Jim Jones (2018)

Jim Jones, a former sports editor of The Ridgewood News, is being inducted as a Special Contributor to Ridgewood High School athletics. Jones has covered sports on a full-time basis for The Ridgewood News since 1960, serving as sports editor from 1970 to Dec. 31, 2000, when he ended his full-time work at the newspaper. He has remained on the staff for part-time assignments since then. His sports sections received a number of awards in the New Jersey State Press Association contests, and, in 1969, his Sports Sidelights column was selected number one in New Jersey for daily and weekly newspapers. Jones is a native of Bergen County, Montvale and Park Ridge High School. Starting as a correspondent for The Record in high school, he later did newspaper work in a four-year stint in the Air Force on Guam and Columbus, Ohio, and received a BA in English from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he worked four years full-time for the Muncie Star, a morning daily, and left as the assistant sports editor, returning to New Jersey. Jones was the sports information director at Fairleigh Dickinson University through the 1960s in addition to his work at The Ridgewood News. He received an award from the Bergen County Coaches Association in 1998 for long-time contributions to scholastic athletics. Jones served as co-chairman of the Sports Medicine Seminar with Doctor Vincent W. Giudice, then head of orthopedics at The Valley Hospital, 1974-1986. Jones has been honored by the North Jersey Masters Track and Field Club for helping the Ridgewood Run to become one of the top road races in New Jersey, and he covered 23 of the first 25 races, starting in 1976.

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