Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest daily newspaper, to end print editions next year
The Newark Morning Ledger Co. said the decision announced Wednesday was due to rising costs, decreasing circulation and reduced demand for print copies of the Star-Ledger.
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The Star-Ledger will stop producing a print version of the paper in February 2025 and move fully online.
The Newark Morning Ledger Co. said the decision announced Wednesday was due to rising costs, decreasing circulation and reduced demand for print copies of the Star-Ledger. The company also said it will close its Montville production facility in February 2025, the same time the newspaper's print version will cease.
The closing of that facility means another daily newspaper, The Jersey Journal, will cease publication on Feb. 1 after operating for 157 years.
The news dissapointed many New Jersey residents.
“Seems like something is being lost by losing a printed paper,” said Tom Ankner, a librarian at the Newark Public Library. “For the last three decades, it’s been the largest newspaper in New Jersey,” said Ankner.
Even News 12 has been connected to the paper. News 12 New Jersey was launched in partnership with the Star-Ledger in 1996.
The Newark Public Library houses the archive of the Star-Ledger and its predecessors going back over a century. It has paper copies, microfilm, photos and an electronic database.
“This is the history of Newark, the history of New Jersey, anyone studying 20th-century New Jersey history will want to see the Star-Ledger,” said Ankner.
Rutgers Journalism and Media Studies professor Steve Miller tells News 12 that the change will impact how readers get information.
“If you don't have it on your doorstep and you don't have it in front of you, what happens is that information then becomes a research project,” said Miller.
He says the consumer will have to do more work to find news in the maze of the internet.
“It’s very hard to climb through the haystack to find the needle, and that’s what newspapers online are going to become,” said Miller.
At the library, it’s often the first place librarians go to find information for someone.
“We get these questions all the time from people. They want the paper from the day they were born. We’ll send the front page - for them, it’s like history encapsulated,” said Ankner.
Now, history will be documented in a different way.
“I think this is the end of an era. I don’t think anything quite replaces the Star-Ledger,” said Ankner.
To find out more information about Newark Public Library and access the archive, click here.
The Associated Press wire services contributed to this report.
