Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Revisiting the Newark Evening News

A panel discussion on the defunct and often-praised Newark Evening News will take place at the Newark Public Library on Tuesday, January 29. Four journalists who worked at the paper will participate in the program, which begins at 6 p.m. Complete deatils are online at http://www.npl.org/Pages/ProgramsExhibits/Programs/NwkEveNews08.pdf.

2 comments:

L. Craig Schoonmaker said...

One must wonder what the point is of "revisiting" a newspaper that has been gone for decades, unless someone is going to revive it or resurrect certain key features that were lost but could have value to future readers. A print version of a new Newark paper seems most unlikely. Might someone, however, start an online Newark News? Even then, would it have any of the features that made my parents think the News the better of Newark's two papers? I have often wondered why the better paper would fail, and thus wondered if the News really was better. The Star-Ledger seems to be doing a pretty good job, but maybe we could use a major online paper specific to Newark and different from the S-L in some significant way, as perhaps being more disposed to long-form features, fotos, art criticism, and a major focus on the emerging economic engines of resurgent Newark.

Richard A. Lee said...

While I can't be certain of the purpose of the Newark Evening News event, I suspect it's not to revive the paper or start an online version, although -- as you suggested -- such developments might be welsome. As for why the News failed and the Star-Ledger survived, you may want to take a look at The Long and Winding Road That Forms the History of New Jersey Journalism paper on my blog. There's a section in there on the Newark papers. Thanks for you comment.