Last year the Star-Ledger was threatened by closure if it did not make cuts the Newhouse owners deemed appropriate. Now, after a 40% newsroom reduction, publisher George Arwady is seeking to cut another 50 jobs due to the worsened financial situation at the paper.

While closure is no longer on the table, the Ledger is still loosing money. "We're not the paper we were and we're not the paper we want to be," says Kevin Whitmer, new editor at the Ledger. However he reports that more people are looking at their content than at any time in their history when online and video and included in viewing statistics.

The problem is that this does not translate into revenue. Even with wider public exposure, there seems to be in New Jersey a mounting sense of newspaper irrelevance due to smaller staff and less stories. Brendan Byrne, former NJ governor, states his disillusionment flatly: "You don't expect that the Star-Ledger is going to have the kind of news it used to have."

Despite the cuts there remains demand in Jersey for print space, where whistle-blowing and journalistic watchdog services are needed. "Politicians will fight for the tiny piece of ink that is available," says Richard Codey, State Senate president. This raises concerns about corruption and unfair endorsements, something more papers are choosing to avoid but are hard-pressed to combat given staff reductions.

Mr. Whitmer is nonetheless optimistic about the future of his newspaper. "You look at where...papers are now, what their resources are, and what we're confronted with, and we're comparatively better positioned to absorb more cuts," he said, which clearly not a very comforting position. But "we've been able to maintain the basic structure of the paper and the vision of our coverage," he adds.

There have been recent significant traffic gains for the Ledger website, nj.com, and a promise that various counties will continue to front the paper. Meanwhile more local and flexible papers like the Daily Record, which has also sustained staff cuts, are teaming up with big timers like the Ledger and expect to see a modest (in the hundreds) increase in circulation. The increasingly local focus has paid off; the Record earned a Pulitzer nomination for investigative reporting that stimulated state legislation requiring regulation of projects using public funds.

So there remains much cause for hope and optimism for the future of newspapers in New Jersey, especially if they continue to prove their worth to the public by focusing both local and investigative journalism.