Bridgegate Mastermind Goes Back to Blogging

Before he was a top Port Authority official, a Bridgegate mastermind and a convicted felon, David Wildstein was a political blogger in New Jersey. Now, after having testified against his fellow Bridgegate conspirators in order to get off with probation, Wildstein is back to blogging. And he's teamed up with Ken Kurson, the former editor of Jared Kushner's paper, The Observer, to relaunch Wildstein's blog, New Jersey Globe.

After Wildstein's federal trial ended, he started tweeting about politics. Then he started a blog. And almost immediately, the New Jersey arm of Politico started quoting him regularly, and putting his blog posts in its very influential newsletter. 

Many journalists found it remarkable that Wildstein continued to have such a high level of access to political insiders. But not everyone welcomed Wildstein's return. David Cruz of NJTV recently tweeted, "I'll say this to no one in particular. Anyone who retweets or otherwise promotes a David Wildstein "report" is aiding and abetting a criminal and a clown, who diminishes all of us by masquerading as a "journalist." It's insulting to what real journalists do every day."

And yet, Wildstein's influence seems to have solidified. Last week, he posted a story citing one anonymous source that claimed Alfred Doblin, the editor of The Record Newspaper in Bergen County, was trying to get a job working for the president of the state senate. Politico put the story in its newsletter. And within a day, Doblin was fired.

Now, journalists take jobs working in politics all the time, but they certainly don't want anyone knowing about it until they actually have the job. But here's the real kicker: The Bergen Record was the newspaper that broke the first Bridgegate stories about a mysterious traffic jam. Without their work, Wildstein might have his friend Jared Kushner's job in the White House right now.