June 2, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

BOOK PUBLICATION: “FROM INK ON PAPER TO THE INTERNET: PAST CHALLENGES AND FUTURE TRANSFORMATIONS FOR NEW JERSEY’S NEWSPAPERS.” BY JEROME AUMENTE.

Summary: The book traces the history of newspapers in New Jersey from their fragile beginnings in the 18 th century to the successes of the 19 th and 20 th centuries, and the challenges in the 21 st century as they dramatically reinvent themselves as major players in the digital age of the Internet and newer media. New Jersey, with the nation’s highest median income and the most densely populated state in the U.S., presents a vivid case study of how newspapers nationally are fighting for survival in a sharply changing media landscape. Editors and publishers candidly assess the future and suggest what universities must do to prepare a new generation of journalists for the multimedia, digital age. The book also chronicles the impact of the New Jersey Press Association, the oldest continuing operating press association in America, which celebrates its 150 th anniversary in 2007.

see the book jacket (pdf format)

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NEWS RELEASE:

The story of New Jersey’s newspapers from the precarious early days of their creation in the 18 th century to their growth in the 19 th and 20 th centuries, and the dramatic challenges they now face to reinvent themselves and survive in the digital age of the Internet and newer media are central issues in a new book being published in the Spring of 2007.

“From Ink on Paper to the Internet: Past Challenges and Future Transformations for New Jersey’s Newspapers” was written by Jerome Aumente, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University. It will be published by New Jersey Heritage Press, an imprint of the Public Policy Center of New Jersey which also publishes “New Jersey Reporter” and “New Jersey Heritage” magazines.

Research and publication for the four-year project was supported by the New Jersey Press Association (NJPA), and the book is a center piece in the 150 th anniversary celebration in 2007 for NJPA -- believed the oldest continually operating press association in the United States. The book is one of the most comprehensive histories ever compiled of New Jersey’s press with over 500 pages of text and photographs.

Among the book’s key findings:

• Many newspapers, large and small, are taking major steps to redesign their operations to utilize the Internet and newer digital media. Some are reorganizing their newsrooms as multimedia news and information centers, 24/7. They see the Internet as a growing new source of ad revenue for stories presented in text, video, sound and interactive graphics, not just in traditional newsprint.
• Top editors and publishers interviewed say the rapid growth in broadband delivery to the home and office, and the proliferation of wireless, portable devices and cell phones make the Internet an important new “delivery truck” for their news and information. Newspapers say their “branded” and trusted news reputation gives them an advantage in the highly competitive Internet world.
• News professionals urge colleges and universities to upgrade curriculum to prepare future reporters and editors for the multi-platform, digital age while still preserving the best of a liberal arts education, research, writing, research, critical thinking skills, and media ethics.
• New Jersey counts an impressive number of journalists who went on to national fame, after gaining key experience in the Garden State. These include the heads of top news media organizations such as the Associated Press, Gannett Inc., and MediaNews Group, and top editors at USA Today, interviewed for the book.
• As newspaper circulation and readership suffer a steady meltdown, the newer media may help print media to recapture younger generations who are disinterested in newspapers but favor “always on” digital media.
• As the state with the highest median income, and the most densely populated in the nation, what is happening at New Jersey newspapers provides a composite case study of what newspapers across the United States are experiencing, as they retool and adapt to the digital age.
• With Internet competition growing, smaller dailies and community weekly newspapers seem best able to weather circulation declines with their heavy emphasis on local news, while larger metropolitan and regional papers find it more difficult to recalibrate the mix, with so much of their state, national and international news content free on the Internet.
• Schools, historical associations, libraries, colleges and universities can help preserve the history of communities by joining together to preserve newspapers, both in print and multimedia digital form, with programs suggested in the book.

“The absence of significant commercial television in New Jersey created a unique ecosystem in which the print media here flourished by concentrating on local and regional news,” Aumente said. “How the newspapers here reinvent themselves to survive the competition of the Internet and newer media presents a fascinating case study with implications for the growing national dialogue on the survival of newspapers.”

Aumente is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Special Counselor to the Dean in the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS) at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He was founding chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, and founding director of the Journalism Resources Institute (JRI). Both units are in SCILS. During his directorship, over 14,000 journalists in New Jersey and internationally participated in JRI programs, many of them cosponsored by NJPA.

John J. O’Brien, executive director of the New Jersey Press Association (NJPA) who asked Aumente to undertake the book and cooperated closely with him said it was important that the project focused on the newspaper industry of New Jersey, not NJPA, and that “Jerry has done a masterful job of capturing the pure essence of news-papering here in the Garden State.”

“People who run newspapers have always been different. They truly care about their advertisers and their employees. But most of all, they care about their readers. “O’Brien said. “However, in most cases, all of those previously mentioned are the same people!

I guess the word is, they ‘connect.’ And they have been doing it for hundreds of years. This book offers an insight into that ‘connection’ and why it happens to be stronger than in other areas of America. New Jersey is truly ‘The Newspaper State’ and ‘From Ink on Paper to the Internet’ gives us an insight as to why.”

