Title: 100 Years of 100 Things: The Star-Ledger

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. It's thing number 49, a 100 Years of the Star-Ledger newspaper. Why? If you haven't heard this yet, they've announced that starting in February, they will entirely discontinue the print edition of the paper. Their content will be online only at nj.com. It's the end of a very long, important era in New Jersey journalism. Their related publications, the South Jersey Times and the Times of Trenton will stop printing as well.

Not the same company, but the Jersey Journal, which has served Hudson County for more than 150 years, is completely shutting down it announced, also in February on the 1st. we'll open the phones for what any of these Jersey papers have meant to you as a reader, an employee if you work for them or used to work for them, or just a resident of the state or what the print edition of any newspaper we can expand it to that has meant or means to you.

Especially the Star-Ledger in particular, right now at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 call or text, as we welcome our guest for this segment, Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University and former press secretary for Governor Jim McGreevey during McGreevey's term in office. Micah, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Micah Rasmussen: Thank you so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know some of the early history? I only know because I was reading up on it. Like once upon a time there was a Newark Star-Eagle and a Newark Ledger. the journalism mogul S.I. Newhouse bought the Star Eagle and merged the two. the Star-Ledger was born in 1939. Do you study how Newark was served by journalism in the old days?

Micah Rasmussen: I do. I will say that it's tough to separate even the politics of the cities versus the politics of the state because so much of New Jersey's politics has been dominated by the legendary political bosses of Newark and Jersey City. The mayor, Frank Hague, boss Hague really ruled our politics in the state for a long time. The Ledger chronicled this more than anybody else.

You really can't separate their coverage of Newark and Jersey City with their coverage of the rest of the state. It's funny. If you look at old political election returns, you'd see Essex, Hudson and the rest of New Jersey would literally be how the returns would work. We are part and parcel, all one and the same thing. What the Ledger covered was what New Jersey read about our politics.

Brian Lehrer: I see you wrote us that there's a wall in your office that hold some of the paper's original political cartoons that lampooned legendary figures in New Jersey politics like governors Alfred Driscoll, A. Harry Moore and Harold Hoffman, and the infamous boss, Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague. You want to tell us about one or two of those cartoons? Read the caption and describe the visual.

Micah Rasmussen: Yes. [laughs] There's one of Governor Driscoll and the man who would later be--

Brian Lehrer: What year is that, by the way? Roughly when did he serve?

Micah Rasmussen: This would be 1947. It would be as our new state constitution was being written, which was a function of reform to try and give our institutions, particularly our governor, the power to fight the bosses, to ward off, to be stronger than the bosses. People often say that our governor is the strongest governorship in the country. We vested a lot of power in our governor in this constitution.

It was because we wanted somebody who could stand up to the political bosses specifically. They had succeeded in avoiding a new constitution for probably about 10 years. Governor Driscoll was a major reformer, was a proponent of the new constitution. He was wrestling in one of these cartoons with the guy who would become the chief justice of our Supreme Court, Arthur Vanderbilt.

They were wrestling over how to reform our judges, our judiciary, and form what is now known as a strong independent judiciary. It was really the Ledger's coverage of these, not only the constitutional fight, but their coverage of the bosses that gave the public a ringside seat into all of this. These are fights that are going to continue, Brian, but they're going to be out of the public's view. I think it's going to make the reformers' fights that much harder going forward.

Brian Lehrer: You told us that you keep those cartoons as a point of reference for your students at Rider University, but they've taken on new meanings since the end of the line. The end of the print edition was announced. How come?

Micah Rasmussen: Absolutely. It's funny. The signature course that I teach is New Jersey politics and government. We have specialists, obviously, all across the discipline. I'll talk about Hague or I'll talk about Harold Hoffman, a governor who on his deathbed confessed to embezzling money for years. They understand these legendary figures that we talk about, but they can actually see who they were when they look at the cartoons.

