Examining 150 years of New Jersey newspaper history
Archived article from Apr 26, 2004
By Robin Warshaw
From the Civil War to the war on terrorism, New Jersey’s newspapers have reported, explained and influenced current events. They’ve also battled with each other for readers and advertisers while coping with competition from the next big thing — first radio, then television and now the Internet.
For the next two years, Jerome Aumente will explore how the state’s daily and weekly newspapers have reflected New Jersey’s social, political and economic changes over the past 150 years. Aumente, professor emeritus in the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS) and former chair of the department of journalism and media studies, is conducting the project under commission from the New Jersey Press Association (NJPA).
The history is slated for publication in 2007, in conjunction with NJPA’s 150th anniversary. While focusing on New Jersey’s newspapers, it also will include a section on the press association’s founding and development. “We’re giving him free rein,” says John J. O’Brien, NJPA’s executive director. “There will be a component of the history of the organization in the book, but not a dominant one.”
Aumente envisions a lively text, filled with memorable characters, vital public issues and defining moments in the state’s newspaper industry. “We’re not going to do a phone book index of every paper that was ever published,” he says. “I want to make it a good read.”
Right now, he’s poring over 19th-century newspapers, searching NJPA files and contacting his network of New Jersey newspaper sources. Aumente says he feels “like a squirrel trying to find acorns” as he digs through mounds of material. “Luckily, we’ve been getting a lot of help,” he adds.
He credits the special collections staff at Rutgers’ Archibald S. Alexander Library, and director Ronald L. Becker, for being especially supportive and helpful. Aumente has invited large and small newspapers, libraries, history buffs, professors, students and interested individuals to contribute documents, clippings and other research items.
“New Jersey is a unique state in terms of journalism,” says John V. Pavlik, professor and chair, department of journalism and media studies, SCILS. “The history of the press here is an important and interesting story that we think has great value to our students and is of value to the wider community. Journalism touches on everyone’s lives.”
According to Aumente, the extensive information hunt is helping shape the project. “As I’m looking at the archives, I’m starting to spot issues and track back and see who in the press was performing well,” he says. “It would be interesting to see how two papers in the same New Jersey city fought over the same story.”
Oral interviews are just beginning with current and former editors, reporters and publishers as well as newspaper production, marketing, advertising and circulation specialists.
Aumente, who helped develop Rutgers’ programs in urban and metropolitan communications, wants to analyze the state’s newspaper history by following New Jersey’s patterns of growth, highway development and suburbanization. He intends to look at how pressure from New York and Philadelphia electronic media helps drive the demand for New Jersey-based news coverage.
Recognizing that much of the historical material won’t make it into the book’s estimated 200 pages, Aumente and the NJPA hope to develop a companion Web site. There are also tentative plans for a series of related round tables and symposia to be held at Rutgers, in SCILS and in Alexander Library’s Scholarly Communication Center. Both the Web site and the public presentations will receive help from Rutgers’ Journalism Research Institute (JRI). Aumente is JRI’s founder and senior research fellow; Pavlik is its director.
Topics being considered for the presentations include: the state’s media history, the press’s role in social issues, the influence of new media on print journalism, the changing reader and what the future holds for New Jersey’s newspapers. “These are things that scholars at Rutgers — teachers and students — should be looking at,” Aumente says.
Now retired and living in the mountains of Virginia, Aumente will travel to Rutgers and New Jersey regularly to work on the newspaper history project. He also is co-directing a series of programs sponsored by Children’s Futures, a Trenton-based health care and social service organization, in conjunction with JRI and SCILS. In addition, Aumente is program evaluator for a federally funded project aimed at modernizing the School of Journalism at Moscow State University in Russia.
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