By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger

In 2001, The National Geographic came to Ocean Grove as part of a series called, “ZipUSA.” They were going around the country focusing on different zip codes. I guess they decided that Ocean Grove would be interesting because of the religious component. So they called the article “God’s Square Mile” and they referred to the Grove as a “bible wielding beach town.” Although they did mention that other kinds of people were living in town, their theme was determined to be a religious town that hadn’t changed much over the years. The accuracy of the report was sacrificed to a predetermined narrative agenda.

I thought of that recently as one news outlet after another got the story of our post-Sandy struggles all wrong. We have reported on the recent inaccuracies found in the New York Times and the Asbury Park Sun as it relates to the FEMA denial. (The Times also described Ocean Grove as a Methodist town within the town of Neptune—another wrong fact.)

This item appeared in the NJ NewsCommons out of Montclair State University on March 22, 2013:

“Down in Asbury Park, we have one media outlet critiquing another. Blogfinger’s Paul Goldfinger references an Asbury Park Sun story on the Asbury Park Council’s decision not to support Ocean Grove’s FEMA request but says that “the reporter who wrote the piece got the last sentence totally wrong…. The FEMA denial had nothing to do with the fact that the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association is a private, nonprofit. It was about the FEMA definition of the boardwalk as a recreational venue.” NJTV went into the weeds on that distinction in its March 20 NJToday program.”

Here is that report from NJ Today (by Lauren Wanko) dated March 20. She was one of the few who got it right. NJ Today link At that time, many media outlets repeated that same inaccurate mantra without fact checking for themselves, despite an accurate press release issued by the OGCMA after the Feb. 6, 2013 FEMA denial.

Then there was the inaccurate use of a photograph of Ocean Grove on the front page of the Coaster, which suggested the wrong idea that we had failed to restore our town. Link to the BF article about the Coaster

An article in USA Today (Feb 7, 2013, by Bill Bowman of the Asbury Park Press) said, “In its decision, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the boardwalk, destroyed in superstorm Sandy, did not qualify for federal aid because the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, considered a private nonprofit organization, owns it.”

Last week, Mr. Ralph delCampo of the CMA told me that the Wall Street Journal had come to speak to him about the OG Sandy problems. So yesterday, on the front page of the Greater New York section*, was another photo (see above) of a devastated Ocean Grove which serves as the poster child for a town that has not recovered at all. The photo was composed in a way that would illustrate a pre-determined inaccurate news fact. It illustrates how corrupted news photography can distort the truth.

I went back to that spot on our boardwalk. It is in the “middle beach” area, about a block south of the Pavilion where the existing boardwalk ends. The WSJ photo shows no evidence of existing boardwalk or even of human life. It just shows sand and some cockeyed lamps which are temporarily askew like some drunken sailors. But unlike the Coaster, at least this story offered a caption that was helpful and one sentence on page two which said, “In Ocean Grove, most of the boardwalk is back , and the beach is open.” But how many just viewed the photo and how many turned the page to read the fine print?

What amazes me lately is that none of media have taken an interest in our very unique situation here in the Grove regarding the FEMA denial. There is a good chance that no other shore town was refused funding by FEMA to reconstruct a boardwalk. There has been so much press lately about how the Jersey Shore has rebuilt itself, that no one in the media wants to spoil that narrative and very few, including Blogfinger, have tried to get the FEMA facts straight.

Comments on Blogfinger reveal that even some Grovers don’t understand what has happened with respect to the FEMA situation. It is not an easy matter to understand. We’ve got people from OG trying to turn this thing into another gay-CMA war about the Pavilion. Others suggest that perhaps the CMA has been targeted by big government for political reasons. BF even got the facts wrong in our October 2012 article about hurricane Irene and our issues with FEMA at that time.

But this current situation is fascinating, complicated and quite unusual, yet where are the journalists who ought to be chasing this story around? I think they are not because they are too lazy and unprofessional to wonder about what the heck is going on here and they don’t want to disrupt the nice story line that we see and hear everywhere. Some journalist ought to be in Washington making some inquiries.

Why doesn’t the media wonder why we still have the middle of our oceanfront looking like the beach at Normandy after D-Day? Why don’t they investigate how FEMA decides who gets paid? This could prove to be an important national story played out in a small New Jersey shore town.

—Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger

*Credit: Andy Levine of OG for alerting us to the WSJ photo.

JUDY COLLINS. “Send in the Clowns” by Stephen Sondheim: