By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
It’s funny what passes for news these days, Save Jerseyans.
Right now, as of this writing, the top story on NJ.com concerns a man whose family vacation was allegedly ruined by a rat infestation.
Nowhere to be found? Coverage of a sensational story from former Star Ledger reporter Bob Braun about PARCC testing provider Pearson monitoring New Jersey kids’ social media accounts and reporting it to the NJDOE with the expectation of disciplinary action.
Braun (hardly a right-winger) vented his frustrations on Facebook:
Careful what you share, Bob. Pearson is watching!
An equally major concern? The Fourth Estate isn’t trying to combat the mind-numbing effects of social media by finding new ways to package/communicate/market hard news. Nope; they’re increasingly turning to tabloid tales, and tabloid formats, to generate ad revenue driven by click bait.
I’ve got news for them: it won’t work. Ask the Catholic Church. Vatican II’s dumbing down of the mass didn’t improve mass attendance.
Similarly, replacing real news with vacation horror stories and Kardashian wedding gossip won’t save the old media from the grave. All it’s going to do is drive more Americans to non-traditional news sources like Save Jersey or Braun’s online Ledger.
The good news is that no one, left or right, trusts the PARCC tests. Everyone knows all about them. Everyone wants to stop it, and eventually it will be dealt a final blow.
Good job on this article! I think it worked because they eventually ran the story, but not until about 7:30 pm after you ran this one.