By: Joe Strupp Gossip inside New Jersey's state capitol press corps was picking up on Aug. 12, 2004. Something big involving Gov. James McGreevey was coming, but little was known early that day. Backroom talk about the governor's sexual orientation had swirled around Trenton for years, but nothing had ever been substantiated enough to report. "There were rumors, you heard a lot of talk and it kept changing as the day progressed," recalls Tom Martello, Trenton bureau chief for The Star-Ledger of Newark, who was on duty as deputy bureau chief. "Something strange was afoot."
But that day, the bombshell that was dropped at a 4 p.m. press conference was bigger than many expected. The Democratic governor admitted he was gay and, indirectly, revealed he had carried on an affair with a man he had named to a high-level homeland security position. Once the news was out, the 10-person Trenton bureau of the Star-Ledger, along with dozens of other staffers statewide, leapt into action.
The payoff the next day was one of the most analytical in-depth reports the paper had ever produced. Eight months later, when the Pulitzer Prize board revealed its awards for the year, the Star-Ledger shone again, taking the Breaking News award. That Pulitzer was the second in the paper's history, coming just four years after photographer Matt Rainey won for a moving photo of students burned in a Seton Hall University fire ? coverage that also earned the paper a finalist nod in breaking news the same year.
Fast forward four years, and the largest daily in New Jersey ? and the highest circulation paper in the Advance Publications chain ? has hit its lowest point in decades. In just the past year, the paper has endured a financial slide that some in the company say reached estimated losses of $40 million.
Publisher George Arwady predicted the crisis nearly a year ago in a letter to employees that warned cuts were coming. That was followed at the end of July with what many contend was the most startling news in the paper's recent history: a demand that at least 200 of the paper's 700 non-union employees take buyouts, while its two largest unions agree to givebacks, job cuts, and wage freezes.
Arwady threatened that the paper would either be sold or possibly closed if the demands were not met. By mid-October, he went so far as to issue notices to staffers that a potential closing date of Jan. 5, 2009, had been set.
"It is really unprecedented in my experience with this newspaper," says Andrew Hoffman, attorney for Teamsters Local 1100, which at the time represented 400 mailers and agreed to a new contract that included the buyout of 100 employees. "These events took everyone by surprise."
By the end of October, both the Teamsters and the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union, which represented about 90 drivers, had approved new deals, while more than 230 non-union workers had put in for buyouts. When the dust settled, more than 200 buyouts were granted companywide, with 151 in the 330-person newsroom. That editorial staff cut reduced the number of newsgathering bodies by 40%, while shrinking the prized Trenton bureau from 11 to just four staffers.
"I am really wondering what is going to happen," says Anne-Marie Cottone, assistant features editor and a 35-year veteran who took the buyout. "It is hard to walk away, but it makes it a little easier because the paper I knew doesn't exist any more."
Editor Jim Willse agrees the downturn is difficult, but not a complete surprise. "We got caught in the same combination of forces that everybody else got caught in," he tells E&P. "It is a bad economy, there is an erosion of some advertising, some related to the Internet. A newspaper company our size got caught in the plague. There is not an awful lot that is unique to this paper that has not hit other newspapers."
Except that the Newark paper's history ? of few, if any, layoffs ? does make this case different.
Growin' UpSo what happened? For decades, the Star-Ledger was the big, fat, and happy moneymaker operated by the Newhouse family, which had no shareholder worries, paid well, and for which layoffs were a taboo subject. In New Jersey's unusual media market, with numerous newspapers ?including another major metro, The Record in Bergen County, to the north ? but no major television or radio, the print products splurged on advertising and circulation. The Star-Ledger carved its niche as the area's major media outlet, a distinction the paper still holds today despite its economic problems.
"It has played a central role in the state of New Jersey in terms of providing news," says John Pavlik, a journalism professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. "It really has helped set the agenda for news throughout the state. Because New Jersey doesn't have a major television market, the citizens really rely on news-papers. The Star-Ledger has been one of the most important, if not the most important, in that role."
Claiming roots back to The Centinel of Freedom, a Newark weekly launched in 1796, the Star-Ledger's beginnings as a daily date to 1832 and the Newark Daily Advertiser, which eventually became the Newark Star-Eagle, and later merged with the Newark Ledger to become The Star-Ledger in 1939. For many years, it competed with the Newark Evening News until 1972, when the News, an afternoon paper, folded as readership went to mornings and the population expanded to the suburbs. After the News closed, the Star-Ledger's daily circulation soared, from 357,144 in 1973 to 399,695 in 1976, and to 407,333 in 1980. By 1990, it topped out at 477,462 weekdays, and nearly 700,000 on Sunday.
"It was considered the state paper, it covered the state wonderfully," recalls Charles W. Rubel, a former weekly newspaper publisher in New Jersey and now a consultant. "The way they operated was one of the driving forces in making it a good newspaper."
Never trying to be The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, the Star-Ledger thrived on its New Jersey position, taking full advantage of its large Trenton office ? the largest newspaper statehouse bureau in the nation ? as well as numerous county bureaus. Mainstays such as an annual school report card of test scores and college grad-uation rates, as well as extensive high school sports coverage, proved popular with readers, and the paper threw as many people at a story as were needed. When native son David Chase launched his HBO hit The Sopranos, about a group of Garden State gangsters, he drew praise for many of his authentic Jersey notations ? among them mob boss Tony Soprano's regular on-screen reading of, what else? ? The Star-Ledger.
In 1995, when Editor Mort Pye stepped down after 31 years (he would die two years later), the Newhouses brought in Willse, a veteran of the San Francisco Examiner and New York's Daily News. He was credited with stepping up demands for government information, including increased FOIA requests at city hall. The New York Times that year noted Willse's push, stating at the time: "Mr. Willse's effort to put an edge on the paper's coverage of government has been the most significant element of what may be the most ambitious effort to revitalize a large newspaper under way anywhere in the country."
As a newspaper editor, Willse, a New Jersey native and son of a New York City cop, is straight out of Central Casting. Deep-voiced, big and bearded, and straight-talking, he shuns the spotlight, but is a stickler for watchdog journalism. After taking the helm, he boosted resources by hiring some 60 newsroom staffers in the first year. He also added several bodies to the Trenton bureau. "We had the vision that the paper should play in the same league as the big regional papers in the country. We saw ourselves as being the same quality as The Philadelphia Inquirer or The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, papers like that," Willse recalls. "My predecessor did a lot of visionary moves and brought the paper into a very strong position. But it hadn't really been updated in a number of years."
John Martin, who has covered courts and enterprise for the paper since 2001, recalls when he joined: "All of the editors I met when I came in were hungry and excited and enthusiastic."
The efforts paid off as circulation remained high throughout the 1990s. Between 2001 and 2005, the paper won its two Pulitzers and received four finalist nods, including a 2005 international reporting finalist nomination for its Iraq coverage.
In 2001, the paper made a bit of history by becoming the first major daily to drop complete stock listings ? a move nearly every other major metro has followed since.
Lost in the floodThe owners of 22 other daily papers, including The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and The Oregonian in Portland, the Newhouse family ? which owns Advance Publications ? were regarded as a hands-off hierarchy. Each paper ran its operations without much interference, as long as it remained profitable and kept readers happy. The Star-Ledger was among the closest to the family's heart (and headquarters), but remained an independent operation.
But as the economic downturn hit newspapers in the late '90s, the Star-Ledger was hit with the same circulation declines that all papers have suffered, dropping from 456,137 daily and 686,256 on Sunday in 1994 to 405,182 and 605, 529 in 1998. After a slight rebound, the drop continued to 399,218 and 599,967 in 2006 and, earlier this year, to 316,280 and 455,699 ? lower than it had been 25 years earlier after the Newark Evening News closed.
"Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that doing a good job covering the state just costs you money," says Newspaper Analyst John Morton. "It doesn't get paid off with advertising revenue."
Lauren Rich Fine, a former Merrill Lynch analyst who now teaches at Kent State University, adds, "when you are feeling less pressured financially, you are able to ride it out a little longer. They have not been as aggressive or creative as they could be." But she adds, "I don't get the sense that anything has been badly run."
Keith Dawn, publisher of The Press of Atlantic City since 2001, agrees the Newhouses were generous and accommodating. Doug Clifton, who edited the company's Plain Dealer in Cleveland from 1999 to 2007, says being good to the staff made the Newhouse papers better: "The industry was taking the body blows and they resisted doing anything Draconian for a long time. I think they put into practice what so many people say ails the news business ? they did not call for the kinds of cuts you see in other places."
