Star-Ledger print edition is going away

https://www.nj.com/news/2024/10/star-ledger-ending-print-edition-and-closing-production-facility-in-2025.html

Wow. This is a stunner although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. They’ll continue the online edition. 

From the article: 

The Star-Ledger will cease publishing a print newspaper and will close its Montville production facility in February 2025. The decision was made by the Star-Ledger’s owner, Newark Morning Ledger Co., due to rising costs, decreasing circulation and reduced demand for print.In addition, Advance Local, which owns NJ Advance Media and NJ.com, announced that it is ending print publication of dailies The Times of Trenton and the South Jersey Times, as well as the weekly Hunterdon County Democrat.

Online newspapers for The Star-Ledger, The Times of Trenton and South Jersey Times will continue to be produced seven days a week for subscribers. The online newspaper provides subscribers with 10+ exclusive daily pages of additional local and national content not found in the current printed newspaper.

I worry about the erosion of the print media record. Decades of reporting still exists and can be accessed in microfilm/fiche archives of printed newspapers in libraries across the country. And some of that record is hyperlocal to a degree that is long since gone. So the era of this super-granular historical record with lots of copies to guard against revisionists is ending. 

The new journalistic record is all digitized, subject to loss and digital tampering/alteration.  I find that troubling. I know a lot of people think that social media has taken over the role but it’s so disjointed, heavily colored by individual bias and ultimately owned by a handful of powerful companies who can do what they want with it. Especially when you consider the advances in AI recently - using an AI to comb through social media posts looking for posts that support a particular world view will only get easier. And then delete the rest?

mrincredible said:

https://www.nj.com/news/2024/10/star-ledger-ending-print-edition-and-closing-production-facility-in-2025.html

Wow. This is a stunner although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. They’ll continue the online edition. 

As a [very] long-time reader of and subscriber to print newspapers, I knew this day was coming. I get the NYT delivered 7 days and I know I'm a dying breed. I know it's just a matter of time before I will give it up. I use all the apps and online versions and Wordle and Connections, etc., on my phone and iPad but still get a level of comfort from holding that paper in my hands and doing the crossword puzzles in [blue] ink. I picked up my newspaper reading habits from my parents who were among the first to buy a photocopy machine for the home so they could stop buying two papiers every day so they could both do the puzzle. They amortized that baby pretty fast. 

I read that earlier.  We've been subscribers for decades.  Since they're stopping, I decided, "Why wait for 2025?"

We have a weekend subscription. It also includes the online version. So we’ll just keep paying for that. 

It only makes sense. Newspapers on paper don't really make much sense economically, or any which way, any more. I'm actually surprised we're still using as much paper for print as we do. What's the point except as nostalgia for boomers?

I remember when we had the Star-Ledger in the morning and the Newark Evening News in the afternoon. My first job was delivering the Evening News.... $3.50 per week.  

The news .... the best part was that they advertised Empire Burlesque and Minsky's. Tempest Storm and I spent a lot of time in the bathroom together.

Yeah, that's TMI

drummerboy said:

It only makes sense. Newspapers on paper don't really make much sense economically, or any which way, any more. I'm actually surprised we're still using as much paper for print as we do. What's the point except as nostalgia for boomers?

It’s my current bias against all media going digital. There’s a lack of tangible permanence that makes me uneasy. 

Sigh.

We subscribe to (the remnant of) our local paper (Milwaukee) Wed and Sun, also online.  Even so, i find i follow the local news less this way than with a daily paper paper.  I seem to lose the thread, like i have to go looking for it instead of it coming to me, if that makes any sense.  Admitted boomer.

Public worry:  what happens to oversight of local government etc. when the "papers" are gone altogether, not just on paper?

What about those who do not go online either on principal or because they don't have access to WiFi for a variety of reasons?  How do they access the news when print journalism vanishes?  I also worry about the the lack of accountability to the press when the press goes away.  

