Last Thursday, October 3rd, 50 or so Madison juniors and seniors attended a Chief Executive Council for Madison meeting with CEO’s from very large companies in the nearby area. Stephen H. Rusckowski, CEO and President of Quest Diagnostics, and Chris Dagget, CEO and President of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, spoke to the students (along with myself) about business management, their own life stories, and most importantly the importance of interpersonal skills. During his introduction, Chris Dagget mentioned that there are four areas the Dodge foundation focuses on including arts, education, environment, and media. He shortly discussed how the quality of news is declining along with all forms of media. After the program I decided to speak to him to figure out what he exactly meant about this subject.
Dagget was approachable yet professional as he explained the Foundation’s goals. The biggest issue, he explained, was that New Jersey is often overshadowed by Philadelphia and New York City news and therefore the Garden State loses its independence. Dodge’s goal is to use traditional and innovative ways to capture New Jersyans attention, engage audiences, uncover the truth of where and whom people give their money and trust to, involve the community, and give the young generation a voice. Dagget reiterates the importance of a captivated audience and skilled investigative reporters. Since 2010, the Dodge Foundation has given $893,500 to media organizations in New Jersey alone. $125,000 was given to Montclair State University for a new media program in New Jersey. Dagget explained that the partnership with Montclair State will allow the school to create new programs in the field of media and hopefully even share their news broadcasts and publications all over New Jersey.
Another problem with journalism in New Jersey, and even across the nation is that news is primarily online; through apps and smart phones there is free access to breaking news across the world. The huge issue is that this takes away a huge amount of profit for news companies and in order for the companies to stay alive, a high amount of journalists are cut. The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation aims to share advertisements from paper to online news sources to news programs that link each site to the next in order to create a bond between media corporations throughout New Jersey and have advertisements worth more money so more journalists can be paid and hired.
Hopefully the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Montclair State University, and other various media companies throughout New Jersey will be successful in promoting the growth and importance of journalism and give the state its own spotlight.
Source: http://www.grdodge.org/what-we-fund/media/
joseph fennelly • Oct 27, 2013 at 11:13 am
terribly important- all politics is local. We need the local facts to both engage and to stimulate futher involvment. Plus it keeps facts flowing so that when wrongs are committed it doesn’t take a disaster to uncover the wrond doings. this is just one of the many functions of smaller local news outlets. Another equally important is to recognizes local ledership and talent so as to encourage contiual committment to improving society.