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.