Dating myself here bigly but I read the N S-L pretty much daily from about 1988 (when it was 15 cents!) through the very early 2000s. Then I started fading on it as I moved to digital news and the paper itself went downhill. Haven't touched a copy in many years. 

It had a really good sports section in its day, and the NJ coverage was very good too.  

joan_crystal said:

What about those who do not go online either on principal or because they don't have access to WiFi for a variety of reasons?  How do they access the news when print journalism vanishes?  I also worry about the the lack of accountability to the press when the press goes away.  

in high school and college I had a couple of jobs working in libraries. Part of the job if you were there in the morning, was to take the newspapers that were delivered and slide them onto the wooden rods that were hung on a rack. There were patrons who would come in and sit and read the whole paper.

There was also a job of putting magazines on a rack, and then last week’s issue was put in a stack that was kept behind the shelf. I think there was always a years worth of monthly magazines, and several weeks worth of weekly magazines.

There are also known issues with reading things on brightly lit screens. One of which is disruption of sleep patterns, which is especially difficult for the elderly.

It’s harder and harder to take possession of a piece of media that might be something meaningful you want to keep. I haven’t bought a new in a long time, as an example. We also have some newspapers showing headlines from momentous events, such as the tour of the century And the election of the first African-American president. My parents had a copy of life magazine from 1969 with pictures from the first moon landing. I remember being fascinated when I found that in the attic.

I loved the Star-Ledger print home delivery for almost forty years.  While it is not the NYT and I miss some important news, it does cover all of NJ in a very good manner and this is what I needed for work.  Several months ago I switched to online since the price of home delivery became too high. My home delivery person was great and very reliable.  The online version is still good and sometimes better.  They do an update section at the end which covers the late-night news.  

mrincredible said:

in high school and college I had a couple of jobs working in libraries. Part of the job if you were there in the morning, was to take the newspapers that were delivered and slide them onto the wooden rods that were hung on a rack. There were patrons who would come in and sit and read the whole paper.

There was also a job of putting magazines on a rack, and then last week’s issue was put in a stack that was kept behind the shelf. I think there was always a years worth of monthly magazines, and several weeks worth of weekly magazines.

There are also known issues with reading things on brightly lit screens. One of which is disruption of sleep patterns, which is especially difficult for the elderly.

It’s harder and harder to take possession of a piece of media that might be something meaningful you want to keep. I haven’t bought a new in a long time, as an example. We also have some newspapers showing headlines from momentous events, such as the tour of the century And the election of the first African-American president. My parents had a copy of life magazine from 1969 with pictures from the first moon landing. I remember being fascinated when I found that in the attic.

Maplewood Library has remote printing and I am sure other libraries do too so making a hard copy of a digital document is possible.  However the reader still has to be able to go on line and have the skill to press print and follow directions to send it to the library’s printer if the reader does not have a printer at home.  That said, I much prefer reading hard copy when available. 

drummerboy said:

What's the point except as nostalgia for boomers?

The point, for this reader, is the same pleasure of any vetted selection from a trusted source, whether it’s my weekly New Yorker or a decennial Sight and Sound movie list. A news website is so vast and scattered that it encourages self-selection of what to read. A printed newspaper encourages reading whatever appears next as I leaf through it, even if I’m not already interested in the topic.

More discovery, I find, happens for me that way.

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

What's the point except as nostalgia for boomers?

The point, for this reader, is the same pleasure of any vetted selection from a trusted source, whether it’s my weekly New Yorker or a decennial Sight and Sound movie list. A news website is so vast and scattered that it encourages self-selection of what to read. A printed newspaper encourages reading whatever appears next as I leaf through it, even if I’m not already interested in the topic.

More discovery, I find, happens for me that way.

you are claiming that a printed periodical offers more or better opportunities for discovery than reading something from the internet?

okie-doke.

drummerboy said:

you are claiming that a printed periodical offers more or better opportunities for discovery than reading something from the internet?

okie-doke.

So often asking questions when you don’t need answers.

The answer regardless in this case is yes, I am claiming that (as far as news sites go), as explained, for me.

