30 Years Later The Montgomery News Is Still Kicking

By Richard D. Smith | August 8, 2025

How many successful newspapers owe their beginnings to a rodeo?

Very few, especially among those founded in New Jersey. But that’s the origin story of the newspaper you are now reading — The Montgomery News.

Its founder, Frank Drift, was and remains a Jersey boy. He grew up in Montgomery Township at a time when youngsters routinely got after-school and weekend jobs helping on farms or doing yard work. The going pay rate was 10 cents an hour.

Frank Drift in his office at Daube Farms on Sunset Road in 2018, when Barbara A. Preston interviewed him for an article on the rodeo.

His great great grandfather had immigrated from Poland to Montgomery and started a successful farm on Sunset Road. The property was passed down to the generations of elder sons. Although Frank didn’t take up agriculture himself, he had a knowledge and love of the land.

This led him to “grow” a career as a successful real estate investor after he graduated from Princeton High School in 1961. (At the time, Montgomery had no high school of its own, but was a sending district for nearby Princeton.)

Always one to give back to his community, Drift donated to many local charities. One day Drift was sifting through fundraising letters when he asked himself, “Why can’t we have one big event to raise money for all of them?”

Living on a farm property with a strong equine heritage, he figured he could stage an annual rodeo with the profits divided among these groups.

His first rodeo was in 1995 — that same year he founded The Montgomery News.

A Rodeo and a Newspaper

How are the two connected? Drift was always one to do his homework. He and his wife (Noel) began attending rodeos in the west, tapping into the network of performers and shows that toured the country.

“Still kicking” typically means alive and active, or continuing to exist and function. It can also be used to describe something that is still popular or successful, despite expectations that it might fade away. The phrase often implies a sense of resilience and continued vitality. From the bucking broncos of the Montgomery Rodeo to today, The Montgomery News is still kicking. Photo by former Montgomery resident and star photographer Frank Veronsky.

He also realized that a Montgomery rodeo wouldn’t succeed unless he could “find a way to let everyone know a rodeo would be in town.”

After visiting the established Somerville and Princeton newspapers, he discovered putting full page ads in all them would cost somewhere between $1800 and $2500 — a serious sum now but even greater 30 years ago.

He was sitting at his desk pondering what to do when a knock came at his door. It was Brian McCarthy, a freelance reporter-photographer for The Princeton Packet looking to do a feature on the upcoming rodeo.

Drift readily agreed to be interviewed and, in the process, shared his need to spread the word about the show if it were to be successful. McCarthy was writing all this down when he suddenly stopped.

“You’ve got a lot of people in this town,” McCarthy said. “Why don’t you start a newspaper? I could help you. I could be the editor.”

Sharp at recognizing when opportunity literally knocks on your door, Drift answered, “Let’s do it!”

The Montgomery News introductory issue dated August 1995. It was mailed first class to all residents of Montgomery Township (population 9,612 then) and Rocky Hill (662 population). The paper is still mailed first class, and the population has grown to about 24,000 and 755 respectively. The cover story on the first issue was the Montgomery Rodeo, of course.

A Newspaper Is Born

Having their priorities straight, Publisher Drift and Editor McCarthy immediately started soliciting ads.

A cadre of volunteers (including Drift’s grandchildren) got involved. It was a hard sell to local stores, which weren’t keen on spending money, even for advertising. “But we got enough,” said Drift, ”and we worked up the paper.”

The inaugural rodeo was held on the Drift family land at the corner of Burnt Hill Road and Sunset Road.

Drift said the paper was a great success from the start. One notable difference from today’s Montgomery News is the content.

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Good News Only

(No Police Blotter)!

Drift’s concept from the start included good news only. For example, there was no police blotter. “We needed a good newspaper: no negativity! Everything positive, every public function, school sports and so on,” Drift said.

At first the paper didn’t do much in the way of “hard” news and did not even include a roundup of local crimes, accidents and arrests.

This changed as The Montgomery News truly became “the” local paper. Readers wanted news, good and bad.

The Inaugural Issue

Of course, the inaugural issue featured two full pages of rodeo preview. “It was a big hit,” Drift recalled, adding with a smile, “And now all of a sudden all the stores wanted to have an ad!”

With Brian McCarthy’s solid expertise in journalism and news photography, Drift began to assemble a staff, all volunteers at the start: Madeline Hagen, Russell Fuchs, Nancy Grasso, Linda Bauman … names he remembers to this day with great gratitude.

The operation soon moved from his home office in a comfortably renovated former horse stable on the family farm to a small building with high visibility on Route 206, which had stood vacant for several years. Basically, it was a glorified, winterized farm stand. Later editors recalled the toilet water freezing due to lack of heat in the building.

“We renovated and cleaned the place up,”

At any rate, McCarthy handled the editorial and photography functions.

