Only 911 People in Town : These Reporters Really Know Readers

The reporters on the Roosevelt Bulletin know their readers. Almost all of them.

There are just 911 people in this central New Jersey town, which was founded as a social experiment in 1936 and named after FDR.

“But there are a lot of people expecting babies,” Honey Socholitzky said.

Socholitzky, 78, is copy editor at the monthly newspaper, which is staffed by volunteers who cover the school board, the planning board and their neighbors.

The staff is serious about its work. Since the Bulletin began as a mimeographed newsletter 11 years ago, it has grown into a sharp tabloid of 24 pages, neatly laid out with modern graphics.

Its content also has evolved.

“We’re a small town with some fairly large problems,” the editor, Mark Zuckerman, said. “We have some big decisions that have to be made.”

Reporters write about happenings such as the geese that camped at the town’s only gas station, but they also pay close attention to the issues.

Improvements Needed

Decisions must be made on how to pay for updating the sewer system and making school repairs. The Bulletin reports the potential solutions and residents take to the opinion columns.

“We’ve become a little more hard-newsy,” Socholitzky said. “There are a lot of problems in town, in that some people want to see it grow and some don’t.”

About 600 acres of city-owned farmland is in the path of builders, and residents are debating whether to sell it to help pay for some of the needed improvements.

“Some people think if we let in the developers we can double the population and bring in some money,” Zuckerman said. “Some people don’t think that’s such a great idea.”

The growth debate keeps Bob Clark busy on his planning board beat.

“I’ve always just had a desire to stay involved in the affairs of the community, “ he said. “It gets to be a bit of a drain because you have to keep up with it, going to meetings and so on, but it’s worth it.”

State-Employed Reporter

Clark said his “real” job, as deputy director of the state division of investigation, precludes him from holding political office, but writing for the Bulletin gives him an outlet.

“Occasionally, someone will question the objectivity of a hard news story, but I chalk that up to them not getting their favorite quote printed,” he said.

The newspaper is no more unusual than the the town. Roosevelt, an experiment in socialism founded with New Deal financing, was established by immigrant Jews who moved here from New York.

Garment workers here made coats in the winter for sale in a cooperative factory and raised their own food in summer. The experiment failed after three years, but the town remained.

Like most of the newspaper’s staff, Clark and Socholitzky have non-journalism backgrounds.

Reporters’ articles are edited in an office owned by Zuckerman’s company; Zuckerman takes care of the graphics on a computer.

‘Purist’ Does Editing

To Socholitzky, the editing is of paramount importance.

“I took a two-year hiatus once, but I had to come back because I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the editing,” she said. “I’m a purist, grammatically.”

And she is picky.

She once discovered a grammatical error in the listing of ingredients on a baby food label.

“I wrote (the company) and said I didn’t want to raise a baby on a baby food with a split infinitive in it,” she said. “They wrote back and said they had already printed thousands of labels, but would correct their error on the next printing. And they did.”