House of Cards Tumbles Out of Asbury Park Civic Journalism Project

House of Cards Tumbles Out of Asbury Park Civic Journalism Project

While the same smug stereotype still exists in other elite metro newspaper circles, it is in our opinion more myth than truth.

Witness what happened with our debut civic journalism project, which resulted in the start of local, county, state and federal probes into a major real estate fraud.

When our team of reporters, editors, photographers and graphic artists carefully planned the Asbury Park Press journalism project, we never expected a marriage between hard news and solutions-oriented civic journalism.

To our surprise, it happened and it works. The Press had committed an unprecedented amount of resources toward examining the plight of its namesake city, once the crown jewel of the Jersey Shore, now a study in urban blight. A team of five reporters, three photographers and two editors under the direction of Deputy Executive Editor Jody Calendar spent several months interviewing city residents, designing polls and conducting surveys. We outlined stories, graphics and photo essays aimed at probing the city’s most pressing problems, and at the same time helping it find solutions.

It was textbook civic journalism. We looked to residents, not officials, to set the agenda. We then assigned teams of reporters and photographers to those priority issues: the city’s high crime rate, plunging property values, and inadequate recreation program. We framed the stories to highlight solutions to problems, not the problems themselves.

“What Ailis Asbury?” started with an explanation of the project and the first “House of Cards” installment, detailing how properties were “flipped”

What happened next is why this business is at once so maddening and so thrilling.

Project reporter Nancy Shields returned from a day at City Hall, checking on ownership of waterfront properties, with a tantalizing lead: It appeared that one company was buying up dozens of run-down city properties, then immediately selling, or “flipping,” them for many times the prices it had paid. The “flips” were financed by mortgages that far exceeded real values.

After further reporting, it became apparent we had stumbled upon a massive real estate fraud, a scam not limited to Asbury Park but spreading to other urban pockets of the Jersey Shore, several northern New Jersey cities and other states, such as Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York.

Clearly, a major real estate scam in our own back yard was too good a story to pass up. But what would it mean for the rest of the civic journalism project?

Originally, we had planned to package the civic journalism reports in some kind of coordinated way — a tab, perhaps, or a series that would run every Sunday for a month or two. Now, we had a breaking investigative story on our hands. We diverted William Conroy and Shields from other assignments on the civic journalism team to work on what came to be called the “House of Cards.” That left three reporters-Shannon Mullen, Jacqueline Sergeant and Terri Somers — to handle the bulk of the civic journalism work. We brought in reinforcements from throughout the newsroom, including state reporter Larry Arnold, business reporter John Ward, database editor Paul D’Ambrosio and database reporter Rick Linsk, to keep attention on the other important segments of the civic journalism project– crime, recreation and government mismanagement. They also worked on the breaking investigative story.

Reports on recreation, crime and city government followed.

We kicked off the civic journalism project, “What Ails Asbury? A City Searches for Solutions,” on June 29 with the investigative report, called “House of Cards.” It was accompanied by a piece from the project editor outlining the purpose and scope of the civic journalism series.

We have produced dozens of daily investigative articles on the housing scam plus thoughtful, comprehensive packages on the city’s other problems.

The packages use a mix of traditional journalism techniques, new research tools such as computer-assisted reporting as well as interactive civic journalism to highlight problems and offer a forum for solutions. We hired forensics experts for handwriting analysis of mortgage applications, title searchers for property record checks and real estate appraisers as consultants.

Our computer-assisted reporting team has been a key database resource for both the “House of Cards” series and the “What Ails Asbury” crime package. Old-fashioned gumshoe reporting out on the street has turned up numerous leads for many stories.

The project became a seven-day-a-week nearly around-the-clock effort, with plenty of night-time pizza parties.

In the weeks following the launch of the series, The Press’ circulation soared by about 5,000 over the same period last year, which circulation executives attributed partly to the “House of Cards” reports. E-mail poured in at a rate of a dozen or so a day. Many more readers contacted us by letter and by telephone, wanting to know more or giving the newspaper more tips to follow up.

The Press held public forums in September and October on the housing, crime and recreation series to help continue the public debate on those critical issues and perhaps lead the citizens to some solutions.

The reporting has produced results. The mortgage company that holds the loans on about 200 “flipped” properties has filed a racketeering suit in federal court alleging a sweeping conspiracy to defraud the lender out of $24 million. The company credits The Press with having brought the problem to its attention.

Criminal and civil probes have been started by the county prosecutor, the FBI, the U.S. Postal Service and the state Department of Banking and Insurance. Once again, The Press has been credited with leading the way.

In late July, a month after The Press published its first story on the real estate scheme, teams of federal and state agents raided the offices and homes of the principal companies and individuals involved. Law-enforcement sources say it’s only a matter of time before criminal charges are filed.

Grassroots community activists and leaders have been meeting at The Press monthly as a networking group and are now emerging as an action group. They are working on solving problems piece by piece.

“This was all out there but our civic journalism helped us look at it a different way,” said Calendar. “Civic journalism opened my eyes to how blind journalism has become.”

Contributing were Gary Deckelnick, T.J. Foderaro,
Bob Hordt and John Hudzinski .