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Here is the latest comment from former Breaking News Editor Jerry Demarco on Malcolm Borg and the ascent of Stephen Borg (The Prodigal Sin) to North Jersey Media Group president and publisher. As he notes, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of anything he says, but, boy, it's so readable and entertaining -- as DeMarco does his own version of walking a tightrope across the Great Falls (photo):

"Honestly: I thought he [Malcolm Borg] looked good considering all he'd been through.

"Put 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."