Old Trenton Road

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Maria is awesome and works hard at her job. If the packet folds she will land another job in a second. She is the only reason there are any stories at all about Cranbury. Lets just hope she doesn't get a job somewhere else

[busyone]

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Sign me up for the Maria Prato fan club.

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Internet killed the newspaper star!!!!!!!!

[Guest]

Thanks to the poster who informed me that Hank is gone. I just signed back up for the paper.

[Guest]

Yes, the new editor for the paper is Mae Rhine. Hank will still have a dispatch column I believe as he is the editor of the South Brunswick paper. However, Mae is in charge of the Cranbury Press. I understand from speaking with people that Mae will be a different type of editor for us.

[Guest]

Hank is still listed as the editor in today's paper.

The "Dispatch" column has no logical place in the paper. It's a small paper and they already have a weekly official editorial. Any other space should be devoted to local issues. Its not like anyone gets this paper as their sole source of news and most of us already have other sources for our state and national news.

[Guest]

The change was made this week. I agree about the dispatches having no place.

[Hank Kalet]

I do not normally post here, but I thought it important that I clear up a few misconceptions and address some of the rather personal and nasty attacks on my -- attacks that have come from unnamed people.

First, I no longer will be the editor of The Cranbury Press, a position I have held for going on 10 years., During my time, the paper has won numerous awards and we have striven to do our best to cover what happens in the community. That has become increasingly difficult in recent years as we have lost staff and faced serious cutbacks in all areas of our operation.

I will miss editing the Press and I will make my way into Cranbury when I can.

Second, I will remain the editor of the South Brunswick Post and will continue to write Dispatches. You do not have to agree with my perspective on state, national or local issues and I have always left the paper's editorial section open to anyone who agrees, disagrees or has something else to say.

Third, the fact that I live in South Brunswick has nothing to do with my opinions on consolidation, which I have made clear would have to be considered on a town-by-town basis. I have nothing to gain from the issue, however it plays out.

My replacement, Mae Rhine, is an experienced editor who will do a good job in Cranbury. I will continue to have a role, offering her my knowledge of the community and the region, the players and assistance in reading copy.

Finally, I wish that the handful of people on this site who appear to have a personal problem with me would have identified themselves and contact me directly with their complaints or at least not make personal attacks on me or anyone else anonymously.

Thanks to all the people in Cranbury. Please, feel free to keep in touch.
HK

[Guest]

Hank,
I am grateful for the Cranbury Press and I think it is a good community newspaper in most respects. Thank you for your efforts in this regard.

However, under your leadership, the CP consistently supported forced consolidation. So, I canceled my subscription last year after reading yet another editorial in favor of forced consolidation. I explained my decision when I called and canceled. You have had my name, phone, e-mail and street address for a year.

Moving forward, I hope the new editor chooses to be an advocate for, not an adversary of, Cranbury. Good luck in your new role.

You Know Who

[Guest]

Hank,

Thanks for responding.

I understand you kept the editorial page open; however, the point is you failed to keep your readers in mind when you ran the Press. Being a managing editor means you have a responsibility to increase readership and not simply have a means by which to distribute your views. By ignoring your audience you lost readers.

It is fine to write editorials on a national level or even be controversial in papers like the Trenton Times or NY Times. Readers expect those papers to have editorials such as Dispatch and many people read these papers for those editorials- i.e. Paul Krugman or Dowd. However, papers like the Press have a wide audience who are looking for one thing stories and editorials on a local level pertaining to the day to day items impacting the town.

When the readers start seeing editorials on the national health care reform or discussions favoring consolidation it strays from what people want to see in a small town paper especially one that they view as representing the town. Regardless of your stance on town by town assessments any call for consolidation in a local paper has a direct impact on Cranbury and by association your readers. The result is that the readers will not support a paper that runs counter to their interests or that strays from what the Press's role as a local paper.

I hope as the editor of the SB post and Mae as the editor of the Press will consider your roles as not just writers, but also as a people responsible for increasing circulation and providing the readers with information that is geared locally to the towns you represent. Put the readers first before you make your personal stance in print on the editorial page. Otherwise, the readership will continue to decline and the papers will cease operations.

[Guest]

Hank,

1. Some of us have directly shared our concerns with you. To suggest otherwise is insincere. And to suggest it is just a “handful” of people who oppose your editorship is wishful thinking. I have heard disgust with your editorship as a topic at local parties and I have yet to hear anyone defend you, besides yourself. As a general rule when you use a local paper to publish personal opinions, usually with no concrete facts, that run contrary to the very existence of the locality, it won’t win you a lot of fan. Perhaps you don’t care, though your posting here suggests otherwise.

2. It is deceptive to suggest that you have kept the "editorial page open." You have published letters to the editor that are contrary to your positions but that is not the same as the main editorial slot of the Press every week which you have influenced and used in addition to your Dispatches slot. That means every week there is not one but two editorials under your influence both of which get more prominent display than the letters to the editor. Why the need for two?

3. Opposition to your dispatches column has nothing to do with your personal politics. I for one am most likely, based on your views, a member of the same political party. Yet I think your column is inappropriate in the paper. Not because of your positions but because it usually has nothing to do with Cranbury. You already have a blog you can use for your national and state views or if it is publish-worthy why not submit your opinions to state and national media outlets?

4. You are once again trying to revise history and side-step the facts on your views about consolidation of Cranbury. After the first time you published an editorial in the Cranbury Press endorsing consolidation and there was outrage on this board, you showed up and commented then as well, again saying “you don’t normally do this…” You implied then that you weren’t referring to Cranbury, despite the completely illogic of publishing an issue that is absolutely specific to a local community then assuming everyone would understand that your views somehow didn’t apply. Duh. Nor did you clarify or retract in the paper. Yet a few people were placated by your clarification until you did it again. Now we humans are learning creatures and you seem reasonably clever. So I don’t find it credible that you completely forgot that incident by the time you got around to endorsing small town consolidation even more forcefully again in the Cranbury Press, this time even more forcefully. Yet you again did nothing to suggest that you didn’t think that applied to Cranbury or even that you were directing your opinion to any place other than Cranbury. Even now you did not say in your post here that you didn’t think Cranbury should be consolidated into another municipality. Why? Because the fact is that you do believe we should be consolidated. If you didn’t you would have said so in any of multiple editorials. It would have taken only a few words and made the editorial so much more locally topical to state where Cranbury stood relative to your position. Sorry, but not doing was not repeatedly an error of omission.

5. If you are going to devote nearly a page (between both editorials under your control) of an 8 page paper to your personal opinions, could you at least try to make them credible? By that I mean, more actual facts and less turns of phrase and assumptive logic. Too often your editorials have a similar credibility to Glenn Beck (despite being on the opposite side of the political spectrum) and use similar tactics. I would be more impressed if you collected facts that build a compelling case. That’s what make your editorials supporting consolidation all the more frustrating. You repeatedly spewed the same generalities that politicians have that are actually contrary to actual facts about Cranbury as a small town. Thus in one swipe of the pen you both alienate a community you apparently oppose and lose credibility all at the same time.

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