Well, we've shared that Michael was a mentor to many of us here at NJ Spotlight News.

His search for the truth inspired us all.

He had more institutional knowledge of New Jersey policy and politics than just about anyone in Trenton.

His reporting gave voice to important issues in the state and the public important insight on what they were about.

Joining me to talk about how Michael's work shaped local news reporting here, our senior political correspondent David Cruz and senior writer Colleen O'Dea.

David, so of course, you had a great working relationship with Michael and personal relationship.

You also took over two of the shows.

One has since changed.

But what do you feel like you gained by working alongside Michael and also being his pal in the NEWSROOM?

Let me say, first of all, I feel every week the big shoes that I have to fill every week, you know, when when we're trying to be smart, we're trying to contextualize, you know, I feel that every.

Week because Michael was.

Yeah, totally.

Totally.

Especially with roundtable, which was his baby, literally, you know.

But I just a couple of things.

When I first the first time I ever saw Michael, we were outside WBGO, which is down the block from the old NJ and had quarters in downtown Newark.

And Michael was walking by and I just looked at him.

I was like, Oh, that's Michael Aron.

And he was just staring straight ahead, right?

And I'm like, Who is this guy?

You know?

But then years later, the first conversation I ever had with Michael, I'm on a shoot.

I get a call from Tim Stollery, who was his long time cameraman with whom I also worked a few years.

He says, I got someone who wants to talk to you.

I'm like, Okay.

So I pick.

I'm on the phone.

And this is David.

This is Michael Aron.

And in that voice that he had is uniquely his.

And he complimented me on the package that I had done two days prior, just talking about the writing and all the stuff that I take pride in.

And he just nailed it.

And he didn't have to call me to say anything to me but that I took like a I am here now.

He was really good colleague.

I love that story.

David.

And something that has come out from a lot of other journalists is how Michael promoted everyone else's work.

That's something that I've taken with me in my professional side of life is to promote other people's work, to recognize when it's smart and it's thorough and detailed.

And Michael did that regardless of whether you were a competing outlet or not.

It's only in recent years that you and Michael worked in the same newsroom, but you've known each other for a long time.

Yeah.

And, you know, for for me, I was a young, quite young reporter down at the state house.

And so he was kind of like everyone looked up to him, Right, Because he's Michael Aron.

You know, he's the guy who always asks the great questions at news conferences.

And I remember the first time he asked me, I was there a couple of months to to do roundtable, and I said, oh, I couldn't do that.

You know, I couldn't be on the air.

I don't know anything.

I don't you guys, you.

Sort of question, why is he asking?

Right?

Come on.

He knows everything.

He doesn't need me on here.

And the guests, you know, all of these other reporters who've been working there for so long, he says, You know, I read your stuff.

I look at your stuff.

You're doing a great job, you're smart, you'll do fine.

And I said, okay.

And, you know, he came in the first time, you know, when I was getting make up and said, don't worry about it, you're going to be fine.

You know, you're going to be fine.

And I, you know, probably did roundtable once a month after that.

So he really gave me the confidence to feel because you can it's it's a daunting place down there.

There it's not the place it used to be.

There are not as many nearly as many reporters as there were, you know, back 20, 30 years ago.

But everybody there, at least once you when you first get there, seems like they know everything.

And it just makes you feel like, oh, boy, you know, I don't know anything.

I don't know what I'm doing.

Right.

Well, when you have someone with that type of gravitas who says you're talented, right, you believe it.

And I wonder what we now lack by having that sort of person with that institutional knowledge.

You know, Michael was a walking encyclopedia of state politics.

What we lack now in our landscape without someone like him to not just point out, hey, you're talented, but he also had a way of helping you cultivate it, especially for those of us who got to work alongside him.

Where do you see the landscape now shifting with so much turnover, especially in this market?

Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a real problem.

You know, you've got a Charlie Stile at the Bergen Record, right?

He's got that kind of institutional knowledge.

And and there are some reporters down there who are very good and who've been there for a while, but it seems like too many places and there are not a lot of news outlets that are covering Trenton anymore.

But too many places, you know, when there are unfortunately layoffs or when folks decide to leave and move on, you know, somebody goes in there who's just green and then they don't have that institutional knowledge.

