UPDATE: At 10:07 pm, the Newark Star-Ledger announced over its live stream that the Associated Press has called the New Jersey Governor's race for Chris Christie.

For a lot of national political operatives, the New Jersey governor's race, which wraps up next Tuesday, is a high-stakes game of poker, a test of Pres. Barack Obama's coattails, and a possible foreshadowing of the 2010 Congressional campaigns. For this New Jersey voter, and, I suspect, many others, it's a welcome end to a largely uninspiring partisan snipefest.

Something has been missing from our conversations about the changing nature of news and journalism education, and after gnawing on it for months, I think I finally have the words. Of course teaching students to tell stories across platforms is essential, and so is understanding the impact of new technologies on business models. But we also have to research and teach about how these new tools affect the epistemology of journalism.

A new report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism -- the home of the Pulitzer prizes, no less --  suggests that government funding might be a necessary part of the solution for preserving independent local news reporting. The report has been greeted by reactions ranging from interest to skepticism and outright dismissal. The need to preserve independent journalism

This week, CNN's Soledad O'Brien will anchor "Latino in America," the latest installment of her multi-year in-depth reports on America's multicultural identity. According to Baltimore Sun television critic David Zurawik, it's some of her best work: