NJ's largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger, and others will end print editions - Gothamist

Published Oct 30, 2024 at 1:09 p.m. ET

Modified Oct 30, 2024 at 4:15 p.m. ET

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Published Oct 30, 2024 at 1:09 p.m. ET

Modified Oct 30, 2024 at 4:15 p.m. ET

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The Star-Ledger — New Jersey's largest-circulation newspaper — and several other newspapers serving the Garden State will end print production early next year, according to NJ.com, which runs the news group's content online.

The Star-Ledger, Times of Trenton and South Jersey Times will all move to online-only editions, NJ.com said in an announcement published on Wednesday morning. But because the Ledger will shut down its plant in Montville, New Jersey, the long-running Jersey Journal — which is formally owned by an affiliated company, the Evening News Association — will shut down entirely after 157 years of operation.

Jersey Journal management said in that paper's own story published on Wednesday on NJ.com that continuing publication as an online-only entity would not have been viable.

“We fought as hard as we can for as long as we could,” the Journal’s editor and publisher David Blomquist said. “An online-only publication simply would not have enough scale to support the strong, politically independent journalism that has distinguished the Journal.”

The Star-Ledger, Times of Trenton and South Jersey Times will publish their final print editions on Feb. 2, 2025, according to the announcements. The weekly Hunterdon County Democrat will cease publication after Jan. 30, but subscribers will be given access to the online-only version of the Star-Ledger.

The Express-Times, which served Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley and parts of Hunterdon and Warren Counties in New Jersey, said it will also cease publication in February. Its newsroom will continue to produce content for LehighValleyLive.com.

The announcement about the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ledger and related newspapers said the changes would have a "significant impact on existing employees" but didn't specify how many jobs might be lost. It said affected employees would be given "generous severance and transition assistance packages."

Kenneth Burns, president of the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists and a reporter for public radio station WHYY, said he hoped the end of the print papers wouldn’t lead to layoffs. He said local outlets are crucial in a state underserved by major-market outlets in Philadelphia and New York, “and the fewer reporters you have covering New Jersey, the worse off we are as Garden Staters.”

Burns also worried about people who still rely on physical copies of newspapers, even decades into the digital age.

In 2014, Advance Media began its NJ Advance Media group, an umbrella organization that includes the Times of Trenton, South Jersey Times and other properties. That move consolidated the NJ.com and Star-Ledger newsrooms into one operation, and the Ledger shut down its Newark newsroom, where it had operated for decades. The Ledger continued to publish seven days a week though that transition, with the joint newsroom providing content for both NJ.com and the Ledger print edition.

Terrence McDonald, now editor of NJ Monitor, reported for the Jersey Journal for almost a decade. He shared the shock at the decision to end all print production and said it spoke to a larger trend where consumers are turning further away from a monoculture of just a few news sources.

The Ledger print edition’s “death really signifies how much society has fractured, that we cannot sustain our biggest newspaper,” he said.

Brian Donohue, an editor at Redbankgreen.com, was also a longtime presence in the Ledger’s newsroom, both as a print reporter and video producer, appearing on-camera and behind the scenes for long-running video features on NJ.com. Before that, he worked at the Jersey Journal.

“I have priceless memories of filing a front-page story on deadline and then grabbing a copy of the paper as it rolls off the presses at 1 o'clock in the morning,” he said. “But I'm less concerned with the nostalgia over the end of newsprint than I am about the state of journalism.”

He said if ending print editions helps companies devote more resources to journalism, “and help the journalists still there in the trenches, then, you know, I'm all for it.

This story has been updated to reflect conversations with journalists who've worked at the Star-Ledger.

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After about two decades in (mostly) New Jersey-focused commercial print, digital and digital-but-radio-adjacent news, Lou stumbled into member-supported news in early 2021, as the editor and CEO of Montclair Local. There, he (hopes he) expanded enterprise, brought more sophistication to digital storytelling and moved the nonprofit newsroom closer to long-term financial sustainability. He helped lead the Local to its fourth consecutive General Excellence award from the New Jersey Press Association — the NJPA's highest honor with judges noting the paper's work to strip away layers of government opacity, to hold power to account, to make news accessible for more members of the community, to share the stories and concerns of more facets of the community and to tell compelling stories across multiple media.He's excited to continue the same ethic — news as a public service — at NYPR as the New Jersey and suburbs editor, drawing on the extraordinary talents of reporters including Karen Yi and Nancy Solomon. Lou lives in Philly (that commute!) with his partner and their two cats, about whom and about which he speaks incessantly.

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