Type Weekly newspaper Editor Caren Matzner | Founder(s) Joseph Barry | |
Owner(s) Lucha Malato and David Unger Founded 1983; 34 years ago (1983) Headquarters 447 Broadway
Bayonne, New Jersey 07002 | ||
The Hudson Reporter is a newspaper chain based in Hudson County, New Jersey. It is the only weekly newspaper chain in Hudson County and one of only two newspaper companies in this busy metropolitan area. The Hudson Reporter publications focus on local politics and community news. In addition to articles written by the staff, the papers print readers' letters to the editor. The oldest newspaper in the chain is the Hoboken Reporter, founded in 1983.
Contents
The company publishes eight weekly newspapers and three local lifestyle magazines. The papers cover news and features in Bayonne, Hoboken, Jersey City, North Bergen, Weehawken, Secaucus, West New York, Union City, and Guttenberg. The lifestyle magazines cover Bayonne (Bayonne: Life on the Peninsula), Hoboken (07030), and Jersey City (Jersey City Magazine).
History
The Hudson Reporter was founded in 1983 by Hoboken-based developer Joseph Barry, founder of the development company Applied Housing, who bought the weekly Hoboken Pictorial and its group of local newspapers. Its first newspaper was The Hoboken Reporter, which Barry published out of a small building in downtown Hoboken. It subsequently moved to a basement office on 14th Street. As Barry's real estate holdings in Hudson County grew throughout the 1980s, the organization bought a chain of local newspapers and consolidated them into a coordinated weekly paper group. In 1995 the chain moved to a large, historic bank building at 1400 Washington Street, across the street from the basement office. In 1999, with the real estate market becoming even busier, Barry no longer had time to dedicate to the newspapers and sold his majority share in the company to his minority partners, general manager Lucha Malato and advertising director David Unger. In 2004, the group bought the Bayonne Community News.
After both offices lost power during Hurricane Sandy in October/November 2012, the staff worked out of Palisades Medical Center.
In early June 2016, after 33 years in Hoboken, the paper moved its main office to 447 Broadway in Bayonne, three blocks from the 22nd Street Light Rail station. The consolidation of the staff at the new location also saw the closing of the small satellite office in Bayonne that published the Bayonne Community News for years. Among the reasons Malato cited for the move was the amount of unused space at previous Hoboken location, such as the large darkroom that became obsolete since the staff's adoption of digital photography around 2000. The company will continue to maintain its distribution facility in North Bergen.
Accolades
The chain and its writers have won numerous awards for investigative reporting, going beyond the norm for weekly newspapers. The company has become a training ground for reporters and writers in the New York area, having sent two to The New York Times, and several to other top publications including The Star-Ledger and news organizations like Associated Press. Other writers have published novels and nonfiction books, and written for television.
Publications
The company publishes nine weekly community newspapers:
The company also publishes three magazines:
Until late 2006, the company published the Gateway Guide, a quarterly New Jersey tourism magazine.