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New Jersey Blogger Gets Press Pass Yanked

The New Jersey Law and Public Safety Department has yanked the press pass of a blogger who earlier this year was granted permission to officially cover the state legislature's activities in Trenton. State police cited "security issues" in reversing the decision.

The blogger in question is statehouse correspondent Jay Lassiter of Blue Jersey. The New York Times profiled him yesterday, after the press pass was revoked:

Mr. Lassiter -- who has never applied for press credentials from the New Jersey Press Association -- said he was told by the police that he did not qualify for an identification card because Blue Jersey did not have an office here. He can enter the statehouse to conduct his reporting, he said, but instead of circumventing security and metal detectors with an official ID, he must be issued a visitor’s badge.

The new crop of blogger-reporters -- they have also cropped up at the capitols in California, Tennessee and Georgia, among other states -- have made legislators and journalists wary. Some of them do not consider bloggers worthy of credentials.

"A lot of these guys are fairly partisan, so I have concerns about opening the full membership to people who are not in a traditional sense objective reporters," John L. Micek, the president of the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association, told State Legislatures magazine in January.

"We couldn't be more proud of Jay for going where no blogger has gone before, right down into the thick of things in Trenton," Scott Shields, who was the Internet communications director U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., in last year's campaign, wrote at Blue Jersey. "Here's hoping he's reporting from the Capitol for some time to come."

(Hat tip to Jersey Blogs.)

CLARIFICATION/UPDATE: I attributed the decision about the press pass to the state's attorney general after misreading the blurb at PoliticsNJ.com. The attorney general is the head of the Law and Public Safety Department, but Blue Jersey editor Juan Melli e-mailed to say that he doesn't think the attorney general had any direct involvement in the decision. I've corrected the lead paragraph above.

I also added the word "officially" to the lead because Melli emphasized that Lassiter was covering the legislature before he received the press pass and will continue to do so. "In practice, this changes little to nothing," Melli said.

Maybe so in practice, but it's a symbolic setback for bloggers. New Jersey could have been at the forefront of redefining "press." Now they've moved to the back of a long line of other states -- and Congress -- who are bound by outdated traditions of journalism. That's a shame for New Jersey and the country.

Posted by Danny | 01:32 PM

Comments

There's really no indication that Stuart Rabner personally had anything to do with this. That was political observer and blogger Wally Edge making a joke about the fact that Rabner's about to move from the Office of the AG to become the Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court.

Happily, Jay will continue to cover the statehouse in Trenton from the inside even without a press pass.

Scott Shields | 07.03.07 11:57 AM

"A lot of these guys are fairly partisan, so I have concerns about opening the full membership to people who are not in a traditional sense objective reporters," John L. Micek, the president of the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association

I hope Mr Micek is joking. If you have to pass some sort of non-partisan test most reporters would fluke out.

Dave | 07.04.07 10:33 PM

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