After feeling the back of the hand of Nick Lemann in The New Yorker, Baristanet’s Deb Galant comes back swinging with her reporter’s pencil after reporting on power outages on her street and beat yesterday:
I offer yesterday’s coverage to Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia Journalism School, who wrote the New Yorker piece, as an example of what he missed.
Here’s what you saw last night on the Montclair Times website. And here’s what you saw on their other internet presence, My Montclair. The Township of Montclair website didn’t have anything about the fire/power outage situation until late at night. And if you called the Montclair Public Library, the official cooling center for the town last night, you got a recording saying it was closed. Phil Read of the Star Ledger was there with notebook, but his reporting contributions didn’t show up on the NJ.com website until this morning. And for the most part, the Montclair Watercooler was clueless, and focused on its usual preoccupations of window replacement vendors and Italian tutors.
We, on the other hand, were all over this story like cheap suit. And that we includes you.
Thanks again for all your contributions — your tips, your “on the scene” reporting in the form of comments, your generosity to your neighbors, and your sense of humor. Keep posting.
