PACKET EDITORIAL, Aug. 31
In the late 19th century, an editor at the old New York Sun offered this colorful explanation of what makes news:
"When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news."
Several generations of journalists have been introduced to that quotation and generally appreciate it as a quaint rule-of-thumb for differentiating big news from the kind of same-old/same-old that news professionals are also obligated to report.
For example: A newspaper in Princeton is frequently obligated to report that the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township are engaged in a public dispute over one thing or another. At the risk of stating the obvious, let us point out that the obligation originates with the dispute, not the other way around.
Township Administrator Jim Pascale, by all accounts an able and experienced public servant, no doubt understands this. So what are we to make of the closing lines of the following Aug. 17 e-mail message from Mr. Pascale to Borough Councilman David Goldfarb, disputing Mr. Goldfarb’s contention that the township is wrongfully withholding sewer fee proceeds from the Sewer Rehabilitation Trust Fund?
"We are currently trying to work out how to jointly use the SOC lands, we are revisiting the library parking issue, etc. etc. We don’t need to have our relationship adversely affected by comments we read in the newspaper. If someone on either governing body has a concern I would respectfully recommend that the matter be addressed by officially contacting the other community. Newspapers thrive on controversy and would love to report on how the two Princetons can’t get along. Our residents deserve better."
While all due respect to Mr. Pascale’s impression of what newspapers "love," the soap opera that is the rivalry between the two Princetons is in more danger of producing tedium than sensationalism. These disputes are as much eye-rollers as eye-openers.
In fairness to Mr. Pascale, we agree that Princeton residents "deserve better" and we suspect that he is vainly trying to use the bogey man of negative news coverage to dissuade Mr. Goldfarb from continuing his public campaign over the sewer fee issue. Further, he seems to have the better part of the argument. Absent some documentation to the contrary, the township seems perfectly within its rights to use sewer fees to pay off a pumping station project that it undertook without assistance from the borough.
But if Mr. Pascale, Mr. Goldfarb and their colleagues in township and borough government really want to make big news, we recommend that they all get together in a conference room someplace and actually resolve some of these migraine-inducing disagreements.
That would be a real "man-bites-dog" story.

