Montclair's local elections, perhaps the most exciting, divisive, and controversial in years, brought out the press, including yours truly, working the scene with my favorite reporting tool, the iPhone (not a paid endorsement). If you wanted to find out who won the election last night, Baristanet was the place to go. Baristanet also sent an email blast to 3,000 people and tweeted the news.
Montclair didn't rate any TV crews that I could see, but ink-stained wretches were everywhere, including Star Ledger's journo's who called it in to Phil Read*for his morning report, and the lovely Erica Zarra of the Montclair Times. Never mind, the Montclair Times wasn't the go to website if you wanted to know what was going on. Their website looked like this at 9:45 pm and was still unchanged at 11am this morning.
*Phil published election results on NJ.com at 10:04 pm and made it to the party at Unity HQ...
Partnership Montclair was gathered upstairs at Tierney's trying to make sense of the results as they were posted. We heard the crowd was monitoring municipal Channel 34, but the televised results were nearly impossible to read.
Comments (10)
Nobody had to "call it in" to Phil Read; he was on Bloomfield Avenue last night.
I have always said that whenever there's a hoopla going on in Montclair, and I want to know what's up (like if there are sirens and helicopters all over the place, or 20 firetrucks rush by, or police have an area cordoned off in a serious-looking way), I know I can usually go home and log in to baristanet and find out what's going on.
And there have been several times when something big seemed to be going down and I have fired off an email to the Baristas to tip them off (and find out if they know what's up) and within hours a post has gone up about it. Like the time when my apartment building was surrounded by 12 police cars and trucks!
This is why you'll never hear me complain about local soft news appearing on baristanet sometimes (although the whole sopranos thing did get to be a bit too much!)
Definitely where I went for the results - great job!
I'll add a hearty slap too!!
I've said this to my journalist friends who work at big papers-- no one is going to cover local issues better than a local blog.
No one.
Certainly no the Ledger or NJ.com.
I agree- Baristanet always does a great job.
Not to sound like an apologist for the Montclair Times, but I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation as to why there's still no election results on their website. Perhaps the Montclairvoyant guy has the entire staff working 24/7 to come up with puns for the word "Fried."
The Watercooler released the Official Results at 9:28 PM to the 2,561 members!
Perhaps, just perhaps... The Montclair Times did not view it as a story that merited their coverage.
You know the internets is just those tubes the kids use.....
Baristanet moment: Taking a 10 p.m. 66 bus home last night, I pulled up baristanet.com on my blackberry and told a friend the results. Just like that the strangers sitting and standing around us coalesced into a community, with everyone curious to hear and share the news. Thanks, baristas, for doing such a fine job of reporting the election.
i never did get this site's angst against the montclair times. plus, this site calling anyone out on journalistic accountability is like jose canseco calling barry bonds a cheater.
this is a glorified gossip site, the wikipedia of news if you will.