Local news outlet The New Jersey Girl published an April story headlined “WTF is Happening with NJ Transit for World Cup?” That question has been on the minds of many soccer fans descending on the Garden State this summer, and the answer has been difficult to surmise.
NJ Transit—the elderly train line that serves New Jersey, along with areas of New York and Pennsylvania—has a notorious history with delays, breakdown and other mishaps. The opaque and slow drip of information about how it would handle transporting fans to and from the biggest soccer tournament in the world stoked concern and confusion among both everyday commuters and those planning to attend matches at MetLife Stadium (renamed to New York New Jersey Stadium for the tournament).
The New Jersey Girl, and its parent company, Local Girl Media Group, lives on addressing public worries; this one just happened to have stakes for a broader population.
At a time when community-focused news is on the decline—the number of local U.S. newspapers has declined from just shy of 9,000 in 2005 to about 5,400 twenty years later, according to a report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism—Local Girl Media Group is growing, and FIFA bringing the global soccer stage to New Jersey is only helping.
