Saturday, October 30, 2010

Editors have contempt for older readers

2000–2001 Toyota Camry, photographed in the Un...Image via Wikipedia
A 2001 Toyota Camry, like the one above, barreled into a Paramus house.


The 77-year-old man who launched his Toyota Camry into the side of a house in Paramus told police the "brakes failed," according to a caption with the handiwork of Staff Photographer Tariq "Crash" Zehawi. But the real failure is head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who refuses to launch a project on the challenges facing older drivers and the help available to them.

You've seen variations of this photo in The Record of Woodland Park scores of times in the past 20 years: an elderly driver loses control of a car, climbing stairs or hitting a store, a house, a tree, another vehicle or a pedestrian -- sometimes with fatal consequences. The paper covers most of the accidents with a single photo and caption or just a few paragraphs, rarely following up. The man in the latest accident isn't even identified.

Sykes and Editor Francis Scandale have contempt for older drivers, just as they do for Alzheimer's victims and older newsroom workers. They've discriminated against the elderly by running more than one series about autism, but none about Alzheimer's. Scandale even thought he could stop declining readership by aiming coverage at 20-year-olds. What a farce.


Today's Local section has a dozen election stories, but residents of Hackensack, which has municipal elections in May, are out of luck, and there isn't any Englewood news, either.

Bomb scares for Halloween

A-1 today is dominated by the worldwide for search for explosive cargo at airports. Six Record reporters worked on the story.


An A-2 correction notes the A La Carte column in Better Living was mistaken on Friday when it reported Avenue Bistro in Clifton had closed, when it had just moved to a new location.

The erroneous closing notice still appeared this afternoon on the Second Helpings blog at northjersey.com. It was posted by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung -- only one of the major errors she has made since joining the paper about three years ago.

A second erroneous notice in A La Carte on Friday wasn't corrected. 

Omusubi Gombei, a Japanese chain known for its handmade rice balls, opened a kiosk at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater on Friday and will sell rice balls there through Nov. 7. The notice in The Record says it will open "by Nov. 7." 


See: Warm, delicious Japanese rice balls


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