South Jersey Local is proud to announce that we have launched our first print edition! To help bring our mission of telling South Jersey’s stories to life, we’ve partnered with a quartet of well-known local digital content creators.
While our focus is primarily on crafting a print newspaper, we acknowledge the power of online platforms when they’re done right, and we believe we’ve picked four of the best around to join our team. In the next couple days we’ll introduce you to each of them individually, with profile stories on each to let you get to know them better.
In this feature, we introduce you to Joey Contino of the Wildwood Video Archive. Contino’s coverage of the happenings at the Jersey Shore and beyond has been exceptional for many years now, with the South Jersey native telling stories through award-winning video reports and informative written articles. Having Contino on the South Jersey Local slate of conttributors has been an absolute pleasure so far and we can’t wait to see what’s next to come!
Joey Contino’s Wildwood Video Archive may actually be something of a misnomer.
He doesn’t only focus on Wildwood, though as you’ll soon read, it’s certainly where his heart is.
He also doesn’t only create videos, though he does make them extremely well.
The archive part of the name may be the most accurate, as he sees his mission as preserving the history of his beloved Jersey shore town, and the surrounding area.
“It’s documenting history that’s already happened and history that is happening,” Contino said of his editorial focus in both the videos and written articles he creates.
Building a Brand
His output is substantial and constantly expanding.
Wildwood Video Archive, which is just one of Contino’s platforms, includes a website, a YouTube channel, a popular Facebook page and more.
Through professionally-produced videos, and expertly-crafted written articles, Contino details day-to-day life at the shore, often highlighting the developments and comings and goings of businesses that keep the resort towns in constant flux.
His content often breaks news before other larger media outlets, while also providing a deeper look at those stories than you might find elsewhere.
Where it All Began
Contino’s road to becoming an online journalist began in Gloucester County, where he grew up and went to Washington Township High School. After graduation, he headed just across the river, attending Temple University in Philadelphia.
Of all the online personalities we’ve partnered with, Contino probably has had the most traditional and straightforward path to getting into the news business.
He majored in Communications, specifically studying mass media and broadcast journalism at Temple.
Oh, Those Wildwood Days
But it was his love of the shore that would ultimately shape just about everything in his life.
“I was always a Wildwood guy,” Contino said.
He said his great-grandfather, in the 1930s, built the house in North Wildwood that’s still in the family today.
“I’m the fourth generation in that house,” he said. “I love everything about Wildwood.”
His love of being in the Wildwoods led to him working for one of the best-known businesses on the island, the Morey’s Piers amusement company. What was initially just a summer job in turn led him to his career in media.
“Doing the announcements on the boardwalk for Morey’s Piers got me involved with doing a lot of my audio stuff,” he said. “I used to be the guy, from 2008 to 2014, the ‘may I have your attention please, may I have your attention please,’ guy. That was me! That got me in love with doing anything for audio.”
Sincerity Leads to Success
That love of the resort island, Contino said, has without question translated into the success of his own online output.
“Someone is happy to open a video to see something about their favorite place, or read an article about something new coming to their favorite place,” he said. “In a way, even though they’re not physically there, their memories transport them right back to the Jersey Shore.”
In 2014, he said he started doing online news reports about Wildwood, as well a finding and uploading old footage of the shore town to act as a sort of historical archive.
“I started buying old 8mm films, 16mm films of Wildwood, digitizing them, putting them online,” he said. “As I was trying to save older history, I also wanted to save the history that was going on around us. It was around the time that we were losing hotels and motels and I wanted to document all that stuff.”
Striking Digital Gold
Contino said his content immediately found an audience and it continues to gain in popularity.
“Since then, it’s blown up,” he said. “Ten years later, we’re covering Atlantic City all the way down to Cape May. We have an Emmy nomination. We’ve won multiple awards. We just hit 100,000 on our YouTube channel and won a YouTube award.”
The Emmy nomination Contino mentioned was for best “Historical/Culture – Long Form Content” video in the 2023 Mid-Atlantic Regional Emmy Awards. The honor was given for Contino’s video on a story not from Wildwood, or anywhere in Cape May County for that matter, but rather a bit further north, in Salem County.
The video was entitled “South Jersey’s Unknown Ship Graveyard,” and it focuses on former World War I ships intentionally sunk as a breakwater in the Delaware River in Lower Alloways Creek Township.
Contino’s interest in ships also recently saw him providing excellent coverage of the saga surrounding the storied cruise liner the S.S. United States. The ship, which was a fixture along the Delaware River in Philadelphia for decades, was recently removed from that site and towed down the coast, where it will soon be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to form an artificial reef off of Florida.
Contino reported on the developments as they happened and captured footage of the ship as it set out on its final voyage.
International Affairs of the Heart
It wasn’t just a love of journalism that Contino found in Wildwood. He also found the love of his life.
“My wife and I met at Morey’s Piers,” he said. “We met there and fell in love there.”
Contino said his wife Julia had come over from Ukraine in 2010 to work in
Wildwood as part of the J-1 student visa program.
“We fell in love that summer,” he said of what at the time could have been just a brief romance, as Julia had to return home at summer’s end.
But they managed to stay in touch and carried out a very long distance relationship, which would soon progress even further.
“We talked on Skype every day for hours on end,” Contino said. “She came back and we made the decision. I said, ‘I need you to stay with me.’”
The couple has now been happily married for about 10 years.
From Wildwood to War Correspondent
But world events being what they are at the moment has meant that things for the past few years have not always resulted in just happy news for the couple. Julia still has family in Ukraine, and Contino has now created another platform, this time on TikTok, where he details news from the war with Russia.
“We’ve been rated one of the top political/news sources on TikTok,” Contino said.
His video reports on Ukraine have led to a massive audience, with more than 700,000 followers on TikTok and tens of millions of views per month.
“Because of everything going on in Ukraine, and her family, I wanted to use everything I know about journalism, and how to speak to people, to convey what’s going on, so that people get the real truth and real information in real time,” he said.
Still Doing What He Loves
Despite his new foray into more serious topics of life and death, Contino doesn’t seem like he’ll be slowing down his coverage of his happy place anytime soon, and you might not ever find a bigger supporter of the Wildwoods and its history than you will in Contino.
“You tend to remember two kinds of memories – really awesome memories and really bad memories,” he said, when asked what it is about Wildwood that makes it so special for so many people. “When people think about the Wildwoods, they think of how many times they went down the shore with their grandparents, their parents, their own kids, their grandchildren.
“They remember their kids’ first time on the slide or the carousel, their first time diving into the ocean, going fishing, catching a monster fish, going crabbing. They remember all those awesome memories. So that even on a frozen, cold December day, they feel warm inside thinking about the awesome time they had there.”
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