Stuck in the middle... with you?

Hoboken411 and RealHoboken get in a mudfight, sticking me in the middle.

Neither Joe Concha nor 411 site owner Perry Klaussen can lay any serious claim to journalistic integrity. Both have glaring personal agendas that they showcase, while simultaneously insisting that no such agenda exists.

Much of their disaffection results from their similar neediness. Both are thin-skinned, verging on the dysfunctional. Both crave outsized amounts of reassurance, and use their blogs for embarrassing public displays of ill-advised navel-gazing. To wit: "I was inspired to write this post earlier this week when I was showering at 7am, not to “get ready for work”, but rather to “get ready to sleep” after not showering for three days, and being up for 24 straight hours, and only getting FOUR hours of sleep the previous 72!" While a certain amount of such 'inside' information might be endearing, Klaussen spends an inordinate amount of time regaling his readers with his heroic efforts to run his site and, uh, his spotty personal hygiene. Concha lives in a similarly distorted world.

Hoboken's a small town, and there may not be sufficient public attention to assuage both these self-obsessed, damaged egos.

Usually, I wouldn't post about a spat between this pair. (It's just not that interesting, and I rarely post these days anyway.) But Concha, who sporadically leaves mean-spirited (if cryptic) comments here, used my name to support a fevered 'expose' of his 411 rival. Klaussen does not seem to have responded directly, but his sycophants are linking to some of Concha's bad behavior here on Mr. Snitch.

Since I don't read either site (I stopped reading 411 when the owner's agenda became baldly evident, and I never did develop a RealHoboken habit), this inbred nastiness could have blown over sans comment from me. But links to my site show up on the SiteMeter. That is how I learned I was an unwilling participant in a Concha/Klaussen grudge match, with both sides citing Mister Snitch as proof of their 'rightness'. (Or anyway, as proof of the other guy's 'wrongness'.)

Good, persuasive writing is the product of insight and lots of rewriting. In other words - work. But Concha's stream-of-unconciousness prose style demands far more work from the reader than the writer himself bothers to put forth. Behold the Chinese Fire Drill that is a Concha sentence: "What Klaussen failed to do way-back-when, or admit now, which is, you know, a major point in all of this, was to inform his readers of this relaxed, first-name-basis-relationship when the financial agreement between Zimmer and Klaussen came to fruition back in the winter, and not following two elections (a third will occur in early November) after a newspaper does its homework."  

Concha's desultory presentation and besodden personal reputation (aside to Joe: The people at your summer beach house rentals REALLY like to TALK... think about it) undermine him even when he's right. And his piece on Klaussen, for readers able to see past the troweled-on vitriol, is reasonably accurate. It's reasonably important, as well.

Of course, Concha's 'Real' agenda is to get a rival blogger, not to right a wrong. This is painfully evident. Still, he manages to make the following points, despite himself:

"Realhoboken.com wishes to extend an open letter of thanks to the Hoboken Reporter for their well-researched column for their revelation of a Hoboken-based blog owner..."

The Reporter has done a good job in standing up to the phony HCDO-backed 'reformers' who have managed to get themselves elected lately. At first, reformers-for-rent Soares and Lenz insisted that the HCDO had suddenly 'reformed' itself, and pressured the paper to accept that claim as fact. (The empowerment of Soares and Lenz equals reform, you see.) As HCDO politicians have continued to be indicted, however (most recently in Guttenberg), the line from those enjoying HCDO backing is "HCDO? What HCDO?"

Klaussen is thrilled to have been embraced by this gang. The attention and importance they bestow on him is the balm he craves, and this motivates him far more than the jobs they toss his way. He regularly runs posts soliciting praise from readers, and you can sense how he aches for it. Hey, we all want approval. But when you just can't go on without it, it's going to warp your judgement, and that's where Klaussen is coming from.

"Peter Cunningham of the 5th Ward also hired Klaussen, as if there were no other web designers in the Tri-State area, to handle I.T. duties for his campaign website as well. On September 8, Klaussen accused Cunningham challenger Perry Belfiore of voter fraud despite police reports to the contrary. When asked publicly to make a retraction by Hoboken blog Mister Snitch, Klaussen adamantly refused, according to Snitch owner Jeff Faria.

This is of course where I came in. And it's true: I confronted Klaussen about his site's false accusation of Belfiore. I told him that the proper thing to do was run a correction. At this point, he became hysterical and abusive. He told me he would do no such thing, because he had proof that the police report was "100% wrong" and because "No one cares... we've moved on."

