Mark Porter:
CLASS OF 1971
Montclair High SchoolClass of 1971
Montclair, NJ
Mark's Story
Hi, I'm a retired journalist who's worked for three daily newspapers and served for nearly 19 years as the editor of The Montclair Times.
As a reporter at The News Tribune for 15 years, and then the Home News Tribune for two, I covered nearly all the beats from municipal, county, general assignment to Statehouse, and had been the arts writer twice. By day I interviewed governors and senators; come night, I wrote New Jersey's second-most-distributed music column for TNT and The Bergen Record. Ah, those interviews with Debbie Harry and Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson, The Smithereens and Jon Bon Jovi, Clarence Clemons and Duran Duran!
I'd regularly returned to Montclair to mooch a free meal off my mom and stepdad and eventually realized: I really like Montclair! I moved back to town in 1988, got married, bought a house, and worked for two years in NYC for Investment Dealers Digest, a Dow Jones subsidiary, covering Wall Street mergers and acquisitions during the dot-com boom. IDD's office was in Tower 2 of the World Trade Center. My wife was working in Tower 2 on Sept. 11, 2001, and exited moments before the jet struck.
As a resident and professional journalist, I would write condemnatory letters to The Montclair Times for publishing opinion pieces in the guise of bylined front-page news. In 1998, The Times' editor departed. Several weeks later, I sent in a resume and was hired!
From June 1998 until Gannett bought our company in 2016 removed me from The Montclair Times, promoting me to be an assignment editor at The Bergen Record (and laying off most of my staff and nearly all of the other 37 weekly newspapers' employees!), I connected with readers, sometimes as the target of the screechy calls and letters arriving usually during election times.
Through my editorship, I met some people I'd grown up with, including MHS 1970 and 1971 grads. Dennis Murray, who was a young, hip teacher when I attended MHS, I met again when Dennis was the local teachers' union president.
As editor, I was invited to many local fetes (i.e. Stephen Colbert walked past me at one outside party, oblivious to my head-nodding and fawning stare; I learned to say "hi" to Yogi Berra and not press that monosyllable any further).
At one gala, I met retired MHS Principal Tonnes Stave. My favorite MHS teacher, Mr. Waterman, had died shortly before I became editor of The Times; his passing remains a big loss for me.
Tuesdays were always 14- to 18-hour workdays, writing articles and editorials, ...Expand for more
editing staffers' copy, assembling pages, approving same.
As a journalist, Montclair's a wonderful town to cover. It teems with news and features. As The Times' editorial writer, I got to weigh my opinions and views of the world and state them on behalf of a nearly 130-year-old newspaper, which is great having a professional soapbox (winning statewide awards almost every year for editorials and/or the Editorial Section).
I did a bit of music writing, and constantly came up with new ideas for TMT, resulting in some of our scores of statewide contest wins. I also constantly hired new reporters, as every time we won those statewide awards it opened the door for weekly staffers to find jobs at daily newspapers or magazines. Our MHS Class of 1970 colleague, Gray Russell, had been the environmental coordinator for Montclair, and I was honored to publish a column written by Gray in The Montclair Times.
During my nearly 19 years as editor, The Montclair Times nine times won the New Jersey Press Association's "Newspaper of Excellence Award," or best big weekly newspaper in New Jersey -- more than all of the other "Best in NJ" awards in The Times' 139-year history!
I retired from The Record in 2018, specifically selecting Friday, June 13, as my finale. With The Montclair Times a skeletal visage of what it had been when I was editor and had a full staff of journalists, I then served on the advisory council for a start-up local newspaper, Montclair Local, and freelanced for it until 2023.
My education? I graduated Rutgers U. with an English degree after majoring in comparative literature and a holding a minor in physical anthropology/primatology. I can hold a conversation on maternal/infant bonds among baboons, if not among humans.
I remain a fan of the same movies that journalist savant John Dahlburg and I had cut MHS classes to see in NYC. I enjoy plenty of flicks made since then, along with a lot of TV shows and Off-Broadway theater ... and an occasional Jersey Jackals game.
In my retirement, I'm a trustee of the Montclair History Center. I am vice president of the Dunworkin Club, founded in Montclair during the Great Depression. I've joined the Montclair Bird Club, a local book club, and a politics/everything discussion club that meets in the Montclair Golf Club ... a place where, during MHS, I caddied for two days until a mutual agreement between me and the caddie leadership determined that I was the worst caddie in the club's existence.
Be seeing you, -Mark-
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