Jerome Aumente, professor emeritus in Rutgers’ School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS), spent four years researching his new book From Ink on Paper to the Internet: Past Challenges and Future Transformations for New Jersey’s Newspaper (New Jersey Heritage Press, 2007).

The 500-page book examines the history and future of New Jersey newspapers. And contrary to the bleak forecast for the newspaper industry in the 21st century, Aumente’s findings are surprisingly upbeat. In fact, Aumente suggests a coming renaissance in newspaper publication.

“Many people see this as a dire threat to the survival of newspapers, but the internet also is allowing the papers to reinvent themselves and become leading players in the highly competitive online news and information environment,” said Aumente, who conducted the project under commission from the New Jersey Press Association (NJPA). The book commemorates the organization’s 150th anniversary, which was in April.

Aumente explained that the future newspaper will become a 24-hour news center that can be accessed by internet, cell phone, iPod, and technologies yet unknown. Many news outlets in New Jersey already are starting to make these changes – or at least anticipate them. Aumente describes the present as being “the most exciting time to be a print journalist.”

Aumente began work on the book after being approached by NJPA Executive Director John J. O’Brien. He spent months wading through the NJPA’s vast library of historical files. “When I originally started this book it was going to be a historical overview; however, during research, I found two themes: the story of what happened to newspapers in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries,  and how they could reinvent themselves in the 21st century,” Aumente said.

His research also included interviews with reporters, editors, and publishers of New Jersey’s top daily and weekly newspapers, and with staff at newspapers in Philadelphia and New York that have significant circulation in the state. Aumente’s interviewees include journalists with major experience with New Jersey newspapers including Richard Reeves, national columnist and presidential biographer; Diana Henriques, award-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times; former Gannett CEO John Curley; Associated Press CEO Tom Curley; William Dean Singleton and Richard Scudder, founding owners of MediaNews Group, now the fourth largest newspaper chain in the United States.

Aumente’s book examines ways the universities must upgrade their curricula to prepare graduates for a multimedia, multiplatform world in which the internet delivers instant news in many formats. “With web logs (blogs) and the increase in citizen journalists developing their own online reports, newspapers must redefine their interaction with readers,” Aumente said. As one journalist put it, the news as “lecture” is being changed to the news as “conversation” between the press and its readers.

Today the former chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at SCILS resides in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but remains active as special counsel to the dean of SCILS and in the Journalism Resources Institute, of which he is founding director. A journalist for 10 years at both the Newark Evening News and The Detroit News, Aumente now works internationally with universities and professional journalism associations, conducting workshops and acting as a consultant throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

 
This story is based on an article that appeared in Alum-Knights, the newsletter for alumni of the SCILS Department of Journalism and Media Studies.