There's actually one of me, believe it or not, when I left the governor's office and the caption is, "I need a job with less stress, like the bomb squad.' It was fun. It was a lot of fun. New Jersey's governors are powerful. We don't want their spokespeople to have an easier time and that's what's going to happen starting in February without the Ledger's tough questions being asked.

Brian Lehrer: Staying on the deep history. You told us it was in the 1930s and '40s when the relentless, fearless reporting on New Jersey's notorious party machines by the paper led to this decade-long battle to rewrite the state constitution that you were just referring to and give the governor the powers to stand up to the bosses. I guess the cartoon you read gave us an example of how the newspaper shined a spotlight on it. Take us one step deeper. Why did it matter in the 1930s that New Jersey adopted a state constitution? How does that benefit the residents of the state to this day?

Micah Rasmussen: That's a really good question because that was the question for the public. Why should they care about an esoteric argument about what our state constitution looked like? Hardly anybody would even think about the state constitution. If you think about any constitution, it's certainly the federal one. It turns out that our fractured state politics, up until that time, our fractured judiciary, meant that nobody had enough power to stand up to the bosses.

The bosses in their regional fiefdoms, you had one from Jersey City, one from Newark, one from Camden, one from Elizabeth, one from Trenton, they all were the power as it was wielded in Trenton. Nobody had the power to leapfrog over them. Nobody had the power to sort of go around them or do an end run around them. You needed a statewide institution that had enough power to be able to get stuff done without going and kissing the rings.

Our constitution amassed power in a governor and put enough power in the hands of a governor that he didn't need to go or she needed to go to the individual bosses to get things done. It was a significant redistribution of the power. It was a conscious decision that we needed to form a strong institution to overcome these regional powers that existed in the state and that still exist in this state, but now we have a strong institution that can stand up.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're in our 100 Years of 100 Things series. Number 49, a 100 Years of the Star-Ledger newspaper, and also some of the other papers that we are talking about and will be talking about in this segment. Essentially 100 Years of the Star-Ledger as it has announced that it is ending its print edition beginning in February.

We're also talking about the Jersey Journal, which is closing entirely. Listeners, again, we invite you to call in. We're going to go to some phone calls now before we continue on the timeline. 212-433-WNYC. What has any of these Jersey papers meant to you as a reader? The South Jersey Times, which is part of the same company as the Star-Ledger, the Trenton Times, also going all digital, the Jersey Journal or the Star-Ledger itself.

What have any of these papers meant to you as a resident, a citizen, a reader, or what has the print edition of the newspaper in particular meant to you as it goes away? That's what's going away. They're maintaining their reporting staff, as I understand it, or anybody who has worked for any of these papers with an inside story and feeling about this moment in Jersey journalism. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. Let's talk to Bob in Mercer County. You're on WNYC. Hi, Bob, thank you for calling in.

Bob: Hi, Brian. I wanted to amplify what was said before about the reform. The court system was a total mess. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You worked for the paper, the Star-Ledger, is that correct?

Bob: Yes. I covered the New Jersey Supreme Court and the federal district court in Trenton for about eight years. The court system was a total mess. It simplified it tremendously so that it could be administered. Lawyers didn't know which courts to sue on. You had county courts, superior courts, equity courts, chancery courts. It's all simplified. It's now under one budget and that's been a great reform for the people of New Jersey.

The Ledger, I'd like to say was not a writer's paper, it was a newspaper. I don't know how many times I started a story with the exact same lead, State Supreme Court ruled yesterday. It was not an artsy-looking paper. It just gave you the flat-out news. Another thing I want to say, I'll be brief. The strategy of the Ledger matched the spread of New Jersey.

