OK. It’s official. The Journal News has redeemed itself. It has becoming increasingly clear that the JN is finally starting to ask some tough questions about New Rochelle and come over from the dark side. In 2008 and 2009, New Rochelle was largely ignored by the JN. When it did mention New Rochelle, the 7th largest city in New Rochelle and the 2nd largest in its coverage area it was little more than high school sports scores, police blotter reports and "rip ‘n read" press releases. You could literally count on one hand the number of original reporting done in or about New Rochelle. As for investigative reporting, there was been absolutely none and only the very occasional article that was not spoon fed to a reporter by government officials. That has begun to change. 2010 has been a different story with articles on the installation of surveillance cameras at the library, not supporting Jerome Smith, the incumbent school board member in last May’s election and more, reporting on New Rochelle crossing guards missing from their post while assigned to cross students at lunchtime more than a year after the school district switched to full-day Kindergarten obviating the need for the guards in the middle of the day. And now comes a second story on corruption in the New Rochelle court system. No probe done of corruption claims at New Rochelle court office
Despite allegations of corruption in the City Court Clerk’s Office by a former employee, there has been no recent investigation of criminal activity there.
Here’s one sure to get a chuckle out of knowledgeable residents:
The 2003 incident, investigated by New Rochelle police but never solved, had to do with missing money, he said.
Imagine that! The New Rochelle police department was unable to "solve" allegations of theft by court employees working for Jimmy Generoso. Must have been a real puzzler of a case. The Journal News puts into print the allegations not mentioned in their original report.
In [Gina Amorosano-LePore’s] lawsuit, she said she was targeted for speaking out on corruption. She accused employees of stealing from court coffers; falsifying records to make traffic tickets "go away"; peddling controlled substances, including Valium; taking bribes for ticket fixing; and allowing a city marshal use of the office for private purposes.
The Journal News has now run two stories since Talk of the Sound broke the news of the jury verdict on the case: New Rochelle Guilty, Federal Jury Awards Whistleblower $181,000 over Allegations of Ticket-Fixing & Drug Dealing at Courthouse All we can see here at Talk of the Sound is…welcome to fighting the good fight.
We cancelled our JN subscription
Who needs the Journal News when you have newrochelletalk.com? I believe many others have probably done the same. Maybe the Journal News is beginning to understand that their is competition in the local news market.
For whatever reason, more scrutiny is welcome!
Tom,
You will get no argument form me that for quite a while now, Talk of the Sound has been kicking the butts of local media outlets like the Journal News, Sound & Town Report and Channel 12 News. Looked at another way, Talk of the Sound has become a valuable resource for these cash-strapped news organizations. I really do not care why New Rochelle would get more coverage just that they do.
Channel 12 News and the Sound & Town Report both have major flaws: Channel 12 is part of Cablevision which operated in New Rochelle at the pleasure of the City of New Rochelle and is thus susceptible to that having held over their head. Sound & Town Report makes no bones about being in the pocket of the City government, billing themselves as the "official" newspaper of the City government.
Of course, we all know The New York Times no longer has a Westchester section and the NYC TV stations rarely venture out to New Rochelle to cover local events.
The Journal News is the last best hope and for that reason I would like to celebrate what I see to be a new willingness to both cover New Rochelle and to cover it a more hard-boiled way. Having moved Aman Ali onto greener pastures, Hannan Adley and the FOIL/Data desk are starting to do a much better job of covering the underside of City Hall.
What is amazing to me is that it took this long for the court house to get this sort of look from the media Everyone in town has known for years about the goings-on at the New Rochelle Court House. It has been a wink-wink, nod-nod joke of a court house for many years where those who knew the right people got all sorts of favors and special treatment not to mention trips to the Super Bowl, luxury box seats for baseball games and comped trips to area casinos.
I love how the article quotes officials saying "gee, we rarely get complains and when we have investigated we do not find anything". I guess residents are not supposed to wonder whether the failure of government officials do anything about complaints it does get discourages people from making complaints and maybe THAT is why they get so few. Like much of New Rochelle, people just accept the corruption and figure "why bother" and "I do not want to be targeted for retaliation".
In a world where school district employees send child porn to other school and city employees, no one is arrested and the culprit gets a promotion or where you can plead guilty to stealing from the public schools one day and be he hired by another branch of the public school system another or where you can drive drunk, flip your car, crash into three others and still keep your job as head of transportation for the schools or where you can cheat on your taxes by claiming veterans benefits when you never served in the military….is it any wonder that few people see the value in coming forward to point out wrongdoing.
It has been my view that this site can be a catalyst for exposing all of the rottenness in the New Rochelle government — City Hall, police, schools, etc. At some point (Malcolm Gladwell called it "the tipping point), when you bring together enough of these instances of public corruption the pendulum swings the other way, people come out of the woodwork with all sorts of new information and then house of cards collapses. It is tough to say how you get to the tipping point, how far away you are but when it happens it is very quick and irrevocable. I like to think Talk of the Sound has played a role in moving us towards that point. That the Journal News might want to help move us there is very welcome.
ANY help shining a bright light on pigs feeding at the public trough are welcome.