Author: Luke Parsnow

Publicly funded local journalism? It sounds strange, but it is poised to become a reality in New Jersey. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is on the verge of signing a bill into law that would create a nonprofit group that would funnel $5 million in public money into local news organizations. The “Civic Info Bill,” as it’s called, would aim to encourage more local news reporting and soften the blow that the last decade of budget slashes, staff layoffs, newsroom closings and media consolidations have had on news coverage of small communities and cities across the state and the nation. Such legislation would be the first of its kind in the United States. Mike Rispoli, the…

In my March 8, 2017, column “Tea Party-Style Anger Brewing Within Democrat Circles,” I wrote that a Tea Party-type insurgency was in the making. Those who disagreed with me were probably thinking in the context of the Tea Party as we know it: an angry, conservative, grassroots movement that opposed the Washington establishment, government spending, the erosion of Christian America and health care changes. In less than two years, the Tea Party went from the outer fringes of the Republican Party to taking it over. But I never said that a radical liberal revolution would happen by the 2018 midterm…

Fake. Bias. The enemy of the people. Those are just some of the barbaric words that some everyday people and politicians love to use to refer to the media these days. Hardly anyone who has spent time recently working in a newsroom ― no matter big or small ― has been spared. In the last three years, I myself have been called “bias as hell,” “an uninformed trash writer,” “a sycophant for Gov. Andrew Cuomo” and my personal favorite, “a direct threat to democracy,” which I was called by a communications manager for a member of Congress. I submit that…

It really is incredible. Even as a bid-rigging trial of one of the state’s largest economic development projects was taking place and a corruption retrial of one of their former leaders was just getting underway, members of the New York state Legislature let another session fall by the wayside without passing any sort of ethics reform. It should have been a year of reckoning, especially with numerous corruption trials involving former legislative heads and a former top aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Yet lawmakers left Albany last week for the rest of the year with no progress and even less interest than ever in combating the corruption that has rocked the capitol in recent years. …

In the year 2034, there will be a total solar eclipse, the 27th Winter Olympics will be held and the European Space Agency is scheduled to launch an antenna to detect and measure gravitational waves. It’s also the year that the government’s trust fund that provides Social Security payments is expected to run dry. The social program’s trustees also reported last week that Medicare will run out of money long before then, possibly as soon as 2026, which is three years earlier than previously forecast. When that time comes, those who benefit from these services, regardless of age or needs, will face an immediate cut in what they receive. That means someone who reaches…

We could see this coming. After years of darkening storefronts, a dwindling number of shoppers and now a food-less food court, the only thing keeping Shoppingtown Mall viable was Sears, its last remaining anchor. But the long decline of the DeWitt mall took a drastic turn two weeks ago when Sears Holding Corp. announced it would close an additional 63 unprofitable stores across the nation, including the Shoppingtown location. When the final anchor has its lifeline cut at the end of July, Shoppingtown will no longer be a mall. Now it’s time to really focus on a complete transformation of the mall, from its former model as a suburban shopping center to something better suited to…

Triggered by recent pivotal events like Brexit and the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, a movement has emerged demanding that teens be able to cast ballots at age 16. The campaign to lower voting age requirements has recently picked up speed. Several cities in Maryland and California already allow 16-year-olds to vote. One nonprofit chapter in Illinois is pushing to lower the age to 16 for local elections. And legislation was introduced in Washington, D.C., in April that would allow 16-year-olds to vote in presidential elections by 2020. I’m a big advocate for early voting. But not that early. The voting age was last changed in 1971, when the 26th Amendment to the Constitution lowered the age…

I would never refuse to stand for the national anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance. Not just because it’s drilled into my brain after doing it every day for 13 years in school, but because I believe it’s the right thing to do. As someone who works in the news business, I’m often exposed to a lot of what goes on in other parts of the world. So I always consider myself extremely lucky to call myself an American citizen. I am so lucky because of the millions of men and women throughout this nation’s history who have fought and died to preserve the many fundamental freedoms we enjoy every day…

The ongoing opioid epidemic troubling the nation ― especially upstate New York ― is a favorite talking point for politicians. It’s also something voters can get behind. But a stunning set of polls released by Siena College in recent weeks made apparent the effect of the crisis on the state’s residents, as well as the underperformance by the state in challenging it. The polls were released over the course of four weeks, presenting data that had been gathered over the last two years or so. The scope of the epidemic, while not completely surprising, is still extremely humbling. The poll found that one out of every two New York residents have been personally touched by…

We in New York are very lucky to be one of 43 states that democratically elect our attorney general. As the state’s chief law enforcement officer, the position is a crucial part of the balance of political power in Albany, and whoever holds it is tasked with representing the state while maintaining an independence from the government that it is part of. As someone with so much investment in the public trust, it only makes sense that the public gets to choose every four years who they think is best for such a job. Not surprisingly, our leaders in the…

At 6:46 p.m. on May 7, Eric Schneiderman was the attorney general of New York state. Nearly three hours later, he announced his resignation.

The Central New York lawmaker has gone from the clear frontrunner to being on political life support.

Outdated or broken websites inhibit civic engagement.

Campus media groups need to maintain independent status to produce quality journalism.

One of the defining trademarks in the chronicle of the American economy is companies or industries that spawn, grow, grow too big and then become subject to government regulation. We’ve seen it many times before. After transforming the way we lived and worked, the oil and railroad industries of the late 19th century met their own respective matches with antitrust laws and new regulatory oversight. While we are very much a country seated in free market capitalism, those actions we took at the time were a simple case of the law catching up with the technological changes of the time,…