Image via WikipediaIf you live in Hackensack and subscribe to The Record of Woodland Park like I do, you have to get out there and pick up your paper early. Are you thinking there is some important Hackensack news in the paper, or stories about Teaneck and Englewood? How naive can you be?
No. I should have gotten out there early today, because it is pouring, and the dysfunctional circulation department had some poor, exploited guy with three jobs steer his SUV down my street and throw my Sunday paper onto my driveway in a single plastic bag -- open to the rain. Most of the paper was soaked and it was past 10:30, so I couldn't call for a replacement. Hey, I have the news sections. Am I really missing anything in the other sections? Mike Kelly? Ha! What a joke.
Staff Writer Elise Young deserves to have most of the front page today for another in an occasional expose on the state's screwed-up public pension system, and even a law Governor Christie signed last month won't touch lobbyists who are enrolled in lifetime health care. But one great story can't carry the paper.
The lazy, incompetent news and food editors won't budge on assigning reporters to a project on the obesity epidemic, but A-1 today has a Star-Ledger story on overweight military recruits from New Jersey.
There is so little Bergen County news of any import in Local today, readers must feel they've been slapped in the face by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes. Why is a story on two Catholic schools in East Rutherford and Wood-Ridge running today and not earlier in the week when The Record reported the closing of Paterson Catholic Regional High School?
Why is there a huge story about falling home values in Little Falls in my paper? Or a fish kill in Caldwell? Or Wayne's search for a superintendent? Or even a man shot in Paterson? Did nothing happen in Hackensack and Englewood?
Does former Publisher Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, who lives in Englewood and goes to his Hackensack office, care about the lack of local news? Does Editor Frank Scandale care about the job he's doing at the former Hackensack daily or is he still boasting about what he did at The Denver Post more than 11 years ago? Do Mac's spoiled children -- Stephen and Jennifer, who are now running the paper from Woodland Park -- care?
Does Sykes, who lives in tiny Harrington Park, care about the lack of local Bergen news? When is the last time you saw a story about Harrington Park in the paper? Must be a great place to live with low taxes and wonderful municipal and school officials, a veritable heaven on earth for home-rule advocates.
The sad truth is they don't care. The editors are secure in the knowledge they have employment for life -- no matter what they do in the newsroom -- because none of the Borgs pay any attention to the newsroom. If you're spent time around the Borgs, you know they act as if they are American royalty.
You should have seen Mac in the Bergen County Courthouse on April 9. He and Superior Court Judge Joseph S. Conte, who presided at the jury trial of my age-discrimination lawsuit, recalled a speech Mac had given on the courthouse steps. Then Mac, dressed in a beautiful pinstripe suit with a pocket square, was off to see Judge Peter Doyne, whose father the elder Borg knew. How cozy.
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Funny you should mention Harrington Park: Tiny Bergen town cuts police force.
ReplyDeleteSmall town, small-minded editor lives there. Think they had the story? Nope.
And leave Mac alone. He deserves deference. He's earned it. Just because he's ceded control, after the disaster that was Markey, doesn't make him a bad guy.
Maybe, given some of those upper management hires he made, he's decided he's lost the touch. He doesn't have a mean bone in his body; despite the bluster, he's a good man beneath it all.
Whenever I'm in a courthouse I covered, I check on all my old friends. That's just what you do. It's like going back to your old school.
At his age, he SHOULD be walking around in sartorial splendor. He's operated one of the few singly-owned newspapers in the country. He's won major awards. He's changed public policy and helped those in need.
That doesn't go away because the newsroom is being guided by a doofus who probably steps out of the shower to take a leak...
Scandale seemed a bargain at the time. Just his luck, 9/11 happened -- only he had very little to do with the actual coverage. Since then, what's he done? Followed orders, driven talent away, and turned an upscale place to be into a taco stand.
All's I'm saying: Keep the focus where it belongs. Not the owner(s) or the peons, but those in-between who are truly making the decisions.
