[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We're now joined by Enrique Lavin, who's editor of Star Ledger Online.

Enrique, good to see you.

- Good to see you, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

- All right, let's get down to it.

Every morning, for years, I was one of the last people to open up my front door, walk out, grab my Star Ledger, get my coffee, and I was ready for the day.

What is the biggest difference between what thousands and thousands of us did for so many years?

Star Ledger is such a big part of our life and the Star Ledger Online, please.

- Sure, sure.

Well, you nailed it on the head.

You, it's habits.

You, we've changed your habits on how to read the newspaper, and it's a conversation I have frequently with subscribers like yourself about that habit.

It's something that people really were attached to that ritual in the morning with coffee and paging through the paper, sharing it with a spouse or a partner in the house, clipping recipes out, or a comic or putting it on the fridge.

We understand all that is different, and you can still clip out things from the online newspaper, but it's not the same, of course.

And so part of what we've been doing for the last year through my work as the editor, is holding our subscribers' hands to enter the digital age.

It's much like what I did 12 years ago with the Star Ledger staff.

I was part of the team that helped train our entire staff to be digital first reporters and editors.

And it's really no different.

It's helping readers understand that you're gonna get a little bit better experience, news experience digitally than what you had with the paper.

- Enrique, let me follow up on this.

This is part of our series on media leadership.

- Yep.

- And so I'm curious, in bringing into, bringing people, professionals into the field of media and the world you're living in, versus the world so many of us came into, media journalism the way we did.

You're talking about digital skills and tools.

Are the basic skills and tools of being a journalist different and you've added to them on the digital side?

Or is the entire profession totally different?

- That's a fantastic question.

I get it all the time.

And is it totally different?

It's a lot different.

I would say 30, I would say 25% of it is what we remember as newspaper journalists, as legacy media journalists, in that we still have the same principles.

We're gonna go get the heartbreaking news.

We're gonna ask the tough questions.

We're gonna stay ethical.

We're gonna maintain those high standards.

The difference is the distribution, right?

Is where we had TV, radio, and newspapers.

-Right.

- Now you have a galaxy of places where our content is going.

And that's where the change is, that's where the drastic change is and finding the journalists who can do that work?

Yes, we actually go looking for experts, say in social media, in newsletter reporting and distribution, in podcasting.

All these are skills that are now almost required in the newsroom.

- Erique, go back.

Connect podcasting to Star Ledger Online.

- Sure.

- What, if it's, if I get my, again, as a subscriber to the online version as well, I see it there.

I take my phone, I blow it up a little bit, and I go, "Oh, now I can read this."

I put my glasses and I can read that article.

Where the heck does podcasting come into Star Ledger Online?

- Right, well, Steve, that's been my job, is really to help you understand that with your Star Ledger subscription, you also have a subscription to nj.com and you are missing out.

- Connect nj.com to Star Ledger Online, go ahead.

- Well, so I mentioned that 12 years ago, I trained the Star Ledger staff to become digital first.

Around that same time, NJ Advanced Media, the newsroom.

- The parent, the parent company.

- That formed.

It was basically a marriage between nj.com and the Star Ledger, where nj.com was already a digital first news operation, news and information entertainment operation.

And the Star Ledger was printed in ink and paper.

And so today, the NJ Advanced Media newsroom for the last decade, 12 years, has been providing content to both, to nj.com and to the Star Ledger.

The Star Ledger readers still, like yourself, enjoyed reading the newspaper and having it all in one place.

The difference with nj.com is whereas the Star Ledger focused on five core counties, Ledger lands is what we've traditionally called it, nj.com has to cover the entire state.

So we are all over the state now, as opposed to just concentrating on those five, six counties with bureaus, with covering local, really things on those hyper-local level that we are striving to return today after 12 years.

But covering the entire state is a different prospect.

And what it comes down to is finding that audience.

And we were trying to do that before the, say, the industry collapse or the industry reinvention is where is that new audience?

And we thought it was a, we gotta find that young audience where they are.

We were building a website to, for college students.

All that thinking was going ahead until this thing came around, Facebook, Google, Twitter.

That came around and that changed everything.

- Yeah.

Enrique, you know, I'm curious about this, media economics.

So for our production company, our media production company, we spend a significant amount of our time bringing in the dollars, bringing in sponsors, underwriters, and keeping a very lean operation, as you do as well.

But for some of us on this side of the equation, we're involved in both sides of the business, the business of the business and the journalism and the content of the business.

And historically, as you well know, there was always this discussion of separation of church and state, metaphorically speaking.

And in media, that meant the market, the business people, the sponsorship people, the money people, they're over there.

The journalists are over there.

In our world, we're both.

What are you?

- Correct.

I am part of the publisher-minded set of journalists.

And it was something that was instilled in us during the revolution of our news media industry, that we should be thinking as publishers.

We lost around two.

- Business people, hold on one second.

When Enrique says publishers, I think he means business people.

- Correct, the people who think about how our journalism can be monetized, how it can bring in revenue to pay for the journalism that we do.

And so back then we, you're right, it was a clear separation.

Church and state, we called it the same thing.

We don't talk to the business side.

Some of us editors did.

I was in features, so I would create products that they could sell, a parenting publication, go find some ads, let's do something in ticket where we cover the towns, and maybe the towns can advertise in that special section.

So I was already thinking in those terms back then.

But moving over to the digital first stage of things, we have metrics, so we know what our customers, our readers are reading, and if something hits, if there's something that readers like, because we know there's a high number of, say, clicks on that particular piece of that story, then we know we should probably do a follow up or something more because there's interest in that.

Other pieces that flop, we think, well, maybe they don't want that and we shouldn't, let's not invest our time in doing those things.

The other aspect, Steve, is I was for five years a publisher and editor of NJ Cannabis Insider.

And that was a product that the newsroom created, not under the business side, but the newsroom decided that we should create a business side to bring in, say, the smaller dollars that perhaps the business side wouldn't consider.

And in that way, there was a small team on the editorial side where we think in those terms, how can we monetize the content that we have to support the journalism that we're doing?

- You know, this is complex stuff.

And in the spirit of, you know, the separation between church and state, editorial and business, the line is there, but it's not the same.

And so in that spirit, let me disclose that nj.com is a media partner of ours.

We distribute some of our content on nj.com.

We promote and market our content on nj.com.

We're partners.

So in my view, if you disclose and people know and people can decide for themselves about the content, whether it's independent enough or objective enough or substantial enough.

But if you don't disclose it and you hide and still act like church and state and there's this cement wall between you, that's disingenuous.

- Yes.

- To be clear, Enrique is trying to work this out every day with his team at a Star Ledger Online.

He's the editor there and he's had an extensive experience, has extensive experience in leadership in media.

Enrique, I wanna thank you so much for joining us.

We'll talk soon.

- Thank you, Steve, for having me.

Great seeing you.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato, thanks for watching.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Hackensack Meridian Health.

Kean University.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

New Jersey’s Clean Energy program.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

EJI, Excellence in Medicine Awards.

A New Jersey health foundation program.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

And by PSE&G.

Promotional support provided by NJBIA.

And by BestofNJ.com.

- You are your child's best advocate.

No one cares more about your child's health, safety, development, and wellbeing more than you.

Empower yourself with the vaccination information you need to make the best decisions for your child.

Hackensack Meridian Health can help.

Learn more about fact-based information at hackensackmeridianhealth.org/ vaccine-facts and always talk to your child's pediatrician.