The Star-Ledger, Advance Publication’s largest newspaper, reached a deal with its unions Wednesday night ahead of last Friday’s contract deadline. (Image via NJ.com)

Richard Vezza, publisher of the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger, Advance Publications’ largest newspaper, last summer threatened to close the newspaper if the company did not receive major concessions from the paper’s four unions. The unions and the newspaper last week reached contract agreements that keep the newspaper publishing, which union president Ed Shown acknowledged involved “a lot of painful and hard decisions.”

I had interviewed Shown in late June for my book, who was confident then that the paper would not close and that a contract agreement would be reached by the end of September. He made his deadline.

Read about the details – and the rather telling deletion of a quote from the newspaper’s publisher that mysteriously disappeared from the NJ.com’s online reports – in my book, in bookstores the week of Oct. 13.