Media War in Montclair: Baristanet Pulls Ahead

[Michael Schreiber]

UPDATE: 9/3/10, 10am

In the battle to see who covers the DeCamp strike best, Baristanet pulls ahead. As I wrote yesterday, though they are the horse to beat, Baristanets more frequent coverage of the strike was edged out by Montclair Patch's reporting depth. Not so today. Baristanet dug deeper. Their posts yesterday on the picket line and the giant rat moved the story forward and created a real sense of the conflict. Great shoeleather journalism. Then, last night the posted a picture of an utterly packed Penn station, presumably full of displaced Decamp riders... actually, it was probably Giants fans too, but it was a sticky piece of content and a well-executed post.

Montclair Patch has nothing new on the DeCampt strike. Boooo.

The Montclair Times, incredulously, still has nothing. Seriously? I guess their vacation started early.

The latest story on the subject actually comes from local blog and sometimes actual physical newspaper The Jersey Tomato Press, which could be a the new dark horse in our little media war.

MonclairMEDIA member Diane Lilli astutely observes the following in her post on the site:

"Something occurred yesterday that may have caused the striking drivers to pause: nothing. Instead of confusion, stranded commuters and breakdowns on N.J. Transit buses or trains, the commute for N.J. workers into the city was seamless and quiet.Online in blogs, and in line at train and bus stations at the end of the day, commuters were smiling. Instead of being inconvenienced, it seemed they were happy to discover a new way to commute into the city. Uh oh."

I'd love to see a story that digs deeper into this angle. The DeCamp drivers are banking on the support of the public, but when you read stuff like Lilli's piece it makes you wonder if they are sufficiently inconvenienced. Further, it's no secret that for plenty of riders, there's no love lost for certain DeCamp drivers who have been downright hostile (the didn't get the nickname DeCrap for nothing). Now, many people, like me for example, have a good long walk to the train now that the busses aren't running... so the question is this: Are people people like me, who really are inconvenienced, inclined to support the drivers?