Klaussen likes to talk about his integrity, and how his relationships with people like Zimmer and Cunningham have no impact on his reporting. This is where it all falls apart, though. Because the thing about Perry isn't just that he was falsely accused - but that the paid-for vote was for CUNNINGHAM. And that's a piece of news Klaussen is just not going to touch. The Reporter did, and that was the right thing. Klaussen refuses to, and that makes him a hypocrite of the highest order.

There is just no way around it. You don't "move on" from something like this. Fact is, Klaussen revisits stories all the time. Stories change and evolve, and the great thing about the web it that you can keep adding new posts and links to old posts as new information becomes available. But Klaussen does not want to offend his peeps by printing this truth: THE HCDO BOUGHT VOTES FOR CUNNINGHAM. That would be really inconvenient, because it would make the wrong people unhappy. Klaussen knows this, so he ignores a situation which he cared plenty about when it was a story that made the 'right' people happy. Once the truth came out, it became a non-issue.

Of course, if Klaussen has 'proof' that the Police report clearing Belfiore (and naming Cunningham) is fraudulent, he should trot it out. That's a major scoop. Why is he holding back?

As far as using "No one cares" as a rationale - I certainly hope it is NOT true that no one in Hoboken cares about voter fraud. And I certainly hope that Hoboken is not a place where "No one cares" when an innocent man is slandered. It's sad if Klaussen is right about this - and it means the town is beyond saving. But here's the thing about the "journalistic integrity" Klaussen claims to possess in such abundance: It's rarely convenient. You don't publish something because the right people "care". You publish it because it matters and because it is true. It was doubly important that Klaussen publish the truth about Belfiore, because he did so much to spread the lie. It's that simple, and Klaussen knows it. He simply lacks the courage, and the integrity, to do the right thing. Yet, as Concha points out elsewhere in his piece, Klaussen is well-known for his blistering mockery of the Reporter's standards and practices.

I challenge anyone among the 411 crowd to stand up and insist that Klaussen do the right thing, and correct his false story (giving the correction equal weight with the original story, naturally, and placing the blame for the bought votes on Cunningham, where it belongs). This should, of course, have happened as soon as the news became known, and without my urging. I doubt it will happen, but it IS what a "real reformer" would do. Otherwise, all the 411 talk about transparency in government is merely "reform for thee, but not for me". Hoboken 411 is dominated by cheap, easy, facile, babble (and lots of posturing for position) which places the blame for government failures on demonized 'outsiders'. The site never seriously challenges itself to achieve a higher standard, settling instead for a puerile mockery of others. This will change nothing about what's wrong in Hudson County. 411 will never become a meaningful and respected site without a surprise appearance from Klaussen's backbone. (But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.)

Well, I've made no friends on either side here, have I? But that's the price of being straightforward. Concha and Klaussen are BOTH troubled individuals engaged in unsupportable 'journalistic' practices. Both are self-aggrandizing, but while Concha is smarmy and insincere, Klaussen is outright dishonest. He cites his token criticism of his cronies (yes, 'reformers' can have 'cronies' as well, and Klaussen's sure got 'em) and holds that up as 'proof' of an integrity he neither possesses nor understands. He publishes foul but convenient lies, then covers up his actions. It's reprehensible, and it's unsupportable. Shame on his audience for looking the other way. They're as guilty as he is.

More on the Politics of Corruption and Hoboken 411.

UPDATE: An unreported but important clue regarding who's lying appears in Klaussen's hit piece, where someone at the scene (a Cunningham supporter) embellished the story by alleging that "Stack" paid the voter off. I'm reasonably sure Brian Stack did not give any money or personnel to Perry's runoff election. No one gave Belfiore financial support in the runoff, he was pretty much orphaned. Even the Russos look to have been bought off, as per the typical HCDO MO. And of course, one can only wonder if this poor fellow had ANY idea who was giving him money. Should we believe someone actually told this guy: "Oh, Brian Stack's buying votes here."? Was he so crafty as to deduce this for himself? Did he even give a damn where the money came from? Or is it more likely that Cunningham supporters, put on the spot by an embarrassing and unexpected revelation (hey, they were the "reformers", after all), concocted a story so their candidate would not be embarrassed?

And that they'll say anything to prop that story up, even today?