Songs by reporters who covered the NJ Statehouse over the past 50 years, awards to current reporters for outstanding coverage during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the trailer for a documentary film on the nation’s longest-serving NJ Statehouse reporter will highlight the program at the inaugural Byrne-Kean dinner next Wednesday night.

The event is a benefit for the Corporation for New Jersey Local Media, a non-profit founded to preserve, promote, and strengthen journalism and expand civic engagement. The event is being held at The Stone Terrace at John Henry’s in Hamilton Township at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 29.
“It was fitting to name this annual dinner for Brendan Byrne and Tom Kean because they embodied New Jersey’s best tradition of principled leadership and bipartisanship, both during their governorships and in the statesmanlike roles they played in civic life in the decades that followed,” said Nicolas Platt, CNJLM’s founding chair “We expect this event to become a staple of the New Jersey political calendar and serve as an annual gathering for the politicians, governmental leaders and journalists who shaped New Jersey from the Byrne and Kean era to the present day.”

Platt announced that CNJLM is serving as the non-profit sponsor for the completion of “Saint Joseph,” a documentary film by videographer Tim Stollery on Joe Albright, the Jersey Journal reporter who is the nation’s longest-serving Statehouse correspondent, A 5-minute trailer from the film including interviews with Governors Tom Kean, Jim Florio, and Jim McGreevey will be premiered during the dinner.
A commemorative newspaper is being published for the dinner that includes columns by CNJLM vice-chair Linda Stamato, current Legislative Correspondent Club President Michael Symons, and Joe Donohue, who edited the Post Mortem published at Legislative Correspondents Club shows for almost two decades. Also featured are reminiscences and anecdotes by current and former reporters Paul Mulshine, Harvey Fisher, Jim Manion Dan Weissman, John Froonjian, and others, all of whom are also singing in the show.

Tickets for the dinner are $150 and sponsorships are available through the CNJLM website at www.NewsWeNeed.org. Major sponsors currently include Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, Hackensack Meridian Health, Orsted, and the Rowan Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship. Rachel Holland, president of Rachel Holland Special Events and Consulting, is serving as the dinner coordinator.

Launched 16 months ago, CNJLM is a 501c3 non-profit that is working to preserve and strengthen community journalism by expanding the model of non-profit community ownership to newspapers in New Jersey. “It is critical to the future of democracy and civic engagement that the Corporation for New Jersey Local Media succeeds in its effort to preserve community journalism by transitioning newspapers to non-profit ownership that can sustain and expand them as a public trust,” former Governor Tom Kean said in announcing the event.

In addition to its work to preserve nonprofit journalism, CNJLM’s programming includes free Community Engagement Series webinars that enhance civic engagement by bringing critical public policy issues to a broad audience. Its nine webinars have featured government leaders like Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick, Port Authority Chair Kevin O’Toole and Senator Steve Oroho, and policy experts ranging from Professors Richard Keevey and Charles Steindel to advocates like Brandon McKoy and Janna Chernetz.

The non-profit is also working with Stefanie Murray, director of the Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media, to establish a solution journalism-based collaborative that would bring news organizations together to work collaboratively on major issues.

Murray served as chair of the evaluation committee that selected the winners of the New Jersey Journalism Impact Awards that will be presented at the Byrne Kean event to reporters whose in-depth reporting illuminated critical issues and uncovered information that would otherwise have remained hidden to the public and policymakers, exemplifying the importance of a robust, professional and independent media. Two Lifetime Achievement in New Jersey Journalism Award, for broadcast and for print, are also being presented.

Platt and Amanda Richardson, CNJLM’s executive director, worked with Kean and Ruthi Zinn Byrne to put the dinner together.

“We are pleased that our dinner honors these governors, whose years of ‘Byrne-Kean Dialogues’ in the Sunday Star-Ledger set a standard of civil bipartisan discourse in the tradition of the Adams-Jefferson correspondence that our Civic Engagement series seeks to emulate,” said Richardson.
CNJLM itself is a “Team of Rivals” – Platt, a Republican, and Richardson, a Democrat, teamed up to found CNJLM after running against each other for Harding Township Committee in 2019 in a campaign marked for its public-spirited debate.

“For democracy to flourish, we know we need to do the work of journalism in new ways,” said Stamato, CNJLM’s vice-chair and a Senior Policy Fellow at Rutgers University’s Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. “Finding a sustainable model is more than a public good, it is a civic necessity.”
Richardson said CNJLM chose the Stone Terrace for the location of the Byrne-Kean Dinner because its large outdoor terrace and tent adjoining a large ballroom allows for proper social distancing. Vaccinations are required for all attendees, and masks are required indoors. “We wanted to take every precaution to ensure we can have a safe and successful event,” she said.