Mort Pye, the editor, favored development of New Jersey so he could sell more papers in more places. As Macy's spread and a lot of stores spread throughout the state, so did the Ledger. The last story is I ran into an old college buddy one day and he says, "You work for the Ledger, huh?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Best TV section in the state." That's why he bought the paper.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you one follow-up question. One of the points on the timeline that we haven't gotten to yet is that year in the 1970s, '71, I believe it was when they dropped the name Newark from the name of the paper and just started calling it the Star-Ledger. I assume that relates to what you were just describing about trying to spread its coverage into the suburbs as suburban sprawl took place in New Jersey. Do you think anything was lost for the people of Newark themselves? Newark in particular, as that focus widened.

Bob: There were some excellent reporters on the Newark beat and they zoned the paper a little bit so that there was a paper in Essex County that covered more-

Brian Lehrer: That's for Newark news.

Bob: -Newark news. You might not get the Newark news if you were in Hunterdon County, but-

Brian Lehrer: Further out.

Bob: -Newark is covered.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Another former staffer, Roger, in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Roger, thank you for calling in.

Roger: Hello there. How are you, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: I'm all right, thank you. What you got?

Roger: All right. The managing editor, Andy Stasiuk, and the executive editor, Mort Pye decided in '70 that they wanted the Ledger to be the dominant paper in the state. To do that, there were certain areas, education, health, and politics that they needed to dominate. They made Joan Whitlow the medical editor and gave her her own section that appeared every Sunday. She discussed issues in education, in health, not just the Journal of the Week. She was also the first Black woman to be a medical editor in the country. Bob Herbert, they made him assistant city editor and there were no Black editors in this region before [unintelligible 00:14:00] [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That's the same Bob Herbert who went on to be a New York Times columnist?

Roger: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Came up through the Star-Ledger. Thank you for that. Go ahead.

Roger: I got sent to the statehouse. I was the first Black statehouse reporter east of the Mississippi. I had a desk in the basement because Governor Cahill was opposed to allowing Blacks on the main floor of the Statehouse. Again, that's 1970.

Brian Lehrer: In the North.

Roger: Yes. I've been on your show once before. I ran into the Ku Klux Klan in Michigan.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you.

Roger: All right. Then we had an education writer. I'm drawing a blank on his name at the moment, but he had a Sunday section also, and dealing with issues in education ranging from desegregation to school taxes. By blanketing those subjects, Andy was right. The Star-Ledger became mandatory reading. That's how it passed the Newark Evening News, which eventually went out of business.

Brian Lehrer: Right. It became the Star-Ledger, not just the Newark Star-Ledger in '71. My understanding is the Evening News went out of business the next year in '72. That's how dominant the Star-Ledger had become. Roger, with all that history that you know and that you lived, how would you say the paper has been serving residents on those various beats that you just mentioned in? Let's say, the last 10 years when the newspaper industry nationally has been in such decline as the revenue models, the old business models have been in decline. I know there are a lot of layoffs around a decade ago. How much of a service has it been performing or how much less of a service, if you have an opinion?

Roger: It's nowhere near what it used to be. People lose out as a result of that. In the State House, for example, we covered every bill from its inception, the time it was introduced. There was a column called Action in Trenton, and you did a summary of different bills and you didn't just read the introduction paragraph, you read the whole darn thing. For example, I saw a bill that was supposedly a financial bill, but there was a line in it that said, "For purposes of this bill, a taxpayer's life begins at inception by conception."

I said, "Wait a minute. How did you sneak that into a financial bill? Why is this an anti-abortion bill?" That bill didn't go very far, but that's the kind of detail that we did. That ended. About a decade ago, a number of laid-off Star-Ledger reporters started an online news service. That lasted, three or four years, but then they couldn't really make the advertising and it died out also, and people lose out as a result of that.

Brian Lehrer: Roger, thank you so much for your call. Great calls. Micah Rasmussen from Rider University, who's our actual guest in this segment on 100 Years of the Star-Ledger as it announces the end of its print edition coming in February. We're also getting texts from a number of people who say they can't read online very well for whatever reason. "I'm a senior citizen without Internet," writes one person. "I'm not thrilled with this news," writes that person. What do you think is or isn't lost if the Star-Ledger is ending its print edition, but they say they're not laying off any journalists.