And so much really, I think, depends on that.

You need somebody who can say, well, you know, back 20 years ago, they tried to do this with the with the property tax or they you know, they did this five years ago.

Bill has died six times.

Is never going to make it.

Exactly.

But I mean, to Colleen's point, David, a lot of journalists see New Jersey as a hole, as a stepping stone, right.

To get to a major or national media market.

Michael, of course, did not.

Many of us don't see it that way.

But what does that say about sort of the platform that Michael set up to say, like this is a place to not only hone your skills but spend your life's work?

Yeah, I think it's funny because Michael started in national outlets and then, you know, kind of boiled it down to New Jersey.

I think for me, I'm really concerned.

I was thinking about this as, you know, we were dealing with the the reality of Michael's passing is that this is a really important time right now in our business.

I call it the era of the shrinking reporter because while we have thousands of outlets, we have fewer and fewer reporters who have the stuff that Michael had.

Integrity, just smarts, institutional history, all of those things that aside from how you deal with other reporters, how are you dealing with the news of the day and providing really good journalism that now it's much more hit and miss than it used to be?

And for me, that's what I miss about seeing Michael passing.

And do you think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that we're all chasing the the fact that we're not just a 24 seven news cycle, but we've got, you know, 8 to 20 different platforms that people are consuming news on.

When you think about someone like Michael, that wasn't necessarily his thought.

His thought was, I'm going to probe and dig into this story, whatever it is, and so I wonder moving forward how he would approach what we're all confronted with every day.

To me, the danger is feeding the reporter to the format and not making a format for the reporter.

And I think that that's really important because you can chase algorithms all you want and find out that everybody loves videos of puppies, but that's not necessarily news, you know?

And so sometimes it's got to be reverse.

You have to trust the people who do the journalism to know what's happening and then work away so that you can put it on the 80 different platforms that people are going to be watching it.

Carl, you were shaking your head to that.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's just it's just miles away from where I started out, where Michael started out in terms of things like having to worry about X form of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, tick tock.

Right.

And, and what plays on each format, Right.

What plays on those formats and how how to, you know, create these little snippets or these really quick bites to try to catch people's attention.

I mean, what we're in the business to do is try to explain things.

You know, we don't we tend to not think that, you know, we're chasing that spot news story.

I mean, we we go for those and we hit them.

But we want to give people context and we want to give them the background that they need to kind of, you know, be better informed citizens and make good decisions.

I'm thinking in our election coverage.

Right.

Well, and that was the charter of public Television.

Absolutely.

Media.

Right.

Right.

But so that doesn't play as well today or it's harder for us to get that across.

And so thankfully, we do have a team that, you know, it's a small but mighty team that helps us with social media.

But it's it's a hard thing to then get those those really important messages across.

Mm hmm.

So something that I often would ask Michael is just, you know, what do you think about this story or what do you think about whatever, you know, craziness was happening in politics or with a certain politician or what have you.

So I want to just ask you both what you would leave to say to our younger generation of journalists who are coming into this pipeline or in school now to become a reporter or thinking about it, about how to approach stories and how to ensure that we keep the integrity of the landscape that New Jersey media has had for so many years.

This is a business that can make some reporters of a certain age feel like a dinosaur because so much is happening just in terms of platforms that are being created and used and brought to the front.

What I would say to new reporters is don't go into journalism, honestly, because it's not so much of it isn't as much a place for all of these things that Michael brought to the table as it used to be.

And that makes me concerned.

Colleen, we'll go out on your final thought.

I'll try to be a little bit.

More.

Positive to certainly use all of those skills that you've you're learning in school, that you've learned in school that that maybe we didn't have.

Right.

But don't forget the basics of journalism, which is to make sure you get all of the background, make sure you get all the facts in and present the facts and not the fake news kind of stuff, and make sure that you get both sides, make sure that you use that integrity right.

You do that reporting.

So no matter what happens, how much things change the fundamentals, those building blocks don't change.

There's still these.

Things.

Apply.

The fundamental things apply.

Colleen O'Dea.

David Cruz.

Good to sit and chat with you both.

Thanks.