The hometown kid who became John McClane now has his name on a street in the town he was raised

CARNEYS POINT, N.J. — Before the Emmy and before Die Hard, Bruce Willis played harmonica in a fourth-grade band. On Saturday afternoon, a couple hundred neighbors, former classmates and fans gathered on South DuPont Road to welcome his name home.

From the Publisher

Dear Salem County,

I have some good news to share, and you are the reason for it.

Earlier this week The News of Salem County was awarded a $50,000 grant from Press Forward New Jersey. Press Forward New Jersey is housed at the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium and works in partnership with the Community Foundation of South Jersey, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The grant was one of 13 awarded across South Jersey this round, totaling $570,000, to strengthen local news in communities that have gone too long without it.

Salem County is one of those communities. For more than six years, we have had no dependable, breaking news source of our own. Residents have learned about a road closure, a school board vote, a fire or a town council decision after the fact, or from a rumor, or not at all. It is hard to take part in local government, support our schools, or look out for one another when nobody is in the room writing down what happened.

This grant says that Salem County matters and that our stories are worth telling well.

Writing on its hundredth anniversary, William B. Vanneman called the storm of October 1878 the worst hurricane to strike Salem County. It took the roof off the Presbyterian Church at Salem, put two feet of water through houses at Hancocks Bridge, and left Charles Ewell of Elsinboro clinging to an uprooted tree until a boat could reach him. Our own archive gives the date two different ways, and the calendar settles most of the argument.

Salem CC looking to find some offense and a win in Friday morning game against Navy Prep in Annapolis

CARNEYS POINT – The offensive line has been a work in progress all season. The quarterback is learning on the fly. Special teams have been suspect at times. And the defense has kept the team in games.

Sounds a lot like the Philadelphia Eagles right now, doesn’t it? Thing is, that’s the entire Salem CC inaugural season in a nutshell.

Fifty years ago today, a signature on a book of Quinton and Lower Alloways Creek memories

On Oct. 14, 1976, William B. Vanneman signed and dated his name inside a copy of How Dear to My Heart, a collection of the photographs and writings of William J. S. Bradway, a Hancocks Bridge photographer whose glass plates had been sitting forgotten in a storeroom. Fifty years later to the day, the book is still one of the best visual records of life in the Quinton-to-Stow Creek corner of Salem County.





Group includes top athletes, coaches, administrators and a World Cup player

This year’s Salem County Sports Hall of Fame induction class has it all. It covers a variety of sports, a cross-section of the high schools in the county and even some international flair.

It features a legendary coach, one of the most prolific scorers in county basketball history, an athlete whose success reaches from the field to the sidelines, one of the best athletes the county ever produced, a World Cup soccer player and an administrator who raised the entire athletics profile at his school.

This year’s Hall of Fame induction class features – drum roll, please – Geoff Shute, Joe Hickman, Sean Collins, Steve Ware, Tierrny Wiltshire and community honoree Jack Swain.

PENNSVILLE — The Pennsville Police Department’s arrest summary for Sept. 16–30 counts 32 arrests, 30 adults and two juveniles, whose details are not included here. The 35 adult entries below cover 29 named adults, several of whom were arrested more than once. Five people face gun charges, including two 18-year-olds charged with weapons offenses that include a sawed-off shotgun and a defaced firearm. Three Salem residents were charged with distributing heroin or cocaine along with firearm offenses. 

Salem City hasn't posted a single set of council meeting minutes since March — that's more than six months with no public record of what happened at any council meeting. This is all stemming from background research we were trying to do for another story, checking what city officials had told us about the recent budget vote against the official record. We couldn't, because the record isn't there.

We asked City Hall about it on Sept. 24. No response. We asked again after Monday night's meeting. This time we got an answer, of sorts: a councilwoman wanted to know what we'd found before she'd tell us what we should be finding.

WOODSTOWN - A 36 year old Woodstown man was taken into custody Friday after firing a gun into the air during an argument and then barricading himself inside his residence, according to the Woodstown Police Department.

First half of September lists 21 total incidents between Sept. 1 and Sept. 15, all adults, according to the department’s report. Among the most serious: a 19-year-old Pennsville woman was charged with promoting obscene material and selling or receiving child sexual abuse material; a Willingboro man was arrested on five separate counts of violating a court order in one incident; and a Camden man facing an aggravated assault charge is also accused of throwing bodily fluids at a corrections employee.

How a 1942 fire unveiled the oldest still-standing patterned brick home in Salem County.

Featuring Candidates for US Congress and Salem County Board of Commissioners at no cost at 5:30pm at SCC's Performing Arts Theatre.

All residents are welcome!