There does not seem to be any doubt about it. The days of newspapers, those black and white printed pages young boys tossed on your lawn either from their bikes or from the bags slung over their shoulders are gone.
The days of a newspaper tabloid like The Courier which was eagerly sought out every Thursday in Northern Monmouth County, or a seven day news giant like the Newark News are simply memories, the words of reporters and opinions of editors captured only on line today for the search.
But the Newark News, more properly the Newark Evening News, was one of New Jersey’s leading newspapers and had a fascinating history of its own. Throughout its lifetime, it had a reputation for adhering to the fundamental principles of clean journalism.
The Newark Evening News first appeared in 1883, an independent six day paper that was free from all political and corporate control, aiming simply to give an accurate presentation of the news, a bit of public comment and education and entertainment for all. It was so successful at all it set out to do that it expanded to become seven day a week newspaper within a short time. In 1945, the publishing company also acquired a radio station in Brooklyn, then established WNJR, on a 17-acre piece of land in Union, serving all of New Jersey.
The newspaper, the Sunday edition, the radio station, the success…all the result of the hard work and innovation of the Scudder family.
It was Wallace McIlvaine Scudder the son of Supreme Court Justice Edward W. Scudder who started the paper when he was 30 years old, joining with two other businessmen, Lawrence Mott, 27 and the old man of the group, Henry Abbott Steel, who was 32. Mr. Scudder was a graduate of Lehigh University where he earned a degree in engineering and was an attorney in Newark. Mott did not stay with the News long; seeing its success at first in the northern sections of the state, he left to start his own paper once again in Trenton. Mr. Steel stayed with the Newark News for 20 years, serving as editor. It was Mr. Scudder who served as publisher and circulation manager, and ultimately the sole owner.
When Wallace Scudder died two years before the paper was half a century old, his son Edward W. Scudder, a Princeton graduate took over, and it was in 1949 that his sons, Edward Jr. and Richard, carried on the family business, Edward as president of the News and radio station, Richard as publisher of the seven day a week paper.
Throughout its long life, the Newark News earned and maintained its reputation as the paper of record for the state. It was an institution, people would say, that could give page one space to the story of a lost puppy dog and its tearful five-year-old owner as well as the latest news from the nation’s capital. It was a leader in sports coverage as well as local and national news, included a page of comics that had kids sprawling on living room floors to read about Blondie or the Katzenjammer Kids, or Rex Morgan, MD. It sent its reporters to cover the wars in Europe during World War II and in Vietnam. Its reporters were first on the scene where Dutch Schultz was murdered in front of a tavern in Newark and when the Hindenburg exploded and crashed before landing at Lakehurst.
The paper was created in 1873. It died on Aug. 31, 1972, the victim of unionization.
The Scudder family sold the paper to Media General in 1970 who almost immediately then sold the Sunday edition to the Star Ledger. With the competition of another large newspaper, circulation fell, advertising dropped, and the News was in trouble. Nor was the newsroom happy about it, or their wages, or the way they were being treated by their new owners. It seemed only natural that the newsroom would look to unionizing. That meant a strike, so in May of 1971, the newsroom staff walked out. They didn’t get back to work until the strike was settled, 11 months later. And the News could resume publication.
By then, it was too late. Those experienced staffers found jobs elsewhere, readers got used to the new papers they opted to read during the strike, advertisers did not want to go back and take a chance on a great newspaper that had fumbled and fallen.
Two years short of its centennial anniversary, the Gray Lady of Market Street, as the News was lovingly known, died.
Today, the newspaper of record is alive and well and living on microfilm in the New Jersey information Center of the Newark Public Library. Its newspaper stories, its coverage of everyday events, the simple and superlative, are now a piece of history, and recognized as one of the most vital historical resources in the entire state.