Micah Rasmussen: I do think that there's a difference in how people digest the news. Obviously, I say this as somebody who hasn't picked up a physical newspaper either in a very long time, and I read it online, but I don't think that is the case. I think it's a fair question, as I think about my grandparents and people who religiously followed the Ledger every day and had it delivered to the home. They're not going to consume the news the same way online. I think it's a very big difference.

The newsrooms will not be the same size. One of the things Roger was saying about the beat in Trenton, when I was a young press staffer in the legislature, there were 75 reporters who were covering state government. It was the largest state house press corps across the country. Those weren't all Ledger reporters. The Ledger had about 12 or 15 reporters, but their beat included somebody who covered every department and you knew about every element of state government and what was going on. when you.

When he said that something got slipped into a bill, they caught it. That's not going to happen in the future. That's not going to be the case in the future. Things are going to go across the plate without us having noticed or without somebody having caught it. That is a very big difference, I think.

Brian Lehrer: A listener is asking in a text message if they're disbanding their editorial board. I hadn't seen a reference to that. Do you know if that's part of this?

Micah Rasmussen: They are, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: They are.

Micah Rasmussen: Yes. The editorial board was one of the few operations that was still an employees of the Ledger itself. Everybody else worked for this nj.com, the advanced publications, and will continue to work for the online company. The editorial board itself is all being laid off, unfortunately. They have chronicled all the issues that are important to the state in a long time.

One of your callers also talked about and you talked about the suburbanization of the state. You absolutely can trace the suburbanization of the state and the suburbanization of the paper ran along each other. The rise in education reporting, the following of education reporting, arguably one of the most important issues in the state of New Jersey for the last 50, 60 years.

The Ledger has been that following that. Remember the Abbott v. Burke legislation about the inequities in our schools were part of something that came out of Newark and came out of the poor districts in the state. That's something that the Ledger followed every single day.

Brian Lehrer: The editorial board members, some of these names are going to be familiar to you listeners because some of them also are columnists and have been on the show just as one example of their work. Tom Moran, Julie O'Connor, Dave D'Alessandro, Paul Mulshine, another columnist. I don't know if they're all losing their jobs. You probably know better than me. These were people on the editorial board and the editorial page.

Do you see that as part of what's also been in the news, particularly about the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times rescinding their written endorsements of Kamala Harris for president? They never got published because the owners rescinded them. Is this the company, Advanced Media, that owns what's now going to be nj.com? No more Star-Ledger trying to not take positions on things to cozy up to Trump or for any other reason?

Micah Rasmussen: In their case, it does not seem to be a political calculation. It seems to be the cover to-- The new houses have not--

Brian Lehrer: Save money.

Micah Rasmussen: That's exactly right. Yes, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: No more editorials.

Micah Rasmussen: Exactly. That's cheaper and that's easier. That's right.

Brian Lehrer: Give us a thought on that. What's the value these days? Because I know people in the newspaper business who have said to me recently I never even thought there should be at least endorsements and maybe editorials at all, because it's hard for the public, who's always suspicious of bias in news organizations, to separate them out. We can say as journalists till we're blue in the face, well, there's a firewall.

The editorial writers don't write the news articles, and the news articles are unbiased. We have our opinions on the editorial page. The public doesn't really figure that out. They say, "Oh, this newspaper generally has a liberal editorial page, so their coverage must be liberal." Or the other way around. You get the question.

Micah Rasmussen: That's a question. I think one thing the Ledger did well, and maybe it was because of how well-known Mulshine was, but there was balance. For every piece Moran was writing from the progressive side, you were getting a corresponding piece on the other side from Mulshine. There was balance there. Even if you want to leave aside the question of endorsements or the question of columns.

