How the Herald almost started the Watchdog

On June 14, 2011, blogger Rob Eichmann met with Herald editor Bruce Tomlinson to discuss taking the Herald website statewide.  Eichmann brought along Bill Winkler, who had arranged the meeting on his behalf, and Tomlinson brought in Herald Internet director Amy Paterson.  The meeting was held at the Herald's Newton offices.

Eichmann saw the need for a conservative-leaning print newspaper in New Jersey, to provide balance to the left-leaning Newhouse and Gannett newspaper groups , among others.  With the Herald print edition serving a conservative county, a right-of-center tilt wouldn't hurt it any, while assuming the mantle as the state's "conservative" newspaper would open up the possibility of the Herald operating a website with statewide reach.  To that end, Eichmann was willing to share a reader base of over 40,000 emails with the Herald.

Unfortunately, Tomlinson wasn't having any of it.  During the meeting, he lashed out at the idea of the Herald becoming "New Jersey's Fox News."  Eichmann took his idea away with him and had found funding for it when he was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of cancer.  He died in 2013, before his idea could be launched.  But not before launching a few websites of his own, including Sussex Watchdog.

Originally called Sussex County GOP Watchdog, Eichmann launched the blog in the spring of 2012 with the help of restaurant owner Gail Phoebus, a candidate for Sussex County Freeholder at the time.  After he died, it was relaunched as Sussex County Watchdog and adopted a less partisan, more reform-minded posture.  Many different people contribute to it, including Harvey Roseff, a sometime independent political candidate. 

Of course, the Herald's Tomlinson was furious when Eichmann went ahead anyway.  Tomlinson had assumed that his rejection meant an end to it and did not appreciate Eichmann's determination.  The Herald -- especially Tomlinson -- have had a hard on for the website and its contributors ever since.

Sometime after Tomlinson's arrival at the Herald, the newspaper began to adopt the role of political arbiter in Sussex County.  If politics were a scale with Republicans on one side and Democrats/Independents/Greens on the other, Tomlinson attempted to play the role of a kind of god, using the Herald to balance out the prospects of the opposing sides. This became preposterously obvious in 2011, when he suppressed coverage of the criminal conviction of an independent candidate who used violence against a mother and a child.  When the Herald refused to write about it -- but the candidate lost anyway -- Tomlinson blamed the professionalism of the Republican campaign.

Curiously, he was joined in this by a consultant-turned-politician on the make by the name of George Graham.  Graham was a journeyman political consultant from Hudson County -- where he mainly worked Democrat municipal campaigns and did the government relations work for a major county contractor.  He was also a local elected official in Sussex County who had flipped from Democrat to Republican back to Democrat and then back to Republican again.  Graham contributed to Democrat legislative candidates and even voted in the Democrat presidential primary in 2008 for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Graham wanted to take a piece of the political consulting action in Sussex County and he also wanted to advance up the ranks of elected office.  He took over the Sussex County League of Municipalities and held it until the finances ran out.  He made an important alliance with attorney Dan Perez, who had been introduced to Sussex County legal circles by the Herald's own attorney.  Perez is currently the Democrat Party candidate for Freeholder in Sussex County.

Graham worked in a kind of partnership with the Herald -- and boasted about the hundreds of times he had met with the editor and senior staff.  Graham opposed reform legislation to end the newspaper subsidy, which counted for a great deal with the Herald.  In return, the Herald has been uniformly supportive of Graham's political career.  Last year, the Herald suppressed coverage of the challenge to Graham in his bid to be re-elected Freeholder.  The contrast between 2016 and 2017 could not be greater.

Aside from Graham, the Herald has adopted an antagonistic view towards political professionals -- seeing them as a direct threat to their ability to "play god" and place a thumb on the scale as seen fit.  This is strange, because political professionals have been working in Sussex County -- and indeed everywhere else in America and the free world -- for at least 40 years.  The political consultant is a well established staple of American political life, not the dangerous novelty that bizarrely the Herald would have us believe.

The Herald is part of a mid-western based media empire and we know for a fact that each and every one of those media units within Quincy Media corporation, every radio or cable station and the Quincy Whig, they all have professional dealings with political consultants.  Throughout the whole of the Quincy empire they are viewed as clients -- but not by the Herald.

With malice and premeditation, the Herald has worked to draw out and "expose" political professionals for the purpose of making them boogey men -- all except George Graham.  The Herald has imposed rules on subscribers who pay to use its website in order to identify them with the equivalent of stars and triangles -- for the purposes of making them objects of hate.  No other newspaper in the state of New Jersey has similar rules.  None.  Most newspapers don't even ask that you be a subscriber to comment.  None monitor political professionals.  None care if you post anonymously.  Only the Herald, with its agenda, and a stick planted firmly up its arsehole.

Not content with "exposing" political professionals, the Herald has worked to "expose" their family members and to apply the same rules to them.  The Herald actually trolls social media in order to determine relationships between paid subscribers who comment and elected officials.  That is how mental it has become.  The Herald has become so obsessed that, in our opinion, it crosses the line into restraint of trade. 

The philosopher Michael Oakeshott reminds us that journalism is not about persuading others but rather it is about reporting events clearly.  The Herald is very far removed from this ideal.  In fact, Tomlinson and company more often behave like marketing reps than reporters -- laying their hands all over a story to spin it this way or that.  But in the interest of whom? 

In contrast to the Herald, we have an open policy.  Please feel free to send Watchdog leads or indeed full columns and we will post them.  Thank you.

The Herald's hypocrisy - no pay, no read.

We hope you have enjoyed your first four free articles on NJHerald.com...

If you are not a subscriber to the New Jersey Herald, you don't get to participate.  And the buy-in price to participate is pretty high at $156.00 a year.  But that is what it costs if you want access to the Herald.  You have to be a member.  You have to pay to be a member.  And once a paid member, you have to follow all the crazy rules laid down by Editor Bruce Tomlinson. 

