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CORPORATE HISTORY
North Jersey Media Group is a family-owned publishing and printing company with strong roots in northern New Jersey.
Its history goes back to 1895, with the founding of The Evening Record, the daily newspaper that has become the premier, nationally known publication serving Bergen County and the surrounding region. The Borg family has wholly owned The Record since 1930, when it was fully acquired by John Borg, grandfather of today’s Chairman of the Board, Malcolm A. Borg, and great-grandfather of President Stephen A. Borg and Vice-President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg.
The Record today is the state’s most honored daily newspaper, consistently winning more prestigious awards than any other paper in New Jersey. In fact, The Record has received the New Jersey Press Association’s prestigious General Excellence Award – in essence, "best in the state" – four times in the last five years. Seven of its reporters have been named Journalist of the Year in the last decade, including Lindy Washburn, health-care and medical writer, who is the first reporter in NJPA’s history to have been awarded that title twice.
In addition, The Record holds hundreds of honors from national organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists, the Deadline Club, the Associated Press Sports Editors, the Association for Women in Communications and many more. Often, its in-depth examinations of local and national issues are acclaimed by the highest of journalism’s honors, such as the 2006 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment and the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Medal. The Record has a national reputation for journalistic excellence that far exceeds its regional circulation.
Over the years, as the company diversified, The Record became the hub for new and acquired publications and enterprises. The name North Jersey Media Group was adopted in 2000 to embrace and unify all the different entities that have grown up around The Record.
One of the most notable members of the North Jersey Media Group family is another daily newspaper with a long tradition in Passaic County, the Herald News. Today’s Herald News is the product of three mergers of four newspapers that have served Passaic County since 1872, when it was founded as The Passaic City Herald. Other titles now folded into the Herald News include The Morning Call of Paterson, the Paterson Evening News, the Herald-News, and the North Jersey Herald & News, which was created by a 1986 merger of the Herald-News and the Paterson Evening News.
The Herald News was acquired by the company in 1997, and is now published as an edition of The Record, although it maintains a separate newsroom and staff in Passaic County and has its own editorial personality. Under NJMG’s aegis, it is also a top-notch paper, winning NJPA’s General Excellence award in its smaller circulation category for the past three years in a row. It also has other high honors to its credit from the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Newswomen’s Club of New York, and other organizations.
As of year-end 2007, The Record and Herald News have a combined circulation of 192,816 Sunday and average weekday circulation of 162,572, making them the 62nd largest Sunday newspaper and the 64th largest daily in the United States. Their combined audiences make them a major media outlet in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan market.
It was during the acquisition of the Herald News in December 1997 that the first group of weekly newspapers joined the corporate family. Eleven weeklies circulated in Bergen and Passaic counties, two paid-circulation and nine free-distribution, were tied to the Herald News in a publishing entity called North Jersey Newspaper Company. A few months later, the company began adding more weeklies to its family of publications – and the Community Newspapers of North Jersey Media Group continue to grow.
In March 1998, the company purchased Orechio Publications, comprised of four paid-circulation Essex County weeklies. A few weeks later, BAL Communications Group was acquired, bringing three more paid-circulation Essex weeklies to the fold. In April 1999, The Twin-Boro News, a weekly based in Cresskill, NJ, was acquired.
In July 2001, seven weekly papers formerly published as Bergen County Newspapers were purchased. Morris County-based Neighbor News was purchased in October 2002. In August 2003, the division launched a new weekly paper for Fort Lee residents, Fort Lee Suburbanite. And two months later, it began producing a new four-color glossy magazine, (201) The Best of Bergen. This elegant and popular magazine is distributed as a supplement to the weeklies in select Bergen communities.
Another brand-new weekly, Edgewater View, was launched in June 2004. Six months later, the company purchased selected assets of Aim Action Ads, Inc. of Newfoundland, NJ, and relaunched its weeklies as Aim West Milford, Aim Jefferson, and Aim Sussex County.
In January 2005, the company purchased assets of Downtown Magazine Group, publisher of 12 glossy magazines similar in style to its own very successful (201) magazine. Today, as Magazines of North Jersey Media Group, these magazines serve the areas of Englewood, Pascack Valley, Ridgewood/Wyckoff, Wayne, Montclair, Millburn-Short Hills/Summit, Morris County, Princeton and the Meadowlands. NJMG’s magazine group also includes The Parent Paper, a highly awarded parenting publication serving more than 100,000 parents across northern New Jersey and Rockland County, NY.
Growth of the weekly newspapers continued with the launch of the Hackensack Chronicle, covering Hackensack and South Hackensack, in March 2005. The following month, The Mt. Olive/Netcong Weekly News (Morris County) and The Hackettstown Weekly News (Warren County) were acquired from MJ Media LLC. They were followed by the launch of Leonia Life (November 2005), Ridgefield Park Patriot (March 2006), Cliffside Park Citizen (August 2006), and Bogota Bulletin and Little Ferry Local (March 2007). Now, Community Newspapers’ geography includes parts of six counties in northern New Jersey.
The company’s Internet Division took root when The Record began posting a daily edition of the newspaper online in 1995. It has blossomed into a comprehensive Web site at NorthJersey.com, where readers can access the online edition of The Record, and MyHeraldNews.com, online home of the Herald News. The sites are also portals to online advertising services such as NorthJerseyHomes.com, NorthJerseyCars.com, NorthJerseyJobs.com, and links to other sites and services of North Jersey Media Group. Many of our community newspapers also have their own Web sites.
A state-of-the-art satellite printing facility built by the company in Rockaway Township, NJ, in 1991 and expanded in 2006 is now operated as North Jersey Media Group’s Manufacturing Division. With a stable of printing presses including a new WIFAG press – the industry’s latest technology for speed, flexibility and color capacity – the Manufacturing facility prints all of NJMG’s daily, weekly and bi-weekly community newspapers.
The 350,000-square-foot facility includes an ultra-modern Packaging Center equipped to assemble all the newspaper sections in proper zoning for delivery along with the millions of advertising inserts that NJMG carries to market for its advertising customers. In 2007 alone, the division handled 648,148,607 advertising inserts. The plant is also widely known as the print site for the New Jersey/Pennsylvania regional edition of USA Today.
Corporate headquarters for North Jersey Media Group are in Hackensack, NJ.
For information on company locations and contacts, please click here.
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