By: Joe Strupp Just months after losing more than 150 newsroom staffers in a hard-hitting buyout, The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. is poised to replace some of the departed by contracting with a new outside news service.
Editor Jim Willse confirmed that former Star-Ledger Managing Editor Rick Everett was hiring journalists for an outside news service that would provide local and municipal coverage of New Jersey to the paper.
About 30 reporters, and some college students, are expected to comprise the staffing for the news organization. "When it is up and running it will be somewhere in that number," Willse said. "It doesn't exist yet. It will be a separate company that will cover local, municipal news for a variety of customers, including us."
Everett, a 30-year Star-Ledger veteran who took an earlier buyout in 2006 and has also worked at The Herald News of West Paterson, N.J., declined comment.
The news service approach is similar to the paper's arrangement with Dorf News Service, a New Jersey-based outlet that has been providing high school sports to the Star-Ledger for decades. Willse said once this news outlet is up and running, it would provide such local news coverage on a monthly billing basis.
"We expect it to be a source of municipal coverage for [Star-Ledger Web site] NJ.com, for the paper and perhaps other outlets as well," Willse said. "We will be billed, but we are not there yet."
The news service follows last year's buyout that affected 151 of the paper's 330 newsroom positions. The buyouts followed threats from owner Advance Publications that the paper would be shutdown or sold if they were not taken, along with numerous union concessions.
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