Mission Statement
InsiderNJ is a nonpartisan website dedicated to political news in the state of New Jersey. Veteran award-winning reporter and editor Max Pizarro is contractually in charge of all news content and professionally focused daily on making InsiderNJ the Garden State’s number one trusted source for political news. An editorial board regularly offers opinion on statewide political subjects.
InsiderNJ is committed to giving serious political players a fair hearing and an interactive and dynamic forum for ideas, discussion and political intelligence. We will be out here on the streets of our cities, under the Gold Dome, and in the suburban town halls, fair grounds, marketplaces, county conventions and diner booths of political inquiry and intrigue. We will find our way into the conversation.
We have the great good fortune of living in a state saturated with politics, in an atmosphere that makes for both exciting public campaigns and elections , and seemingly stagnant cycles dominated by intense backroom negotiations and deal-making. In the annals of presidential politics, we may have only given this country one native son who became president in the person of Grover Cleveland, but we are also the state that supplied the ring that FDR kissed when he craved the White House. We are interested in all of it, and will sort it out for you respectfully, accurately and impartially, usually in real-time – and at all times driven by the simple proposition that good reporting makes better public servants and better-informed citizens.
Our regular features include:
The Diner Booth. Picture the nondescript side of a highway somewhere and four or five people crammed into a too-small space over coffee and politics and you begin to get an idea of the kinds of things we’ll cover in this category. The Diner Booth yields the rumor of a run for office, or the intentions of a county chairman, the conversation overheard, the threat leveled or the plot hatched – or nearly hatched. Edward Edwards. Named for New jersey’s 37th Governor, this category employs state history to contextualize moves-making and political strategy. City Confidential. New Jersey’s cities have their own grainy local politics that preoccupy us daily with this news feature. Caucus Room. Whatever happens behind the scenes in Trenton at any given moment will find its way into Caucus Room. Fight of the Week. The site dives into a sharp-elbowed collision between two of New Jersey’s power players. Who’s Up and Who’s Down. This feature takes stock of those political battles waged in the course of a week in New Jersey politics and document the winners and losers.
InsiderNJ also offers a bi-monthly feature on the political condition of New Jersey’s 21 counties. The site offers regular power rankings, video interviews, transcribed interviews, news from Trenton, up close and personal feature stories about key political personalities, and incisive stories about the state’s key political newsmakers and trends. InsiderNJ will use as its core organizing principle and point of coverage the state’s 42 county party organizations, in addition to any and all campaigns and elections.
Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder:
Max Pizarro
General Manager and Co-Founder:
Pete Oneglia
Reporter:
Fred Snowflack
Other Insider NJ Personnel:
Contributing Reporters/Feature Columnists: John Van Vliet, Christine Sloan, MacKenzie Robertson
Legal Adviser: Joe Hayden. Veteran New Jersey-based attorney and civil rights champion.
Regular Columnists: Mary Gatta; Jay Lassiter, activist and Garden State Equality diehard; Carl Golden, Stockton University Fellow; Alan Steinberg, former Region II EPA director for President George W. Bush; Bernard Kenny, former NJ Senate Majority Leader; investigative reporter Bob Hennelly; Steven Goldstein, Garden State Equality founder; and Tom Barrett, veteran member of the Democratic State Committee.
