Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

Random thoughts: Waiting for opening day

John — the news editor here — gets on my case when I get too optimistic about the Mets, but after last season I can’t help it. No doubt, this is a team with flaws — I don’t trust that Jose Valentin can repeat what he did at second last year and there are questions (age-related) about the corner outfield spots.

But the biggest question marks remain the starting pitching. There are an abundance of arms in camp, though it is unclear whether anyone beyond Tom Glavine will provide meaningful innings — and he’s 41. Orlando Hernandez, for instance, set to be the No. 2 starter, already has tweaked himself and missed a few workouts. This wouldn’t be a big deal except he is somewhere between 39 and 163 years old.

Then we have the rest, an interesting mixed bag that includes last year’s surprise (John Maine), a potential diamond in the rough (Oliver Perez, from whom I am predicting big things), a few up-and-comers who may not be ready (Humber and Pelfrey), some retreads (Chan Ho Park, Aaron Sele, Dave Williams when he recovers from his surgery) and some others.

The name not being discussed because it appears the team is committed to his relief role is Aaron Heilmann. This is too back — he may be the best of the bunch.

The issue is of concern because the Phillies have added arms — Adam Eaton and Freddy Garcia. Garcia is a workhorse, though nothing more than a middle-of-the-rotation guy; Eaton possesses electric stuff but has had trouble staying on the mound, but when added to Brett Myers, Cole Hamel and the oldies Jon Lieber and Jamie Moyers, there is depth, if nothing else. I like Hamels, but the Phillies would be crazy to expect too much from him too soon. He may be the next stud arm in the NL — or he could be Mark Prior, a heralded phenom forced into the limelight too quickly.

Certainly, the Phils have the better starting staff, but the Mets bullpen is deep and strong and the Met lineup is far better, going six deep (Alou is a great hitter even at his advanced age, far better and more consistent than the oft-injured Floyd and certainly more reliable than the overrated and overpaid Pat Burrell, his counterpoint in Philly).

Think about it this way: Ryan Howard maybe the best hitter on either team, but it is the only lineup spot where the Phillies have an advantage:

At best Jimmy Rollins matches Jose Reyes (I take Reyes without much thought).
Paul LoDuca is a fabulous No. 2, while Shane Victorino remains unproven.
As good as Chase Utley is in the three hole, Beltran is that much better.
Ryan Howard is better than Carlos Delgado — this is the negative image of the three hole.
David Wright or Pat Burrell? Do you have to ask?
Moises Alou or Aaron Rowland? The only question is whether Alou plays enough.
Shawn Green or Wes Helms? Does it matter? Helms is a fine bench player and it is likely that Abraham Nunez will get a lot of time here.
Jose Valentin or Rod Barajas? Valentin is the better hitter, though there is no guarantee he’ll be in the lineup everyday.

The Marlins have some outstanding young arms and there always is the Braves. But the Mets are the reigning division champs — by 12 games — and were a nasty curveball away from a triip to the fall classic a year ago. Have the Phillies made up the 12 games? My sense is no. But I don’t want to get too optimistic (though isn’t that what spring is all about?) — or John will be forced to take me down a peg.

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Runner’s diary, Monday

Been a few weeks, I guess, since I’ve updated the world (like it cares) on my running progress, but here it is: After a couple of weeks with a lone three-mile run, I did a three-miler today on the treadmill at a slow pace with tight hamstrings and quads and sore knees. I hate getting old.

Today on teh iPod: The Arctic Monkeys.

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Pointing to the future of newspapers?

Jeff Jarvis’ offers some interesting ideas on the potential nexus between blog-like online publications and traditional newspapers on his BuzzMachine blog. The gist of his argument can be summed up with his opening line:

Try this on as a new rule for newspapers: Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.

It is, as I said, an interesting idea, one worth considering, though I’m not sure how useful it will be for community weeklies like the Post and Press that focus on the most local of issues.

