of Bon Jovi, the vision of our partners in this project, and the power of Newark’s residents.”

Prudential Center is the first major sports and entertainment venue to open its doors in the nation’s top media market in over 25 years, and will showcase 76 luxury suites, 2,200 club seats, and an array of amenities and conveniences for fans.

“Since the day construction began we have consistently said our objective was to bring the best in first-rate entertainment to this venue,” comments Jeff Vanderbeek, Chairman and President of Devils Renaissance Development, the affiliate company of the National Hockey League’s New Jersey Devils responsible for operating and maintaining the team’s new home. “And we could not be more excited about Bon Jovi
opening the Prudential Center! Jon is synonymous with the best of New Jersey.”

Bon Jovi’s new CD Lost Highway will be in stores on June 19th featuring the single “(You Want To) Make a Memory”. Go to www.bonjovi.com to preorder now. Watch this week for the debut of the new video on AOL First Look, VH1 and CMT.