Journalist Michael Aron *70 Commanded Respect From All Sides

Like New Jersey governors before and after him, Chris Christie always called on Michael Aron *70 first at press conferences.

“I hoped it would set the tone for the rest of the press conference,” Christie, the Republican governor from 2010 to 2018, said on NJ PBS last year. “Michael’s questions were often very analytical. He would get me to look at things a little bit differently.”

Aron, known as the dean of the statehouse press corps, served for nearly 40 years as chief political correspondent for New Jersey’s public television network. He died on Aug. 13 at the age of 78.

“He commanded respect on all sides, in the tradition of Walter Cronkite,” recalls longtime friend Tom Moran, a Newhouse News Service columnist. “He was meticulously fair-minded. He saw his job as laying out the facts. I never heard him trash any politician.”

Aron received a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University in 1968 and a master’s from Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs two years later. Disillusioned by the Vietnam War, he chose a career in journalism over government.

He wrote for publications on both coasts, including Seattle magazine and Rolling Stone, before becoming editor in chief of New Jersey Monthly in 1978. Four years later, he smoothly transitioned to broadcast journalism, helped by a sonorous voice, his lanky frame, and a deep measure of gravitas.

Even at the end of his career, Aron outhustled reporters half his age, staying at the statehouse until midnight when a legislative session ended at 6, says Briana Vannozzi, the anchor of NJ Spotlight News.

But Aron also worked to nurture colleagues. For Reporters Roundtable, a weekly public affairs show Aron hosted, “he would deliberately go out and invite young reporters before some of them thought they were ready,” Moran says.

Vannozzi benefited from his support after her promotion to anchor. “I definitely had impostor’s syndrome. I felt I didn’t have those Ivy League credentials. Michael sat me down and said, ‘You are every bit as smart as anyone else here. Never stop doing your homework, never stop asking questions, and you’ll be fine.’”

Aron covered nine New Jersey governors. Three former governors and the widow of another attended his memorial service. “I just loved the guy,” the current governor, Democrat Phil Murphy, said on NJ PBS. “He was a giant — smart, funny as heck, very fair in a world where there’s not a lot of fairness.”

Not every politician appreciated Aron’s doggedness.

Aron found President Bill Clinton in a virtually empty room during a fundraising stop in 1995. With the cameras rolling, Aron asked the president about criticism that he changed his positions too often. A red-faced Clinton repeated, “I disagree with that” several times.

“I really had to gather myself,” Aron later recalled. “I had just been screamed at by the leader of the free world.”

Perhaps Aron’s proudest journalistic achievement, says his second wife, Linda Ippolito, was his investigative work leading to the 2010 release of Quincy Spruell, who had been wrongfully convicted in the shooting death of a drug dealer. “Over the years, he wrote me many letters, but not about the case — about relationships, family, health,” Spruell said at Aron’s memorial service. “He became a friend.”

Outside of work, Aron loved soccer, playing until he was 72, Ippolito says. His passion for politics also burned bright until the very end.

“In the final days of his life,” his middle daughter, Nina Renata Aron, said at the service, “when he was no longer speaking or responding and his eyes were closed, I leaned down and whispered into his ear: ‘Christine Whitman [a former Republican governor] is backing Kamala Harris.’ He raised his eyebrows in an undeniable show of interest.”

Philip Walzer ’81 is a former newspaper reporter and alumni magazine editor.