Bergen Record reporter and editor also worked for Gov. Brendan Byrne

By David Wildstein, New Jersey Globe

Robert R. Comstock, a widely respected statehouse reporter and newspaper editor who served as a former top aide to Gov. Brendan Byrne, died on February 25.  He was 93.

He died of complications related to COVID-19, The Record reported on Sunday.

After a brief stint at the Ridgewood News, Comstock joined The Record in 1953 and was the statehouse reporter and public affairs editor until 1973, when he was named assistant editor.  His weekly column, “The Record on Politics” became a staple for the state’s political elite.

In March 1975, Comstock took a leave of absence from The Record to become Byrne’s public information director, a post now known as communications director.  He replaced Herb Wolfe, who went back to his job as assistant editor of the Trenton Times.

At the time, the first-term governor was struggling with low job approvals of around 20%.

Comstock announced in January 1977 that he would return to The Record in March as the new executive editor.  He replaced Carl Jelinghaus, who had stepped down as editor and remained the newspaper’s vice president.  Comstock added the VP title to his portfolio when Jelinghaus retired.

The revolving door attracted some criticism when The Record endorsed Byrne for re-election in 1977, although Comstock said he recused himself from those discussions and the Bergen County newspaper endorsed former state labor commissioner Joseph Hoffman against Byrne in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

While working at The (Bergen) Record, Byrne appointed him to serve on the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority.

He was part of an era of New Jersey journalism giants that included Joe Katz of the Newark News, John Kolesar of the Associated Press, George Cable Wright of the New York Times, George Schick of the Trenton Times and S. Bolton Schwartz, known as Boley, who covered Trenton for the Herald News.  Comstock led the newspaper during a time when it was hugely influential and admired.

After his retirement from The Record, he served assistant director of the Rutgers University Journalism Institute and as a member of the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct.   He also worked at a lobbying firm headed by Alan Marcus, a prominent Bergen County Republican insider.

Bob Comstock, longtime New Jersey journalist and former editor of The Record, dies at 93

By Daniel Sforza NorthJersey.com

Robert Ray Comstock, a fixture in the New Jersey press corps from the 1950s through the 1980s who served as Executive Editor of The Record for more than a decade, died Thursday. He was 93.

Comstock also had stints working as the press director for Gov. Brendan Byrne, as an associate professor at Rutgers University, and after leaving journalism, working in public relations.

Comstock died of complications from COVID-19.

Described by one former reporter as running The Record’s newsroom with “an iron fist and a velvet glove,” Comstock oversaw the newspaper in the pre-internet age when print was still king. His tenure at the helm of the paper covered everything from the Iran hostage crisis to President Ronald Reagan being shot to the Challenger space shuttle explosion and the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s.

In North Jersey, one of the most controversial stories of the decade — the Baby M case — occurred on Comstock’s watch.

Mary Beth Whitehead was paid to serve as a surrogate mother for Elizabeth and William Stern of Tenafly who were looking to have a child. The case made national headlines and resulted in a custody battle and trial that helped to define surrogacy law. A television movie was eventually made, and several books were written about Baby M.

Comstock also ran the paper during the tenure of former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean. Kean recalled that The Record did not endorse him for governor during his first-term campaign in 1981, but did when he ran for reelection.

“He was a first class guy,” Kean said of Comstock on Friday. “He did a tremendous job for the paper and the state. He was not a Republican, so we had some disagreements along the way. But always in friendship.

“You could disagree with him,” Kean said. “But you never lost respect for him.”

Robert Ray Comstock was born in New York City on Sept. 17, 1927 to Phyllis and Kenneth Comstock.

His mother, Phyllis Taylor, had come to the United States from Australia to tour on the the vaudeville circuit with her sister and parents. Kenneth Comstock was an insurance salesman with Mass Mutual during the depression. Robert Comstock himself had eight policies, his daughter Kate Comstock Davis said.

Comstock’s parents met at a Daughters of the British Empire tea, married and moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey, where they built a home in 1930.

Comstock began his newspaper career as a paper boy for The Ridgewood News at around age 10. He graduated from Ridgewood High School in 1945 and then enlisted in the Navy.

“As a boy growing up in a British household, Dad huddled by the radio with family, listening to the dispatches on the blitz in London, and was itching to join the fight,” Comstock Davis said. “He enlisted for a kiddie cruise before he even graduated high school, but by the time he actually served the war had ended. 

With his naval service behind him, he returned to New Jersey, attending Rutgers University and majoring in journalism.  A highlight of his senior year was representing Rutgers in the Philip Morris on Broadway CBS radio competition where he was paired with movie star Barbara Stanwyck — even sharing a kiss.

He spent those summers acting and doing press for the Summer Stock in Corning, New York, which gave him the chance to work with other notable stars of the era, including Burt Lahr, Kim Hunter, June Havoc, Zasu Pitts and Jerry Orbach.

Back in Bergen County, he landed a job with the Ridgewood News after meeting a young woman whose father was the managing editor. About a year later, in 1954, he was hired to write for the Bergen Evening Record.

For the next 20 years, Comstock held roles including reporter, political writer, public affairs editor and assistant editor.

“He was the political editor and a damn good one as I recall,” said former Record columnist John Cichowski, who penned the Road Warrior column. “He had such insights into how politics worked. Who all the movers and shakers were. He was able to straddle those boundaries between how to present the news objectively, yet still use the solid contacts with these people.”

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