I think that the editorials bring policy problems to light. For example, I participated in an editorial over the weekend about state police reforms which continue to dog this agency and have dog this agency, racial profiling issues, and issues of who's being pulled over without somebody shining a light on that. Can an issue be shined on that? Can we bring that stuff to light with editorial? Sure, but they help to point out the policy problems, and that's not really a partisan thing.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get at least one Jersey Journal call in here. They're folding entirely in February. Louis in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hello, Louis.

Louis: Hello, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I worked for the Jersey Journal as a delivery boy in 1972 and '73, so did my brother [unintelligible 00:24:22] [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: On your bicycle or a car? How did that go?

Louis: Bicycle. It was door to door. We had a shopping cart. You could fit 40 papers in a shopping cart. You get 25% for each customer, which meant $10 a week. In Christmas, of course, in the holidays, you get tips. I could make up to like $20, $23. It created such a sense of independence for all of the '80 kids that dispatched the paper in Jersey City Heights. My route was on Beacon Avenue, Hopkins, St. Paul's, and Christ Hospital.

I delivered to Bufano's Gym where I met Joe Frazier, and I delivered to Christ Hospital when it was run by nuns. I'm really glad to see what an institution go. For me and these other boys that worked in Jersey City, what a great sense of independence to be able to afford my own Converse tennis shoes. What a great thing. [unintelligible 00:25:16] [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: What a great story. Thank you for doing this, Louis, for making that call. With no print edition, no more delivery people. That's one little employment opportunity gone. Another text says, "JJ no more." Jersey Journal, no more. "This creates a major void in our political coverage in Jersey City." Maybe this, in its way, is a bigger story than Star-Ledger continuing, but going online only. Micah.

Micah Rasmussen: It absolutely is. Just in the most recent gubernatorial race heading into 2025, the Jersey Journal has been covering Steve Fulop, the Jersey City mayor who's running for governor, has been covering his candidacy very in-depth, has been giving the state-- I know that this is aimed primarily at their Hudson county readers, but with the online availability, we all could see what was going on in Jersey City. That's going to be much harder to see now as we try to find out about our candidates and we try learn about them where it's going to be without the benefit of that kind of in-depth coverage going on in a region

Brian Lehrer: We're just about out of time. Is the name Star-Ledger gone? I see all their coverage on nj.com. I'm a subscriber. I suggest that everybody support your local news organizations, whatever they are. It's there as nj.com. Is the name Star-Ledger going to be dead as of February?

Micah Rasmussen: It's unclear to me exactly how they're going to use it. I do believe that they will continue to use it in some form, but the coverage is all going to be through the Advanced Media. It's going to be through nj.com. It's not clear to me how exactly they're going to continue to use that brand name, which is really all that it's going to be at that point.

Brian Lehrer: Let me sneak in. Oh, she hung up. Oh, there was somebody calling who said they work for the company Advance Media. I wanted to get her perspective in here. Why don't you finish up then just by saying what that company is? It's it's not an individual anymore. Some mogul like Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. What is Advanced Media? That owns nj.com.

Micah Rasmussen: The Newhouses will own it. It is important. They will provide coverage of the state and we will be able to get coverage online. It's better than nothing. People will have to go and they'll have to find it and they'll have to get used to it and they'll have to subscribe to it. I'm glad we have it. We'll have Brent Johnson covering state politics. It's absolutely infinitely better than not having that. If it went away, we would be that much more blind to what was going on in our state politics. It is a shadow of what it was.

Brian Lehrer: That's a company that owns a lot of news organizations around the country or what is Advanced?

Micah Rasmussen: They do, they own. It seems to be this model of taking the print newspapers online. Some of the print newspapers around the country remain in print, but only until it comes to the point that they can make a profit. Then once that goes away, so does the print edition and they move to the online modeling.

Brian Lehrer: Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University and former press secretary for Governor Jim McGreevey during McGreevey's term in office. Thank you for being Our guest on 100 Years of 100 Things, Episode 49, 100 Years of the Star-Ledger. Thank you very, very much.

Micah Rasmussen: Thank you, Brian.

 

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