The Newhouses received kudos in 2005 when The Times-Picayune of New Orleans was pounded by Hurricane Katrina ? and responded by delivering some of its finest journalism to date. While its coverage won two Pulitzer Prizes that year, the company also spent big on staffers, promising to keep paying all Times-Picayune employees' salaries for more than two months, whether they worked or not.
Another area of dispute is the paper's Web site, which, like those of most Newhouse papers, remains less active and far less user-friendly than most other newspaper sites. Operated under Advance Internet ? which oversees Web sites for all the Newhouse papers ? the Star-Ledger's online home has consistently been considered under- utilized. It didn't even offer a daily video report until 2008.
"Some people mismanaged the situation, they did very poorly online," says Pim Van Hemmen, who took a buyout after 24 years and served as the Star-Ledger's assistant managing editor/digital. "The separation of Advance Net and the news-papers is deadly. Unless they give the papers the power to innovate on the Web, they are doomed."
Fine agrees, noting, "Newhouse has not been as aggressive as some of its peers online. They stayed too long with the structure of having one model for all."
Willse acknowledges this to a degree, stating, "I think there have been improvements in the Web component. I also think that we all feel that it could be more agile and responsive to the Internet trends and interests that exist."
Livin' on a prayerThe first sign of cracks appearing in the Star-Ledger's Teflon came almost a year ago when publisher Arwady enclosed a terse letter to employees with their annual bonuses, just before the holidays. The note laid out the worst, that the paper had lost more than $11 million in 2007 and severe changes were needed.
"As a result of several years of such trends, your newspaper is losing money ? a lot of money. If you've attended any of my employee meetings, you've been hearing about this situation in detail for some time," Arwady wrote. "Fundamentally, the Star-Ledger cannot continue to operate the way it has. We need to cut our expenses drastically, and we need many new sources of revenue."
That set tongues wagging and worries soaring. For several months, uncertainty persisted over layoffs, buyouts, and cutbacks. On July 31, the other shoe dropped: Arwady issued his ultimatum ? 200 buyouts were needed, along with givebacks by mailers and drivers, to avoid a sale or shutdown. By mid-October, with buyouts coming in, the paper even issued notices declaring Jan. 5 the possible shutdown date.
Mark Angeles, the Star-Ledger's Union County bureau chief, says the proverbial axe "seems to have fallen so quickly, I can't get my arms around it. Two years ago, everything was hunky-dory."
For months, staffers went through the back-and-forth of whether to take a buyout or ride things out. For many, it was not retirement time, but the future looked bleak. A new reality had set in.
"I don't know if any newspaper can be a great newspaper [today] ? that is what was going through my mind," says John Martin, who put in for the buyout at age 41. Robin Gaby Fisher, who at 56 took the buyout, says she'd hoped to never leave. "The job I do probably will no longer exist," says Fisher, who has covered various assignments in her 15 years in the newsroom. "Those are the big projects that take months to do. I believe they will still do some big projects, but not like [they've done previously]."
Fisher cited a 2005 series she did on a local high school for troubled students that included some nine months of reporting. She also spent that much time on Seton Hall fire reporting in 2000 and last year did a 15-part series about a serial killer. She adds, "I would have been very happy to retire from the Star-Ledger some day."
Gabriel Gluck was the quintessential Star-Ledger staffer stuck in the middle during the past year's turmoil. At 56, he has 25 years at the paper, mostly in the Union County bureau, where he covered everything from courts to environmental battles. After eight years at the Courier-News in Bridgewater, Gluck signed on in 1983 with the full intention of staying at the paper through his retirement.
"If I had my druthers, I wouldn't be leaving," says Gluck, who took the buyout ? but only after much soul-searching. He cited the company's threats to sell or close as a major influence on his decision, and likely others' as well. "This was not some voluntary buyout. This was, 'We will close the paper and we may sell the paper.' Each individual had to figure out where we were in life's scheme."
For Gluck, the decision to leave was set by two factors: his family and the paper's future. With a daughter in high school, he says he had to make sure that he had some financial security, for at least the next year. But also as important is the future of the newspaper and the industry as a whole. "I know my journalism career is over, there is no newspaper left to go to," he says, adding that after such a great run, it's hard to think of another daily that would allow him the same opportunities. "This will be a very different place come January, with one-third of the [news] staff gone. I don't think it is going to exist, once 130 people are gone."
