Death of local news

Good morning!

The collapse of local news has resulted in — you’ll never get this — New Jersey residents finding it hard to learn about local news.

A new Rutgers-Eagleton poll commissioned by the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium found 36% of respondents said local news is hard to find (43% said it was easy to find).

“Many New Jerseyans are actively seeking out local information, but more than a third say what they were looking for was hard to find,” said Ashley Koning, an assistant research professor and polling director at Rutgers-Eagleton. “That is not a partisan divide. Democrats, independents and Republicans report difficulty at similar rates, and property taxes and municipal spending are among the subjects cited most often.”

Residents are divided on whether there are enough local news sources in their area. Forty-two percent said there aren’t enough, 40% said just the right amount, and 5% said too many (who are these people?).

Just last week, I reunited over drinks with some folks I worked with as a baby reporter. Our newsroom had its own municipal beat reporter (🙋), someone who covered education, a business beat, a religion editor, a community news editor, and a sports writer, all working for a weekly newspaper covering a single town, Montclair. Then Gannett bought the paper and essentially destroyed it overnight. The most recent post about Montclair on Gannett’s website is a photo gallery of a flea market that happened nearly a month ago.

Happy Wednesday, I guess!

Insurance: New Jersey hit Geico with a $1.2 million fine after accusing the company of overcharging its customers by $10 million. The penalty comes as car insurance rates soar in New Jersey, a trend that has prompted advocates to criticize the department for approving most rate hike requests. Geico said it has already taken steps to address the state’s recommendations for change.

More: A new secret shopper survey of states including New Jersey found that many patients struggle to make appointments for mental healthcare because of problems with commercial insurers’ doctor directories. Fewer than a quarter of answered calls resulted in an appointment with a psychiatrist or psychologist, while more than half of the inquiries identified a doctor who was no longer in the network, had retired, or was not at that address, or revealed another directory error.

Commentary: Billy Gallagher at Communications Workers of America argues that the potential collapse of the state-run health benefits plan for public workers would raise costs for all New Jerseyans, not just those working for local governments. “Without any real efforts to bring down costs, the local government side of the plan withers, towns leave, and private insurers are there to pick up the pieces. Put bluntly, that is not a solution. It is a demolition plan,” he writes. “When public plans shrink, everyone pays more. The State Health Benefits Plan sets the benchmark for New Jersey’s private market. Kill the benchmark, and watch what happens to prices for the small business owner in Camden, the freelancer in Montclair, the family buying on the exchange in Toms River.”

D.C.: Via Tyler Pager at the New York Times, a billionaire banker from a prominent family in Venezuela wanted a pardon, so his family hired Alina Habba, a Trump ally and our former top federal prosecutor, promising her $50 million over four years. Bet you’ll never guess whether he got the pardon or not!