4/01 The delight which some metro and suburban newspapers take in throwing darts at New Jersey’s famed farmland preservation program is not a surprise. Looking for flaws in the bureaucratic structure, whether they exist or not, is the name of the game in many newsrooms where Page 1 assumes a sort of Holy Grail quality, so that to place a story there confers a blessing, particularly if it carries your byline.
The latest example of this search emerged from the Gannett newspaper chain in the state which seems determined to establish, within the minds of its readers, that the farmland preservation program is riddled with improprieties, that despite the fact that Ag Secretary Art Brown met at length with the reporter and the editorial board and thought, we assume, that he had made his point. As it turned out, he hadn’t.
But that should come as no surprise either. Editorial boards are composed usually of senior journalists whose collective views forge the news policy and editorial viewpoint of the newspaper. Reporters write to that viewpoint. (The Page 1 grail, remember?)
Secretary Brown’s explanations, entreaties, contentions, whatever, would fall largely on deaf ears in that environment and would not find their way into print, to any appreciable degree, if they compromised that viewpoint and tended to weaken “a good story.”
New Jersey Farm Bureau directors are skeptical of the criticism on several counts and have so advised Gov. Whitman. There’s probably some politics involved here as well as a tweaking of the suburban conscience that money spent on farmland would be better spent on golf courses.
This is not to say that the farmland preservation program is not susceptible to public inspection. Secretary Brown has said that his door is wide open to any one, and that includes media representatives, interested in any aspect of the program and how it works.
The New Jersey ag land preservation program stands as a model for many similar efforts across the nation. Notably, through the years, it has won acclaim and support of the citizens of the state who are aware of farmland’s contribution to their quality of life, no matter the cost.
And that cost is plenty. Farmland values in The Garden State are the highest in the nation. Despite that, New Jersey voters, time after time after time, have approved bond issues to keep it going and, most recently, to provide it permanent funding. Perhaps it is that record of achievement and support which leads to misguided journalistic skepticism.
In any event, New Jersey citizens and, in particular, the Whitman Administration, should be proud of what they have accomplished. If those preserved acres were growing concrete and asphalt and the cement-block foundations of a million homes, once skeptical editorial boards might wonder what they had wrought.