About us
New River Press began in 1990 when Paul F. Eno, an award-winning metro-daily newspaper editor in Rhode Island, decided to work from home for awhile in order to personally care for his young sons. His idea: Apply the best standards of American community journalism to the usually boring, fluff-stuffed newsletters and magazines that fill our mailboxes.Not only did the idea take off, it stuck! Paul's sons grew up and joined him in the business, as have other professional journalists from time to time. Association leaders and public relations professionals alike have praised New River Press's award-winning newsletters and magazines as the most substantive they have ever seen. New River Press later tackled book publishing, and now radio, television, e-books and even advertising sales.
How New River Press got started
By Paul F. Eno, Founder and Owner
In 1990 it dawned on me that I could take what I'd learned in many years as a newspaper and magazine journalist and bring it to companies and organizations so they could have good, substantive publications like "The Rhode Island Builder Report." Most importantly, I could work at home and be with my young son, Jonathan, all day. My wife, Jackie, had a job that wouldn't permit that.
When New River Press got going, I was working out of an old chicken coop (no kidding) adjacent to to our little house in the woods of Cumberland, Rhode Island, and just using my own name. Three years later, and a year after our younger son, Benjamin, was born, my wife and I worked up a hare-brained deal with the church whose land we abutted. We would swap our property for an equal amount of land they owned on the other side of the Blackstone River, in the Town of Lincoln. We'd build a house there, and I could continue to work on my editorial enterprise.
Meanwhile, my mother asked, "Why don't you name your company?"
I'm a great believer in names taken from locations. I think companies should be proud of where they are. Well, our new digs were to be on Old River Road. Old River Press? Sounded like I was publishing books on antiques. The new property was next to the church cemetery. Except for the fact that I write books about, among other things, New England ghosts, no ideas there. Just below the property, however, was New River Road.
Ah haaa!! I even used the magnificent oak tree on the property as the company logo.
Alas, an engineer then told us that it was the worst homesite he'd ever seen. So the whole deal fell through, and we moved up the river to a big house in Woonsocket instead. Despite all the changes over the years, however, the New River Press name has stuck, and so has the tree.