For bigger dailes — especially for papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post — this may be an approach that can allow them to provide real, useful and important news without ignoring the fluff and celebrity stuff that seems to be of interest to many out there. It is a way of targeting resources toward their best use.

“(I)n the age of the link,” Jarvis writes, the old ways are inefficient and self-defeating.

You can link to the stories that someone else did and to the rest of the world. And if you do that, it allows you to reallocate your dwindling resources to what matters, which in most cases should be local coverage.

This changes the dynamic of editorial decisions. Instead of saying, “we should have that” (and replicating what is already out there) you say, “what do we do best?” That is, “what is our unique value?” It means that when you sit down to see a story that others have worked on, you should ask, “can we do it better?” If not, then link. And devote your time to what you can do better.

We make this decision nearly everyday, picking and choosing what to cover, how much space and time to devote and how to play it. No newspaper can cover everything or devote the kind of resources we would like to the stories we do cover. And our resources are shrinking at a lightning pace.

So we have to rethink the “architecture of news” by finding new ways to cover things. Is the Jarvis model the right one? Perhaps, though there maybe other approaches. It is, however, something that is very much worth thinking about.

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The long campaign

What if you ran for president and no one cared? Why, you’d probably drop out. Just ask former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack.

As silly as a story like this seems when we remain a full year before the first primary, it does raise some interesting questions, as Josh Marshall asks in this post from Talking Points Memo:

(A)rguably the big story so far in the 2008 cycle is just how fast the race is developing — how quickly frontrunners are being annointed, how soon formal announcements are being made, how quickly people are dropping out, etc.

And I’m curious how much of this sped up cycle is due to blogs and web media. I don’t mean to ask whether this is the ‘netroots’ flexing its muscle, though that’s an interesting question in itself. But the pre-primary presidential winnowing process is largely a matter of buzz and a feedback loop between buzz, organzing and fundraising. People generate buzz, they get supporters, they get more money, that leads to more buzz, etc. Or in other cases, people have a lot of money. So they look formidable. And they get supporters and buzz, etc.

We can argue over whether money is driving buzz or vice versa. But a lot of the pre-primary phase is this process of sampling, often with relatively small sets of people. And the perceptions of those samples pick up steam and often become self-fulfilling. So is it the web and the more rapid sampling it allows — partly in fundraising but much more in buzz — that’s ramping the process forward and making it so fast?

I don’t have any answers, personally, but it is worth thinking about — especially with the primary season being condensed in 2008.

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The mirage of reform

The Star-Ledger today offers a summary of the state’s tax reform effort that presents the last half year in a somewhat better light than I would.

Of the 98 recommendations made by four special joint committees, the paper says that about half were enacted as law. And while that maybe true from a technical standpoint, the most important were not and many of the other controversial items were either watered down in committee or between the release of the reports and the passage of the legislation.

Take the consolidation bill. The one that became law essentially created an advisory panel with authority to study the issue, but left the final decision to voters in the communities to be merged. Normally, I would never oppose giving voters a choice, but the history of municipal and school consolidation is one of failure and inaction, caused only partly by fiscal considerations. Other tangential issues — red herrings like the amorphous “identity,” as if villages like Kingston that are not independent municipalities lack identity — have come into play keeping the expensive array of overlapping and repetitive governments in place.

The bill originally on the table would have addressed that by giving the state Legislature and governor final say — the merger panel would recommend towns to consolidate and the state would act. That would have been infinitely better.

Go down the list: The ban on dual-office holding? Still waiting. New school aid formula? Wait until next year. State comptroller? Sort of — a far weaker comptroller was created than proposed.

The Legislature did manage to create a new, executive county superintendent — a silly idea that creates a new level of bureaucracy — and impose a set of tax levy caps destined to do little more than hamstring local governments and schools. Our best hope for the caps is that they create momentum for greater shared services and mergers — if you can’t spend, after all, you have to find other ways of providing services.

How would I grade the governor and Legislature at this point? I’d give them an incomplete — and make no mistake, this grade applies equally to Democrats and Republicans.

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