The Trentonian is a daily newspaper serving Trenton, New Jersey, USA, and the surrounding Mercer County community. The paper in 2020 has a daily circulation of under 8,000 and a Sunday circulation under 7,000. As of August 2020, it was ranked fourteenth in total circulation among newspapers in New Jersey.[2]
History
The paper is owned by Digital First Media,[3] a media company headquartered in Denver, Colorado, specializing in newspaperpublishing, which owns 75 daily and several hundred non-daily newspapers in the United States. DFM was formed as a merger between Media News Group (MNG) and Journal Register Company (JRC).
In November 2008, DFM announced that some of its newspapers, including The Trentonian, were being put up for sale and the newspaper's daily price increased 43 percent, from 35 cents to 50 cents. Also, the company announced that The Trentonian would no longer be printed in Trenton beginning in January 2009. It will be printed at a JRC-owned facility in Exton, Pennsylvania and delivered to Trenton.
When The Washington Post Company bought the Times in 1975, Katharine Graham vowed to make Trenton a one-paper town. She reportedly would later admit that Trenton was her "Vietnam."[6]
The Trentonian generated community outrage and criticism when it published a front page headline, “Roasted Nuts!” about a fire at a state institution housing developmentally-disabled patients.
The book Tabloid From Hell details what the author considers to be the decline of The Trentonian, with much of the blame directed at Robert M. Jelenic, JRC's former CEO, whom the author says spent too much time on discipline and trivial matters, not enough on quality journalism.[full citation needed] A Mary Walton interview in American Journalism Review was also critical of Jelenic.[7]