The Hudson Reporter


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 the metropolitan area; The Hudson Reporter publications mainly focus on local politics and community news. The oldest newspaper in the chain is the Hoboken Reporter, founded in 1983.
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, Hoboken, and Jersey City.

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. Lucha Malato joined the company in 1983 and David Unger in 1985. both becoming his minority partners. In 1987, the chain began The Secaucus Reporter. In addition to articles written by the reporting staff, the paper's letters-to-the-editor page spawned a book of letters, Yuppies Invade My House at Dinnertime, in 1987.
It eventually added similar papers as part of its Reporter brand for Jersey City, North Bergen, Weehawken, Union City, and West New York. The company purchased the Bayonne Community News in 2004 and relocated to Bayonne in 2016. 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 Malato and 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 continued using its distribution facility in North Bergen.
On June 10, 2018, it was announced that publishers Lucha Malato and David Unger had sold the Hudson Reporter Assoc. LP, the company that publishes their papers, to the Newspaper Media Group of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a publisher of more than 50 weekly community newspapers in Central and Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, as well as a monthly newspaper on Staten Island. Newspaper Media Group Owner & CEO Richard Donnelly stated, "The decision to purchase the Hudson Reporter was an easy one. The award-winning publications fit perfectly into our successful business model of community newspapers. Pooling resources and talent will ensure an even greater success story down the road. We are excited to add this exceptional group of papers to our growing family."
Journalists who started their careers at the Reporter have gone on to full-time positions at major newspapers including The New York Times and New York Post.

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

Current publications

As of June 2018, The Hudson Reporter publishes the following eight community newspapers:
The company also publishes three magazines: