So, I’m sipping a cup of Wawa hazelnut coffee yesterday scrolling PolitickerNJ on my laptop when I see this ominous headline: Publisher says Star Ledger could be sold or closed by January.

My first thought was Yikes! I can’t imagine Jersey without the Ledger.  What will Christie do to keep his name recognition numbers up?

My second thought after seeing the Star Ledger’s own story in its business section today was it’s admirable the Ledger assign a veteran reporter to write a real news story about its own business troubles.  

The media has worked overtime reporting on revenue-raising proposals -- from leasing the state's toll roads to almost anything with a money stream including the lottery -- all in the name of budget balancing. 

Little to no attention has been paid to the notion of leasing the state-owned public broadcast licenses. Depending on who you talk to, estimates range from a few million dollars to more than $100 million dollars. Cha ching!

So it's no wonder the proposed conversion of NJN from a state-licensed facility to a community-licensed one is a bit controversial.

Steering NJN's ship away from rocky financial uncertainty won't be easy. In fact, it may not even be possible according to the some of the folks on deck.

"It's difficult to steer a ship if the crew is in mutiny," stated NJN's Interim News Director Michael Aron.

Aron was commenting on the NJN proposal to transition the station from a state-licensed entity to a community licensed broadcaster.  The audience and the mission of NJN would remain largely unchanged from the perspective of Elizabeth Cristopherson, NJN's executive director. However the station would no longer have to rely on diminishing state funding  (not to mention fickle politics)  to pay its way into the 21st century. 

Selecting the next NJN anchor will certainly be a different process than what happens at the major networks, local affiliates and other public community broadcast stations.

Aside from grappling with its talent loss - filling the shoes (um, heels) of Emmy award winning anchor Kent Manahan - NJN's anchor search will be hampered by deep cuts, budget uncertainty and buyout restrictions.

Of the handful of state employees at NJN who opted for the early retirement package, all but one -- if not all -- may have to be filled from the inside. By law, the early retirement provisions stipulate that only 1 in 10 buyout positions can be filled from outside the state payroll.

For some folks like Senior Political Correspondent Michael Aron and now interim News Director, that may mean wearing two hats for a lot longer.

Wearing that extra hat also means Aron will likely be at the center of deciding who will become the next NJN anchor.

According to Elizabeth Christopherson, NJN's Executive Director, "there is a firewall between management and our news room" in describing how the anchor selection will be a personnel decision for the News Director to make.

Despite all the recent downsizing news at The Record and Star Ledger, similar economic pressures at New Jersey's only statewide television station have virtually been ignored by the media. Aside from the headliner early retirements announced and the station's budget proposal to wean itself off state's coffers back in May, very little attention has been paid to the pressing financial predicament at NJN.

"We are at an urgent point in our history," emphasized NJN Executive Director Elizabeth Christopherson. "Being so lean for so many years makes you creative, but it is also like living on an oxygen tank. If you turned it off now, we will not be able to be sustainable."

Plagiarism is a bit like pornography - you know it when you see it, to paraphrase US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. 

But is the standard the same for bloggers? Given most blogs informal and causal tones, should bloggers be held to the same ethical standards of newspapers?

For some news organizations, "borrowing ideas" is OK, but not the "direct words".  For others, it is "one of journalism's unforgivable sins".
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Case in point, if I was writing this for a newspaper, I would have probably written:  For some news organizations like the Detroit Free Press, "borrowing ideas...is considered fair journalistic practice", but "words directly quoted from sources other than the writer's own reporting should be attributed."  For others like the Grand Forks Herald, it is "one of journalism's unforgivable sins", according to published excerpts on plagiarism by the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

With now less than 100 days to go until the presidential election, the veepstakes race is reportedly narrowing. The problem with the news reports is a gender bias that seems to keep cracking its head open on the glass ceiling.

To its credit, The New York Times public editor recently took a hard look at its own coverage -- "Pantsuits and the Presidency." In the column, Clark Hoyt quoted two experts that noted The Times did a better job than others in the media on the newsroom sexism measuring stick. 

It’s not often a congressional seat opens up in New Jersey – so you would think that all editorial eyes would be focused on any and all campaign story angles in the open districts – especially the hometown dailies.

So when the 3rd District (Burlington-Ocean-Camden) campaigns closed their fundraising books for the 2nd quarter and candidates started reporting cash-on-hand, it should have made some news.

Show us the money!

Twenty months ago The Daily Record's Bob Ingle gave the SCI an "A+" for its report titled "Taxpayers Beware" which detailed how "hidden perks greatly inflated the value of school superintendents' compensation" (The Daily Record, 10/16/06).

Sound familiar? The SCI devoted 165 pages to the taxpayer abuses -- a key section focused exclusively on superintendents' "severance package/buyouts". It exposed seven districts where departing supers had pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars -- including some in the poorest districts in the state.

So why did the SCI report and the ongoing sweetheart-deals-at-taxpayers-expense all but disappear from the headlines until recently?

Another fiscal-cutting measure still lies on the Governor's desk -- it's the one that reduces spending by way of statutory tweaks to the state's negotiated union contracts with public employees.