As Dollars Dwindle, Opportunity Knocks for NJ and Higher Ed

Rutgers University is trying something new this weekend. It’s called Rutgers Day and it takes place Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the school’s Busch, College Avenue and Cook/Douglass campuses.

Rutgers Day is designed to showcase New Jersey’s state university to the people of the Garden State. “Think of it as a great, big one-day show-and-tell for New Jersey, a celebration of our great state and a great university,” the school says on its Rutgers Day website.

Although the date for Rutgers Day was selected several months ago, the timing of the event could not be more fortuitous, given the current economic crisis. The downturn in the economy is forcing everyone to tighten their belts, including state governments and institutions of higher learning.

Garth Brooks, Chris Christie and the News Media

Back in 2000 when country music superstar Garth Brooks took part in New York Mets spring training to raise money for his children’s foundation, he quickly learned that major league pitching was not the only thing to which he had to adjust. Although Brooks was used to dealing with the press as an entertainer, he discovered that professional athletes have a much different relationship with the media.

“There are no reporters in Brooks’s dressing room when he goes from town to town on a concert tour,” Tyler Kepner wrote in a New York Times article about the musician’s excursion into the world of baseball. “Fans do not know where he stays on the road. He gives interviews when he has a specific reason to do so. ‘If I don’t want to be got to, no one can touch me,’ Brooks said.”

Brooks’s story comes to mind this month because of a series of news reports, columns and blog postings about another individual who now finds himself dealing with the press under a different set of rules – Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie.

Can Non-Profit Status Save the Newspaper Industry?

As the tough times for newspapers in New Jersey and across the nation continue so does the search for a new model that can resuscitate the industry.

Conventional wisdom says that newspapers need to find a way to make money now that their content is available for free on the internet. But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong?