Lucha Malato, the co-publisher of the Hudson Reporter newspaper group, was voted the president of the statewide New Jersey Press Association at a dinner on Friday, Oct. 7.
Based in Trenton, the NJPA was founded in 1857 when editors from 26 newspapers formed an organization for the “brethren of the press of New Jersey.” The group soon became involved in legislative battles that would benefit a strong and free press. Today, they maintain the tradition of supporting issues that benefit newspapers throughout the Garden State.
They also offer competitions, lectures, and resources for the state’s media, its journalists, and its journalism students. The organization awards more than $40,000 in scholarships to budding reporters each year.
Malato’s term as president lasts one year.
Malato co-owns the Reporter newspaper group with David Unger. The company publishes nine weekly newspapers including the one you are reading. The full list is: Hoboken Reporter, Jersey City Reporter, Weehawken Reporter, Secaucus Reporter, West New York Reporter, Union City Reporter, North Bergen Reporter (incorporating Guttenberg), the Bayonne Community News, and the Hudson Current arts and entertainment weekly. The group also publishes the twice-yearly Jersey City Magazine and the quarterly Gateway Guide, a statewide tourism guide.
Each of these publications can be found on-line at www.hudsonreporter.com.
Malato was hired at the chain’s first newspaper, the Hoboken Reporter, in 1983 shortly after the paper was founded by Hoboken real estate developer Joseph Barry.
Barry soon bought out a competing newspaper called the Hoboken Pictorial. Malato was hired as the general manager.
In 1985, Unger joined the company as the advertising director.
Barry, who was busy with his real estate interests during the boom in the late 1990s, sold his majority share in the company to Malato and Unger in 1999.Fights for citizens
Malato was elected by the NJPA membership at the Oct. 7 dinner. She had already served on the executive board of the association for six years, most recently as vice president for weeklies.
“I’m honored that they would pick me to represent the state newspaper association,” Malato said last week. “I think it will be a challenge to continue all the projects that the association is involved with, and I look forward to working with them.”
Malato is especially interested in the NJPA’s role in a state’s Open Public Records Act, which gives the public access to certain government records and was modified by former Gov. James McGreevy in 2002. Malato said that some agencies have tried to avoid giving documents to journalists and citizens.
“We now have several of these agencies trying to find holes in the law and not give people the open records that they are entitled to,” Malato said. “[The NJPA’s involvement] benefits not just newspapers, but all citizens. There are several individual cases we’re involved in right now.”
Malato also said the association is trying to get students more involved in journalism and educate them on how to read a newspaper. The NJPA recently published 150,000 copies of a newspaper that teachers will use in the classroom to educate their pupils about the press.
Members of the NJPA’s executive board are unpaid volunteers. The NJPA has a full-time staff in Trenton. The organization is funded by the dues of member newspapers throughout the state, and by advertising fees paid by companies that go through them to advertise in newspapers statewide.
Reporter Co-Publisher David Unger serves as a volunteer on the NJPA’s committee that deals with the advertising, known as the New Jersey Newspaper Network Steering Committee.