Saying he may well turn to public relations or expand on his adjunct journalism teaching at a nearby college, Gluck adds that newspapering as a whole is not coming back: "It is much bigger than this news- paper itself. We are the last big watchdog in New Jersey. We are about to be eviscerated."
Blue moon in their eyesHobby's Deli is real Newark. An old-time pastrami and salami joint in the heart of downtown, it sits just a block from busy Market Street and a stone's throw from the new Prudential Center arena, home to the New Jersey Devils. Inside the eatery, among the 48 years of Jersey memorabilia ? from campaign signs to decades-old menus ? are numerous Star-Ledger framed pages. Some tout Hobby's best dishes, while others proclaim years of local and state news.
In mid-October, as his colleagues were still awaiting approval of their buyout applications, reporter Josh Margolin sat in Hobby's and contemplated the paper's future. A 10-year staffer and a key player in the Star-Ledger's award- winning Trenton bureau, Margolin, who is 37, chose not to take a buyout. He still believes the paper can do well, but admits the future is uncertain with a smaller staff.
"It can't be the paper that it was," Margolin says between bites of a turkey-and-swiss on rye. "The best hope is that it remains the biggest and most influential paper in the state, and chooses its moments." Margolin, a Queens, N.Y., native who cut his teeth at the Herald News in Passaic, turned down a job with New York's Daily News in 1998 before joining the Star-Ledger. He was part of the Pulitzer-winning McGreevey coverage, as well as other state scoops from Rutgers University internal affairs to Trenton-based legislative actions.
But since the economic tumble and all the buyout talk, Margolin admits many staffers both staying and departing wonder if the Star-Ledger can continue as a quality entity. "This has been a terrible surprise, a huge surprise," he says, adding that it has also damaged the paper's Garden State reputation as a solid, tough watchdog: "the publisher and the paper announcing its own financial problems has made my job harder. People always felt they were dealing with the immovable object. We were a permanent reality."
Then there's Mark DiIonno, the 15-year Star-Ledger throwback who has served as a top editor and now writes a lead column. At 51, he balked at a buyout and has spent recent months telling anyone who will listen why the paper can and will go on. "I believe, because I am in public quite a bit, how valuable this paper is," DiIonno says. "I hear people say the bosses should raise the price of the paper before they close it."
A one-time New York Post sports columnist, DiIonno is a Jersey guy all the way, having been raised in the upscale community of Summit and written several books about the state. "The New York media outlets that cover the state usually get their stories from us," he boasts. He says he understands why others are willing to take buyouts, but not him: "I think they see it as an opportunity to do something else, and they are convinced that it is a dying business, which I don't believe."
It's hard letting you goBack in his second-floor office, with views of Newark's prominent Prudential Building and Gateway Center, Willse, 64, must deal with what may be the toughest challenge of his career. "It is a painful, but not uninteresting process," he declares. "Obviously, we wish we didn't have to make some of the choices we will have to make. But you can't let your standards slip away. We still have to be a good newspaper/online product."
So how do you do that when your 330-person staff is cut by 151 people? "In a way, it may force us to make choices that in the long run make us more useful, more valuable," he says, declining to cite specifics. "When you have a huge newsroom, you can cover everything you want. And you don't have to be as discriminating."
With fewer people, Willse says the key is to select what is most important, but cover it the best. He admits "we will have a number of new assignments that a year ago we might not have gotten around to doing. We are going to have to leave some things behind, some beats, but also have some things that did not exist before." Some 50 of the newsroom buyouts will come from the copy desk ranks, which currently include about 100 copy editors, news editors, layout people, and paginators. A universal copy desk combining those now separated for news, business, sports, and features will emerge.
Noting the paper has already combined feature sections on Wednesdays and Thursdays, Willse says further section consolidation is likely for the daily state and county sections. "There is a good chance that the B and C sections will merge, but that doesn't mean we will decrease the amount of county coverage," he maintains. "We are not going to fold up and go away." He adds that the Web site will see a continued boost: "Video news is a big element of our future."
Vowing to stay on the job until "the work is complete" as far as buyouts and downsizing go, Willse commits to keeping the paper the best news source in the state. "I am a realist, I know something has to give," he says. "What I am not going to concede is that we have to cut back on quality. It is going to be difficult, but it is still going to be good."
As for the paper's coveted watchdog role, Willse states: "We will continue to be an important irritant to the public officials of the state."
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