Guy Sterling
Guy Sterling (born September 23, 1948) is an American journalist, author and historian. He spent most of his 35-year newspaper career as a reporter with "The Star-Ledger" in Newark, New Jersey, primarily covering the courts and criminal justice matters, the Meadowlands sports complex and the New Jersey Mafia. Background and early life. Sterling was born in Orange Memorial Hospital in Orange, New Jersey. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (class of 1970) and a master's degree in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (class of 1972 ). He began his daily newspaper career in 1970 as a municipal government reporter with the "Courier-News" in Plainfield, New Jersey and ended it in Newark. Over the course of his career, Sterling routinely published as many as 200 bylined stories a year. Author and independent researcher. Sterling has authored two books: "Elvis in Roanoke", published in 1977 when he was a reporter with "The Roanoke Times & World-News" (1975–78) in Roanoke, VA, and "The Famous, the Familiar and the Forgotten: 350 Notable Newarkers" in 2014. In 2011 and 2012, he also wrote and produced a series of radio pieces  on Newark's history for WBGO Jazz Radio 88.3 in Newark. They aired as a segment entitled "Guy Sterling's Newark" on the "WBGO Journal." Career at "The Star-Ledger". Sterling spent almost 30 years as a general assignment reporter in Newark, starting in 1980 and retiring in 2009. He won a national award for excellence in music writing and was a member of "The Star-Ledger" staff that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting. Also, a story of his was used as the theme for an award-winning season of the HBO series "The Sopranos" and, when  he left daily journalism, he was given a retirement party by the mob and a plaque for his organized crime coverage by the U.S. Justice Department. Sterling was a lead reporter in "The Star-Ledger"’s coverage of the fatal dormitory fire at Seton Hall University in 2000, stories that continued for years. They earned the paper its first-ever selection as a Pulitzer Prize finalist along with the American Society of Newspaper Editors Jesse Laventhol Prize for Deadline News Reporting by a Team in 2001. Other major stories he covered were as follows: Retirement from "The Star-Ledger". Following  retirement in 2009, Sterling became involved in a number of civic projects in Newark: