The City of Newark, a long-time Jersey political toilet, never ceases to amaze.

In an effort to improve its justifiably lousy unfortunate, negative image, the City Council of Newark recently approved a $100,000 no bid deal with a “newspaper,” entitled The Newark Weekly News to print “only good news” about the City Council and the City itself. Apparently, City officials will provide information to the “newspaper,” which will then use the information to create a “news” story.

I suppose that using tax dollars to fund a local or state public relations campaign (e.g. to promote tourism) is not unusual, but using tax dollars to pay for what a Rutgers Journalism Professor called “fake news” is quite another.

Perhaps most telling about the state of affairs in Newark is that the City Council made a deal with a “newspaper” with an editor who is apparently is confused by homophones. The headline story of two days ago dealt with the death of long-time Councilman Donald Tucker. The headline read:

NEWARK’S LOSS LEAVES GAPING POLITICAL WHOLE

I presume that a GAPING POLITICAL WHOLE is something different than a GAPING POLITICAL HALF.

Note: In the event that the “newspaper” has since corrected its headline, you can see a screenshot of the original, courtesy of John Shabel at The Jersey Side.