The Newark Experience: Newspapers

Centinel of Freedom (Newark, N.J.)

1821-1876

Historical New York Times

Allows you to search and display the full image of articles published in the New York Times back to 1851--Includes lots of articles relating to Newark. The three most recent years are not included; use Factiva to find more recent articles. Rutgers-restricted Access.

The Newark Public Library is in the process of digitizing the Newark News, New Jersey's primary newspaper for much of the twentieth century. September 1883 to 1931 is currently available online for browsing or searching.

Newark Evening News: New Jersey's Newspaper of Record: 1883-1972
Panel Discussion, Newark History Society, January 29, 2008.

Eldridge, Douglass. "The Rise and Fall of the 'Newark News,': A Personal Perspective," New Jersey History 104(1/2), Spring/Summer 1986, 37- . Available?

Reeves, Richard. " Newark's Fallen Giant: Euthanasia or Murder?," Columbia Journalism Review 11(4), November/December 1972, 49-55.
Looks at the circumstances surrounding the demise of the Newark News, the "biggest and best newspaper in New Jersey", which ceased publication in August of 1972. Restricted Access

Scudder, Richard B. " 'Newark's Fallen Giant': Untruths, Distortions, Misrepresentations," Columbia Journalism Review 11(6), March/April 1973, 65-67.
Letter to the editor from the former owner/publisher of the Newark News in response to the Reeves article. Restricted Access

Eldridge, Douglass. " Newark: A Guild View," Columbia Journalism Review 12(1), May/June 1973, 71.
Letter to the editor responding to Scudder. Restricted Access

William Crawford. Editorial Cartoons, 1954-1962
Manuscript collection. Cartoons published in the Newark News relating to state and local politics, especially in Essex and Hudson counties.
Special Collections Call Number: MC 244

Newsboys

Lewis Wickes Hine's photographs of Newark newsboys, taken between 1909 and 1924.

Star-Ledger

Full-image access to today's Star-Ledger as well as the paper going back to October 18, 2017, is available as part of the Access World News database. (Rutgers-restricted Access)

Full-text access to the Newark Star-Ledger is available from 1989 to the present as part of Access World News (Rutgers-restricted Access).

The Dana Library has the Newark Star-Ledger on microfilm going back to 1980; microfilm reels from August 1, 1945 to December 2003 are also available from the Rutgers Alexander Library in New Brunswick. The Newark Public Library also has the Star-Ledger in its entirely (1939 forward) as well as its predecessor, the Newark Star Eagle (1916-1939), available on microfilm.

Newark Star-Eagle

The Center for Research Libraries has digitized the issues from March 1930. Access is limited to faculty, students and staff from CRL member libraries. Rutgers is a CRL member.

While there is no complete printed or online index to the pre-1989 Star-Ledger, the Charles F. Cummings New Jersey Information Center at the Newark Public Library has the card file Cummings Index to the Star-Ledger from 1971 to 1996, as well as locally compiled Newark News Indexes, 1916-1970. NPL's New Jersey Newspaper & Periodical Index currently includes the Cummings Index to the Star-Ledger from 1971 to about mid-1979.

From the 1950's to the mid-1980's librarians at the New Jersey State Library clipped articles from several newspapers, including the Newark Star Ledger, on major topics. The news stories were assigned subject headings and filed in folders. These clippings are available for review at the New Jersey State Library in Trenton. See the detailed Subject Headings List for available files.

Newark Evening News Clippings File

The Newark Evening News Morgue clippings file, arranged by subject, is available on microfilm in the New Jersey Information Center.

To see what folders are available on microfilm, you can browse the Newark Evening News Clippings Archive by letter:
|A-C| |D-H| |I-New Jersey| |Newark| |Neway-Rogers| |Roget-S| |T-Z|

The Dana Library has the microfilm of the Newark portion of the Newark News clipping file in the NEWARK collection. (Those files which were labeled "Newark- ".) To see the folders included on the Dana microfilm, browse the Newark portion of the Index.

Newark Sunday Call

Scattered issues of the Newark Sunday Call, from June 1881 to November 1946, are available online as part of the no longer maintained Google News Archive collection. These issues are browsable but not searchable.

African American Newspapers

The Newark Public Library has digitized their African American Newark Newspapers collection. The collection consists of individual issues of African-American newspapers published in Newark, including the Newark Herald, Advance, Herald Advance and New Jersey Herald News published from the 1930s to the 1960s.

The above collection does not include the New Jersey Afro-American, which was published in Newark from 1941 to 1988. Newark Public has the newspaper on microfilm, as does the Rutgers Alexander Library in New Brunswick.

"The Press of Newark from 1791 to 1878,"

Joseph Atkinson. IN The History of Newark, New Jersey: Being a Narrative of its Rise and Progress, From the Settlement in May, 1666, by Emigrants from Connecticut to the Present Time, Including a Sketch of the Press of Newark, From 1791 to 1878. Bowie, Maryland, Heritage Books, 2001. Appendix.  Available?

Reminiscences and Experiences in the Life of an Editor.

William H. Winans. Newark, 1875.

Winans founded the penny Newark Daily Mercury which began publication in December of 1848. Available?

A Story of New Jersey Journalism.

William Lewin. Newark, N.J., 1928.  Available?

For the Glory of the Union: Myth, Reality, and the Media in Civil War New Jersey.

Alan A. Siegel. Rutherford, N.J., Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984.  Available?

"Toward Unionization: The American Newspaper Guild and the Newark Ledger Strike of 1934-35."

Daneil J. Leab. Labor History 11(1), 3-22, Winter 1970.

The strike by the staff of the Newark Ledger was the first strike against a large circulation daily and the first major action against a newspaper by editorial workers. Restricted Access

"Ethnicity and Newark's Italian Tribune, 1934-1980,"

Michael Eula. Italian Americana 19(1), Winter 2001, 23-35. Available?

"The State of the American Newspaper: The Jersey Giant,"

Mary Walton. American Journalism Review 22(8), October 2000, 58-65.

The Star-Ledger's New Jersey Statehouse bureau is the largest in the U.S. Restricted Access

The Star Ledger: A Proud Past, An Uncertain Future

Bob Braun, Jonathan Lazarus, and Allan Wolper, panalists; moderated by Guy Sterling. Newark History Society and Newark Public Library program, May 18, 2010.

Closer to Home: Newspaper Representations of Homelessness During the Housing Crisis and Great Recession of 2007 - 2009

Thomas Scott Gottbreht. (Ph.D. Thesis) John Hopkins University, 2019.

This dissertation asks how public discourse in newspaper articles changed during the housing crisis and Great Recession. Using document analysis, text coding, statistical analysis, and tools from Critical Discourse Analysis, this dissertation tracks quantitative and qualitative changes in the appearance of keywords and topics over a 7-year period in four newspapers: The Baltimore Sun, The Buffalo News, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Newark Star-Ledger. Rutgers-restricted Access