Image by greenkayak73 via FlickrDid desperate Hackensack officials -- angling for news coverage, any coverage -- charter a boat and dangle fish to lure a group of lovable dolphins up the Hackensack River and onto the front page of The Record of Woodland Park?
Oh, they're so cute and lovable. No. Not Hackensack officials or residents of one of the most diverse communities in Bergen County. They're not so lovable, North Jersey Media Group decided many months ago -- too many blacks and Hispanics. So the Borg family abandoned the city physically and editorially to save money as readership declined under the weak leadership of Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Scandale.
But Hackensack is back on Page 1, thanks to eight to 15 wrong-way dolphins and an apparent scoop by environmental reporter Scott Fallon. He'd much prefer to write about dolphins than a state clean-energy bureaucracy that frustrates homeowners, who have to wait up to two years to get solar panels installed. (Generic photo shows how dolphins strand while feeding.)
Did head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes -- who has pulled the Hackensack reporter off her beat for months at a time -- push this story for A-1, rather than Local, because she saw kindred spirits in these 300-pound animals? This is the first time in years Hackensack has been on Page 1.
There's a bigger story on the front -- because of cuts announced by Governor Christie, NJ Transit users face higher fares and less service. Of course, local bus riders in North Jersey have endured those "cuts" for years -- forced to use a fleet of shabby vehicles so much older than the buses mostly white commuters ride into Manhattan.
But Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski and transportation reporters Tom Davis and Karen Rouse are lazy. And Sykes and the other assignment editors don't think the blacks and Hispanics who ride local buses are as cute and lovable as dolphins, so this local bus story has never appeared in The Record.
The Local news section today continues to ignore real education, development or municipal news from Hackensack and Teaneck, not to mention other Bergen County towns. Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano has her first municipal story since Feb. 6, but it's about two buildings the school district sold to the city, not the segregated elementary and middle schools.
In Business, Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais reports that a new Walmart in North Bergen -- the first in North Jersey with a full grocery store -- "seems to be an instant hit," judging from the parking lot on Monday, but fails to point out it was a holiday when many people had the day off and likely ended up there.
He also doesn't report whether the store sells anything but conventionally raised meat and poultry, which are pumped full of antibiotics or growth hormones that are harmful to humans.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_a.png?x-id=a1397c03-c457-4ad3-97ec-8321581ae996)
I hope the Record does the right thing and puts the face of none other than Bernard Kerik, who was just an inch away from becoming the head of Homeland Security on the tomorrow's cover now that he is a federal convict.
ReplyDeleteIt might. Kerik is from around here.
ReplyDeleteI work for NJMG, and lord knows many of us are not happy. In a sick way I like reading criticisms about the main product of the company. Like others, I feel used by my immediate bosses as well as the main chain-of-command. But you seem to hammer the same points, about the lack of coverage of towns, NJ Transit, nicknames of people, and your preference for natural foods, over and over and over again. Find some new things about the paper that piss you off. It would breathe some fresh air in here, maybe even bring some more commenters. Fluffy leads, low-resolution graphics with stories, obvious typos and other mistakes are a little more boring, but they are showing up more and more and that's a little alarming too.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea about Stephen Borg's mortgage out of the company, and given this company's shoddy record of sharing information with employees, I'm somehow not surprised that this was not known to everyone. I work on the weekly side, where budgets are kept thin so the money made can go right into The Record and the awful new website that wouldn't even let me log in to comment on a post.
Here's a question: we've all noticed the growing number of stories from outside the Record area, as part of the content sharing agreement with the Star Ledger. Advance Publications is in the crapper as well, and obviously both companies sharing content helps to save some money and paint a more complete picture of NJ, in theory. How long until one party explores a buyout of the other?
Thanks for your comments. I know I hammer home the same points and I'll try for more variety, but some of the stories The Record doesn't do are major omissions. I've recently started to comment on the superficiality of stories or how they leave out major towns such as Englewood. As for the Star-Ledger stories, they are really lousy and often don't include anything about North Jersey, such as the recent one on arts centers that left out BergenPAC in Englewood. The copy editing is so bad because of all the Herald News rimsters who don't have a clue about Bergen County and the slot who just wants to keep his job and retire, and has put aside all concerns about quality, accuracy and so forth. I think Stephen Borg is bored with The Record and Herald News. He's more of a visionary and marketing wizard who sees the Web as the future of NJMG. I'm not sure of a buyout. Does either party really have the resources to buy the other? You think the weeklies' profits go to holding up The Record and the Web site? That's too bad, but remember, Stephen Borg gave up one of NJMG's biggest profit centers -- commercial printing -- when he moved printing of the dailies to Rocakaway and fired more than 50 press employees. Please keep the feedback coming, and encourage others to do so, as well. Again, thanks.
ReplyDeleteBorg has re-started the commercial printing division, saying he will be much more selective in which customers to take on so that they don't have an effect on existing products. Two of Gannett's upstate NY weekly papers will be printed by NJMG. So the money may be coming in again. But I have to wonder what their window for press is, given everything they print.
ReplyDeleteStar Ledger has never really cracked the Bergen County area, so I think their stories go with the Record's to paint a slightly more complete picture of the state. I'm guessing each paper wants to be a little more complete in their coverage, without doing it themselves.
And I would think the weeklies profits (all or some) go back to the dailies, moreso because while their products see improvements and changes (and new hires), the weeklies staffs see no raises and no real way to discern one from the other, except for the name.
There's no way commercial printing will approach the profits of the past, when the entire Rocakaway press building could be devoted to other newspapers. The two weeklies are a baby step in the right direction, but highlight Stephen Borg's biggest business blunder.
ReplyDeleteCheck your sources Victor, the "weeklies" are the Journal News and the Poughkeepsie Journal. It was announced months ago. Don't you have friends on the inside who leaked you the memo?
ReplyDeleteThere was a story in The Record's Business pages about NJMG printing those two weeklies. The point I was trying to make is revenue from that won't begin to approach the profits from commercial printing in the past. Ending that commercial printing was a blunder, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThey are daily newspapers with a combined circulation greater than the Record's. But let's not let the facts get in the way of a good rant.
ReplyDeleteYou mean the combined circulation of The Record and Herald News, don't you? So you are suggesting the revenue from printing those two dailies will exceed the revenue from a dedicated commercial-printing operation in Rockaway that turned out USA Today, the Irish Echo and numerous other papers, and was consistently profitable, to the point where it made up lost revenue and then some from other NJMG operations, quarter after quarter? Of course, you're not suggesting that. You know this is just a good first step in restoring commercial printing revenue.
ReplyDeleteI'm not suggesting anything. I'm saying that you are wrong when you say that the Record is printing two weekly newspapers when it's printing two daily newspapers. And the Journal News' share of USA Today also. Spin and digest it any way you would like. Your facts were wrong.
ReplyDeleteOK. It's daily newspapers, not weeklies. Look at the anonymous comment from Feb. 19. I took what he/she said as true: "Two ... upstate NY weekly papers." It's not spin. Is that all you've got?
ReplyDelete