“He was a super nice guy. We worked closely. He really helped me with the paper,” Drift said.

Bauman did a super job as office manager, and Drift provided the crucial (and leg-work-intensive) job of getting ads and taking page flats to the printer.

Having made his vital contribution, McCarthy soon returned to his eclectic career as a freelance writer, photographer and, later, videographer. He became an assignment photographer for United Press International.

Over his career McCarthy had contributed to The Times of Trenton, The Trentonian, the U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, the NJ 101.5 website, and MidJersey News. He won special praise for being an on-the-spot man during breaking news stories, always highlighting the service of police, firemen, rescue squads and other first responders.

Brian McCarthy may have had some issues with the “good news only” philosophy of the early paper, and he moved on after about a year. David Pilla was named editor in June 1996.

Over the years, Drift says, the rodeo raised more than a million dollars for local charities and non-profits. (“My family and I never took a penny from that.”) And the newspaper was one of those all-too-rare unexpected but happy side consequences.

“I did it for the rodeo,” said Drift, looking back. “But I came to realize that Montgomery really needed its own newspaper.”

Come the 2000s, with the original volunteer staff long gone, and Frank and Nancy having happily established The Montgomery News as a regional presence, it came time to find new ownership to continue and even build on this legacy.

And Drift again proved that it pays to advertise.

A Photographer Buys the Newspaper

Cliff Moore brought solid and varied experience to the next era of The Montgomery News. In addition to full-time photography work for The Princeton Packet, he was the promotional photographer for McCarter Theatre for many years, as well as several Broadway shows.

Montgomery News Editor and Publisher Cliff Moore with former Rocky Hill Mayor Ed Zimmerman on the left. Moore ran the paper from 2000 to 2017.

Moore was also a Jersey boy, although with roots further south in the Garden State. His forbearers had been instrumental in founding the Camden County town of Lawnside, perhaps the state’s first incorporated towns organized by free Blacks.

Moore was living in Rocky Hill in late 2000 when he saw an ad — “We’re for Sale” — in The Montgomery News.

Intrigued, he reached out to Drift who, for his part, saw that Moore was sincere in maintaining the paper’s core values.

Moore did his due diligence. As he recently recalled in a telephone interview: “My concern was demographic: What was the readership and who were the advertisers?”

He liked what he found. “I knew if we could maintain the ad base while the circulation increased, we could make a go of it. The fact that it was mailed first class to every household was a big plus. And the readers were interested in what we had to say.” Moore decided to acquire the paper.

One important proviso of the sale as negotiated: If the rodeo continued as an annual event, it was always to get a free full page ad. Drift published the January 2001 issue, and then Moore took over with the February 2001 issue.

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Hyper-local News Coverage

Early on, Moore got great encouragement from Richard K. Rein, a Princeton University grad, People Magazine writer and, founder of the once highly successful U.S. 1 Newspaper serving the greater Princeton business and arts communities.

Rein imparted this wisdom to Moore: “If you’re covering community news, the uppermost reader interests will be taxes and the activities they fund, particularly the schools.”

Moore adhered to strict news coverage of the main communities of Montgomery and Rocky Hill, only covering news outside their borders when news or public events were of direct interest to people in those communities.

He made immediate upgrades to The Montgomery News’ capabilities, installing computers and software to better handle production and locating a printer who would produce the paper in color without extra charges.

In 2005 came another vital step — The Montgomery News went online with its own website, which is still going strong at themontynews.com.

“Now we could cover all kinds of news online — stories and events that would be over by the time we published [our next monthly issue],” Moore said.

A key to Moore’s success was having a talented ad sales person, Melissa Kurtz. Her family had been in Montgomery for generations, and she knew the business folks.

She was followed by another dedicated ad rep, Mollie Morgan, who had the newspaper business in her blood. Her grandfather, the late Judge James Kerney of the NJ State Court of Errors and Appeals, was founder and publisher of The Trenton Times.

Come 2017, after a lengthy and highly successful run, Cliff Moore felt ready for his own personal changes — notably retirement.

He took a page — literally — from Frank Drift’s approach, placing an ad in the paper itself: “We’re for Sale, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.”

It attracted the attention of businessman Norman M. Silverstein and editor/photographer Barbara A. Preston.

The Montgomery News was founded in 1995 to publicize the local rodeo, and initially included “positive news only.” Each summer, the newspaper prominently featured a photo from the Montgomery Rodeo on the cover. Above, from left: Publisher Norman Silverstein and Editor Barbara Preston meet Founder Frank Drift in 2018. Drift stopped by the office to make sure the rodeo would still have premium placement under the new ownership.

Visit The Montgomery News Archive online!

Print issues of the newspaper are available online at themontynews.org/archive dating back to February 2018. The editor is working to post all issues, dating back to 1995.