You know… when you think about it… our generation has experienced so much change and revolutionary things that we have a right to be a bit grumpy…

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

you are claiming that a printed periodical offers more or better opportunities for discovery than reading something from the internet?

okie-doke.

So often asking questions when you don’t need answers.

The answer regardless in this case is yes, I am claiming that (as far as news sites go), as explained, for me.

As a general rule, yes, reading a printed newspaper offers more opportunity to encounter new ideas and stories than reading on the internet. As an analogy, it's the difference between shopping at a bookstore and shopping for books on Amazon.

As for the Star-Ledger specifically - the NJ.com site is lousy, in my humble opinion, and it's not easy to read even just an individual story.

nohero said:

As an analogy, it's the difference between shopping at a bookstore and shopping for books on Amazon.

It’s a fine analogy, but even in a bookstore I’m drawn to sections and titles I’m already interested in. A printed newspaper draws sections and headlines to me.

An anecdote that I think I’ve shared on MOL before: My son is a big sports fan. In the printed Times, the daily Sports pages appear behind the Business pages. Often my son would remark on Business stories that caught his attention on his way to Sports. These were stories that he probably never would have clicked on online.

The other day I started reading a Times story on Page 1 that I passed over earlier when I saw it on the homepage. At that time, I didn’t think it would add anything new to my view of things, but the fact that a group of editors thought it deserved a big spot on the front page gave me a nudge. The story nearly brought me to tears.

(Another thing I like about the printed paper is that I can see right away what I’m committing to when I start in on a story, in a way that estimated online reading times don’t really register for me.)

unfortunately the S-L has been on a long, slow decline for many years. I stopped reading it about 5 years ago when it became apparent much of the content was syndicated, and the sports section became a shell of its former self. At one time there was a good argument to be made that the S-L had the best New York sports coverage. They had a beat writer for nearly every area team.

They also let many of their best reporters and columnists go, and coverage of Trenton was not nearly as thorough as it used to be. And on top of that, I was getting the sense they were trying to push back on the accusation they were "too liberal" and started pandering to the right on their editorial pages.

it's sad that the print version is finally being eliminated. But the Star-Ledger I grew up with died a slow and painful death many years ago. This decision is just putting it out of its misery.

ml1 said:

unfortunately the S-L has been on a long, slow decline for many years. I stopped reading it about 5 years ago when it became apparent much of the content was syndicated, and the sports section became a shell of its former self. At one time there was a good argument to be made that the S-L had the best New York sports coverage. They had a beat writer for nearly every area team.

They also let many of their best reporters and columnists go, and coverage of Trenton was not nearly as thorough as it used to be. And on top of that, I was getting the sense they were trying to push back on the accusation they were "too liberal" and started pandering to the right on their editorial pages.

it's sad that the print version is finally being eliminated. But the Star-Ledger I grew up with died a slow and painful death many years ago. This decision is just putting it out of its misery.

Yes. They had to completely slash their reporting staff. And start relying more on syndicated content. Circulation was dropping significantly. 

DaveSchmidt said:

nohero said:

As an analogy, it's the difference between shopping at a bookstore and shopping for books on Amazon.

It’s a fine analogy, but even in a bookstore I’m drawn to sections and titles I’m already interested in. A printed newspaper draws sections and headlines to me.

An anecdote that I think I’ve shared on MOL before: My son is a big sports fan. In the printed Times, the daily Sports pages appear behind the Business pages. Often my son would remark on Business stories that caught his attention on his way to Sports. These were stories that he probably never would have clicked on online.

And in my analogy, you walk past the new titles, and the history and current events, before getting to the sports books toward the back of the bookstore.  

--- and the jobs lost. Jobs in the printing room. Drivers, taking the paper to local distributors and the local deliverers. The one I feel most for, is our local deliverer, Joanne. 

I guess she gets up at 4 or 5 in the morning. The paper is on the lawn by 7:00. I don't know what other income she has. Maybe a full time job, somewhere, or a significant other. But I expect the loss of this income will hurt.