The Herald looks forward to hearing from its readers, so please enjoy our website by using the certain criteria outlined to you and remember that when the moon is full you can only use your nickname but if it is raining you can't use your last name but if it is sunny you can only comment by text from a landline held over your head but then only if you explain how your parents met but then not on Thursday and again not on Tuesday but three times on Mondays when the clouds are lower and the crow flies high but you may post only under your blood type and then only in June.  And please do remember not to know any elected officials or grocers or rat catchers or fashion designers or any other human being involved in any form of behavior not prescribed and not proscribed but absolved unto thee and thou and dem and does, forthwith.

That's the Herald.  It has its rules.  But nobody else is allowed to have their rules.

Take the Sussex County Republican Committee for example.

The Herald thinks that socialists should have full access to any event put on by the GOP.  Never mind that it is a membership organization whose sole goal is to promote the platform and candidates of the Republican Party.  Never mind that its events cost money and that Republicans have to contribute so that the party has the money to put on those events.  The Herald believes that everything should be "open to all" -- only not the Herald.  There you gotta pay or... hit the road.

So when a candidate has been kindly invited to an event -- paid for by Sussex County Republicans -- and then announces that he is going to turn that event into a press conference to endorse someone, then yes, he is going to be asked to be a polite guest or the invitation will be withdrawn.  We've all been to weddings where some bore wanted to be the center of attention and the people who hosted the wedding, who paid for the wedding, had to step in.

The Sussex County Republican Committee is like a long-suffering aunt who invites an errant nephew to a formal gathering only to find him attempting to "entertain" those present with fart jokes.  At recent Republican events, some of the people to whom the Sussex GOP has kindly extended invitations to attend have actually brought with them to those events Green Party socialists who hate the GOP and especially hate Donald Trump.  One such "tag-along" came sporting a motorcycle helmet and a diaper pin and was ready to do battle with the Trumpists.  One is actually running against the GOP candidates this November.  Who pulls crap like that anyway?

It's like the wedding crashers meet the Sussex GOP.  One constant among all these wannabes is that they generally don't vote.  William Jefferson Hayden doesn't vote.  David Atwoodski doesn't vote either -- and he has two names to vote with!  And the freak show that they bring along with them should be seen to be believed.  Sure, a few have run for office before -- but never as Republicans!  So how come the Herald thinks that they should get the key to the GOP County committee just for showing up?

Free access.  The Herald doesn't do it.  So why should the Sussex County Republican Committee?

The Herald goes Seinfeld - a story about nothing.

"The Herald is out to screw Steve Oroho the way the MSM is out to screw Trump."

So read the email we got at Watchdog this morning.

"What was that story even about?"

It continued.

The story filed by Herald Reporter Rob Jennings led with the headline:  "Franklin mayor wants Oroho to quit after gas tax vote."

Fair enough.  Lots of people want Donald Trump to quit after his sex rant.  Others want Hillary to quit after Wikileaks.  Some want the Governor to quit because of Bridgegate.  Some think "Colorado" Gail Phoebus screwed them on their retirement income. And some think Franklin Mayor Nick Giordano should resign because he ran as Republican but he ain't because he voted for Barack Hussein Obama.  Lots of people want just about every political figure out for some reason.

The story was mainly about nothing.  What Nick Giordano says he's thinking about doing but then doesn't do. 

Giordano thought about running against Steve Oroho... but then "ruled it out."

Giordano talks about a recall... but "has not circulated any recall petitions."

So the story becomes about one dim-witted, over-stuffed, local mayor who spends too much time on Facebook expressing himself in the most basic ways possible. 

Nick Giordano says others should be "ashamed" of their actions when everyone has done something to be ashamed of.  Giordano made up lies about his neighbor, Steve Oroho, and then used social media to spread them.  Gail Phoebus told lies about Parker Space in 2015 and about Steve Oroho in 2016. Rob Jennings wrote this pointless news article.  Bruce Tomlinson let it go to print.  Lots of shame to go around.

Giordano says that Oroho "screwed his constituents."  Coming from someone like Nick Giordano, what does that mean?  Jennings really doesn't tell us.

Giordano asks:  "What kind of man would I be if I didn't say anything about it (on Facebook)."  Well Nick, you would be the kind of man who doesn't expose his unfiltered self on Facebook.

Giordano assures us that his "people" (crickets, groundhogs, voles?) want him to express himself on Facebook in an untethered, full-frontal way.  Get it? He's doing this for you, not because he likes to see his name... anywhere.

Giordano tells Jennings that "he would not benefit from the savings (from the tax cuts Oroho negotiated) and that the gas tax increase would cost him, over the course of a year, about the equivalent of a week's salary."  This is a demonstrable lie, but Jennings doesn't challenge it.

Somehow Jennings finds his way back to his story and quotes Giordano:  "Oroho is my local representative, and I'm not saying I'm going to recall him." WTF!  What is this story about anyway?  Is this an episode of Seinfeld?  Everyone knows that Jennings can't write a policy story and that it always goes back to process and politics but WTF!  Why write it? 

Then, as befitting a man who brags about voting for Barack Obama, Giordano goes full-Marxist and charges that "Oroho, a financial planner, had placed his wealthy clientele ahead of the needs of his constituents."  Giordano is talking about farmers and small business owners who get killed by the estate tax, the number one killer of family farms in this country.  Farmers are "wealthy clientele"?  Well maybe to an Obama voter they are.

Giordano is quoted by Jennings as saying:  "Just because I live in Sussex County doesn't mean I'm a hillbilly with a hay stick sticking out of my mouth." Nobody said you were.  A handjob, not a hillbilly.