“The role of NJPA in nurturing the evolving newspaper industry over 150 years is a parallel story of great importance to the state’s history,” Aumente said,” and the actions and records of the member papers offer a treasure trove of information in the struggles to achieve a responsible and independent press.” Top editors and publishers from all the dailies and many of the weeklies gave candid interviews about the challenges they face.

Aumente also interviewed journalists who posted extensive experience with New Jersey newspapers before achieving national and international stature. These include the heads of the Associated Press; Gannett Co. Inc; MediaNews Group, the editors of national newspapers such as “USA Today”, and nationally acclaimed authors and columnists. He chronicles other famous news people from Walt Whitman, I.F. Stone and Malcolm Forbes to Bernard Kilgore, head of Dow Jones and “The Wall Street Journal” who had deep roots in the state’s newspapers.

Kilgore who also owned “The Princeton Packet” weekly while running an international financial news organization at the same time once said: “Our print shops,

no matter how modern in appearance, are really only a packaging machine. The fish market wraps fish in paper. We wrap news in paper. The content is what counts, not the wrapper. I doubt that we will be able to mechanize or computerize the reporter, the copy editor or the managing editor.”

Diana Henriques, an award winning investigative reporter for “The New York Times”said: “If you could pick one state in the country to cut your teeth on, New Jersey was the best.” And Tom Curley, now head of Associated Press, said his newspaper days in New Jersey were “an extraordinary experience… a place of endless opportunities” adding “It either crushes you or you just love it. In five days, you know.” Richard Reeves, a national columnist and biographer of U.S. presidents said of his reporting days in New Jersey: “I look back on it as the best days of my life….I was young and look back on it romantically.”

Aumente said the book is rich in factual history, but told in readable, human terms through the journalistic experiences of the professionals who publish, edit, and report the news, and from their colleagues who provide the advertising, circulation and marketing dimensions of the newspaper industry.

The book is filled with colorful anecdotes ranging from Ernie Kovacs, the comedian who sometimes delivered his local humor column to the “Trentonian” dressed in pajamas and written on toilet paper, to editors and publishers who kept pistols and machine guns in their offices when their investigative reporting resulted in death threats, or one editor killed in his office for his reporting by the deranged founder of Vineland, N.J.

NJPA’s actions in supporting newspapers by providing training and education to newspaper professionals, and scholarships to journalism students; helping start one of the nation’s first journalism schools at Rutgers University in 1925; promoting diversity in the newsroom, and representing the newspapers’ interests at local, state and national levels in legislation involving press freedom, full access to information, regulatory and financial issues are documented.

The complex changes as New Jersey’s population shifted from rural and urban to new patterns of city, suburb and rural areas in transition, profoundly affected daily and weekly newspapers -- from the largest urban centers to the quilt work of new suburbs and changing rural communities. Shifts in population, the impact of the auto and then the super highways all transformed the newspaper industry and its markets in New Jersey.

Aumente found newspapers faced many challenges as stories became more complex and society increasingly more diverse, and the newspapers developed specialized journalism; investigative and enterprise reporting, promoted more diversity in its newsrooms and better coverage of minority issues.

The book should attract a wide audience—general interest readers; libraries within the state and the region; high school, college and university students preparing for careers in the news media; public relations and corporate readers, and those in government at the local, county, state and regional levels, and especially, professionals in the news media.

Aumente is a graduate of Rutgers University, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He was a journalist with newspapers in the United States and Europe for ten years before joining Rutgers University as a faculty member in 1969. He worked for newspapers in New Jersey: the “Newark Evening News” and the “Cranford Citizen and Chronicle”. He was urban affairs and Canadian affairs specialist at “The Detroit News”. He has published three books: on problems of misinformation; new media technologies, and journalism in Central and Eastern Europe following the downfall of Communism, as well as numerous magazine articles.

He continues with journalism training projects and curriculum assistance to universities in the United States and overseas, and has been to Europe and Latin America over 100 times since 1989 in connection with his funded projects in Poland, Bosnia, Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia , Spain, Panama, Colombia, and Jamaica in the Caribbean. Most recently he has conducted a series of programs for Arab journalists, and for journalists from Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro in the Balkans.

Aumente was awarded the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Award in 2001 for lifetime contributions to global journalism education, and also received a special commendation in 2000 from the NJPA Board of Directors for his contributions to journalism education. He received the Rutgers University Presidential Award in Public Service for his outreach efforts with journalists.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Jerome Aumente can be reached by telephone at:

540/635-6395, or by e-mail at: aumente@scils.rutgers.edu .

John O’Brien can be reached at NJPA: 609/406-0600 Ext. 13, or by e-mail at: jjobrien@njpa.org

Mark Magyar, President of New Jersey Heritage Press, can be reached at

10 Hunter Drive, Morristown, N.J. 07960, Tel: 973/292-5288 or

e-mail: < publicpolicynj@aol.com> for information on book orders and bulk discount purchases. ($17.95 paper back, $34.95 hard back).