I was a reporter at the Star-Ledger for three months. But the paper, which effectively died today, followed me – or I followed it – most of my life.

I remember being about 12, lying on our living room floor reading Newark Evening News. The News, which preceded the Ledger as New Jersey’s largest and most influential daily paper, was legendary, with scores of reporters, a venerated sports desk and a TV critic with enough clout to get me tickets to a taping of the Ed Sullivan Show! The News published from 1883 to 1972 before it fell victim to a prolonged labor strike.

The demise of the Newark News left a gaping hole in New Jersey journalism which the Newhouse family, owners of the Ledger, adroitly filled. The paper quickly replaced the News as the state’s indisputable paper of record.

Back to me. When I started as reporter for the Asbury Park Press in 1979, our daily circulation was well over 100,000. At the Star-Ledger’s apex, it sold nearly 450,000 copies a day and almost 750,000 on Sundays.

While the Press flooded ever-growing Monmouth and Ocean counties with reporters, the Ledger had them all over the state and in Atlantic City and Washington D.C., along with what was said to be the largest statehouse bureau in the country.

When I moved in 1985 from Asbury Park to the Associated Press in D.C., the Ledger’s powerful, longtime editor Mort Pye had a copy of the paper delivered to my office every day, presumably so I could see what I was missing. When the Ledger reluctantly deigned to run the AP version of a story about New Jersey, the byline was omitted.

I stayed in the Star-Ledger’s orbit in 1989 when I left journalism to become a spokesman for then N.J. Gov. Thomas H. Kean, who would call his press office every morning to ask what was in that day’s Ledger. Much of my time in the governor’s office was spent answering questions from Star-Leger reporters.

When Kean’s second and final term ended, I was hired as press secretary for the re-election campaign of N.J. Sen. Bill Bradley, who as with the outgoing governor was the subject of enormous attention by the Ledger. Bradley won re-election by a surprisingly narrow margin which did not translate into a job offer for me.

But a few months later, I found myself in Pye’s office accepting his offer to fill in for one of the paper’s most senior Statehouse correspondents on a three-month sabbatical. I still have clippings of front-page stories I wrote about the infamous statewide outcry over whopping tax increases by Kean’s successor, Jim Florio.

When the reporter I replaced decided to stay retired, Pye offered me his job – which I foolishly declined. I moved on as “flak,” or spokesman for a half dozen city and state agencies before I retired in 2016 – fielding questions from Ledger reporters all the way.

I’m still here, but as of today the Star-Ledger is not. Buffeted by a huge drop in circulation, the Newhouse family eliminated the print edition.

As far as I know, my dear friend and mentor Carl Golden was the only professional ever to serve as chief spokesman for the executive, legislative and judicial branches of NJ government. Golden told me in 1989, “The three people who run New Jersey are Hy Grossman (who set the state’s credit score for Standard and Poor’s,) Tom Kean (then governor) and Mort Pye.”