Aren't these insights from Jerry DeMarco priceless? Well, Mac never covered the courthouse; is he a powerful publisher who maybe thinks a few judges should show him the proper deference? Of course, he should wear his best suit. The last time I saw him before April 9 was two years earlier, when I bumped into someone on the way into work. He was coming out of the elevator in Hackensack, and I didn't recognize this old man who seemed unsteady on his feet. He was dressed casually and I watched him as he approached the exit by the guard station. It was Mac! I could hardly believe it.
ReplyDeleteSo, then, where is the compassion?
ReplyDeleteVictor, why do you always have to be reminded to play nice? Judges are always former lawyers; I've known tons who "ascended" to the bench -- we didn't suddenly stop being friends.
Pete Doyne has been a friend of the family for a very long time. In fact, he's also the friend of a lot of reporters.
I was a concert in Englewood one night when I ran into Michael Thaler (RIP). He was with a guy in a beat up old sweatshirt and baggy jeans, who walked a bit hunched over, like Quasimodo.
It was YOU, Victor! I could hardly believe it.
I am twice Michael's size. How could you mistake me for him? What year was that? 1993?
ReplyDeleteRead your previous comment about bumping into Mac. Then read my comment about bumping into Michael, who at the time was accompanied by an at-first unrecognizable guy in a sweatshirt and jeans. I can't believe I have to spell it out for you.
ReplyDeleteYou were being obscure. Just address my comment about Mac. You don't believe he looked bad -- old -- and was unsteady on his feet? Prostate cancer was only his latest health issue. You are familiar with all the rest.
ReplyDeleteHonestly: I thought he looked good considering all he'd been through.
ReplyDeletePut yourself in his shoes, for just a minute. Down deep, you think he's happy how everything's turning out -- not just to his empire but throughout the industry that's been in his family more than a century?
Malcolm Borg never counted on this, cause the knuckleheads at the switches never told him. For Christ's sake: Markey openly told the entire company that TR was going to "bring younger readers" back to reading newspapers.
When your president makes a complete fool of himself, you can't keep him around much longer. So what were Mac's alternatives? Step into the breach himself? He couldn't, given his health.
Go find a bona fide president? With what "brain trust" to help him choose one?
Jen never wanted it. She's a lawyer (a good one, too), not a publisher. So Dad scraped the bottom of his own gene pool and gave the keys to the SL to Corey Feldman.
The Prodigal Sin first had the weeklies to play with. He turned them into money-makers.
So Dad, when push came to shove, went with him as a last resort -- a heartless, punchless boob who couldn't hold his old man's suspenders, who grew up in the shadow of a smarter, more popular sister. The kind of dork whose high school life must've been an unending series of wedgies.
From there, the formula's simple: Shit rolls downhill.... Frick & Frank do what they're told. Mama Crass bitches to her immediate subordinates, then kisses ass when called to account. And a huge investment is made in Ian O'Connor -- who immediately brings the paper major sportside cred, then parlays that to greener grass.
The hope then becomes that Klap returns to form, that the weekly reporters can be absorbed into the mainstream, and that dollars in Passaic County can be tapped.
F&F vehemently oppose the moves; unfair to Local 12! But that's really the only hope they have, as their budgets grow smaller and smaller.
The staff shrinks. Holes aren't filled. Everyone's told to do more with less -- when, actually, it makes them less inclined to meet that directive.
Meanwhile, F&F run from one side of the ship to the other, trying to figure out what'll make Junior happy, instead of establishing principles that stick.
Be sure to tell everyone how you don't vouch for the accuracy of anything I say. Then privately ask people you trust if even the slightest shred of this isn't the absolute truth.
victor , quasimodo...priceless.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting you never addressed the friendship or some kind of friendly relationship between the judge in the case and one of the witnesses in the trial. I thought that was illegal anyway.
ReplyDelete