NJ PBS chair Scott Kobler has issued a statement in which he criticizes New Jersey government officials for “intransigence or maybe even apathy” over the public broadcasting funding crisis.
As I noted Wednesday, NJ PBS may shut down in June 2026 following a breakdown in negotiations between the state and WNET of New York, the public media organization that runs the New Jersey operation. In addition to losing some $1.5 million in federal funds, NJ PBS’s allotment of state funds has been cut from $1 million for the coming year to just $250,000.
The cuts are likely to affect NJ Spotlight News, a website covering statewide politics and public policy as well as the name of NJ PBS’s daily half-hour newscast. The two operations merged in 2019. Although WNET has pledged to keep the news operation alive online and on its New York-based station, Thirteen, regardless of what happens, its reporting capacity is likely to be reduced unless a well-heeled benefactor or two steps up.
Kobler’s statement, published Wednesday by the New Jersey Globe, says in part:
Calls for a top-to-bottom review of New Jersey public media are welcome. However, it could have started with a more sincere and less rigid understanding by the State from the outset that the landscape is radically different than 2000. But within disappointment sits opportunity. New Jersey boasts existing, vaunted educational, artistic, philanthropic, and civic institutions positioned to coalesce and take this function over to provide an enhanced delivery of facts and stories to our neighbors at a reasonable cost. Plus, we do have elected leaders who have been vocal and who care.
Kobler is resigning as NJ PBS chair in order to work on WNET’s winding down of its relationship with the outlet.
As Ellen Clegg and I wrote in our book, “What Works in Community News,” Spotlight is a heartening example of a public broadcasting operation stepping up to respond to the crisis in local and regional news. Stuck between the New York and Philadelphia media markets, Spotlight is the only New Jersey-based TV newscast. And now its fate is uncertain.
Emily Rooney: Don’t quit!
Emily Rooney, the creator of the late, lamented media criticism program “Beat the Press,” has some advice for angry journalists who tell their bosses to take this job and shove it: “Fight back; don’t concede.”
Writing for Contrarian Boston, Rooney cites folks like Renée Graham, who quit The Boston Globe’s editorial board to protest a largely laudatory editorial about the murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk (Graham is remaining as a Globe columnist), and Bill Owens, who resigned as the executive producer of “60 Minutes” over parent company Paramount’s negotiations with Donald Trump to settle a garbage lawsuit. Paramount eventually handed Trump $16 million, paving the way for FCC approval of a merger with Skydance Media.
“Resigning is the wimpy way out,” Rooney says. “Stick it out, make them fire you for what you believe.”
To which I would counter that sometimes quitting is the only way you can stand up for what you believe. Then again, I know that my old friend Emily would always rather fight than quit.
Speaking of not quitting …
Former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, who was fired earlier this month for a series of Bluesky posts following the murder of Charlie Kirk, has filed a grievance with the Post’s union, “arguing that she should have been allowed to share her views on news events under the company’s labor agreement and social media policy,” as Benjamin Mullin reports in The New York Times.
As I wrote last week, Attiah simply published a thread of posts about gun violence. The only post that mentioned Kirk at all quoted Kirk’s own words about Black women. Mullin notes that Attiah posted a follow-up correcting the context in which Kirk had spoken.
Attiah has written more about her firing at her newsletter, The Golden Hour.
Please come to Waltham
I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion on “Journalism in Jeopardy” next Tuesday, Sept. 30, in Waltham, Massachusetts, along with Boston University media scholar Joan Donovan and June Kinoshita, president and co-founder of the Waltham Times, a digital nonprofit.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at the Clark Government Center. Although it’s sponsored by the Waltham Democratic City Committee, it’s also intended as a nonpartisan discussion. Details are online here.
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