People Get Whacked, but this is Personal

By: JOE STRUPP In nearly 10 years at Editor & Publisher, I have covered cutbacks, buyouts, and layoffs at dozens of papers, big and small, good and bad, corporate and family-owned. But none hit quite like the turmoil at The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. That's because "The Ledger," as we say in the Garden State, is more than just another newspaper cutback casualty to me. It was, and remains, my hometown paper.

As I grew up in Summit, the Ledger was on our kitchen table from an early age. At 12, I was helping my brother deliver it (for 10 cents a day then, 25 on Sunday), while the sports section was the only way I really kept up with my Yankees and Giants. The "Kleinesty" of Moss Klein, who covered the Bronx Bombers, and Dave Klein, who wrote about Big Blue football, were mainstays. Dave Klein, now running a Giants Web site, and Star-Ledger Columnist Jerry Izenberg remain two of only four sportswriters to have covered all 42 Super Bowls.

But sports aside, the Ledger was, and is, the quintessential Jersey daily. Bigger than any others in the state, it also gave readers local and state news with a respect for "Joisey," not some stereotypical caricature of big hair, malls, and toxic waste. Yes, it dug up the dirt on such ailments and corruption, but it also held up the likes of Soprano, Springsteen, and Sinatra with pride. Never the kind of daily with Pulitzer-winning columnists and massive foreign bureaus, the Ledger served up a steaming plate of news from all areas of New Jersey, with an eye toward local needs and statewide coverage.

My first letter to the editor, written in ninth grade, appeared on its pages. While in high school, covering local sports for my school paper, I phoned in football, basketball and lacrosse results to the Ledger, for which I recall I was paid $3 or $4 per game. Later, when I got my first job at the now-defunct Daily Journal in Elizabeth, the Ledger was again the big gun. If a big story broke in our backyard, we would send a reporter and a photographer, while the Ledger typically had three or four scribes there. We always longed to work there, but I never did.

Still, as a reader, I often looked at the Ledger as more of a news source than The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, or other "supplemental" papers that landed on the front porch or at the end of the driveway. Sure, the Times and Journal remain among the elite dailies for national and international news, as well as intellectual commentary and insight. But for guidance on Jersey's often-corrupt state government and local happenings, the Advance Publications daily was and remains "it."

Now, for us Jerseyans, both in and out of the news game, the Ledger as we know it ? the statewide news source that lands with a thud every morning outside ? will be gone. Just as my children are learning where to find the paper's sports section "Fridge Grid" of game schedules, the full-color Sunday comics, and the beloved "Munchmobile" restaurant reviews, much of it will eventually migrate to the Web site ? or worse, depart for good.

I feel like a medical writer who has consistently written about cancer, but never truly felt the impact until a family member is struck. My time at E&P and its ongoing coverage of newspaper cutbacks has finally hit home. Like Tony Soprano of old, I still collect my morning Ledger at the end of my driveway ? and it remains more important to our household than any other newspaper. As it passes through its current cutbacks, and likely survives, it will not be the same. And my view of future newspaper cutback stories will not be, either.