Rank commercialism with a heart?

Image by roboppy via Flickr

Business at the mall translates into more advertising revenue for North Jersey Media Group.

Does Editor Francis Scandale really expect readers to believe The Record of Woodland Park's intensive shopping coverage today is all about the rebuilding of our economy? Or is the spread on Page 1 the usual naked grab for more retail advertising revenue as the former Hackensack daily  struggles to stay afloat under his incompetent leadership?


After all, didn't the paper help destroy North Jersey employment and deal a blow to Hackensack's Main Street by downsizing and abandoning the city where it was founded in 1895? 

Could greedy Publisher Stephen A. Borg have chosen a worse time to suck out $3.65 million from North Jersey Media Group's reserves in the form of a mortgage at an undisclosed interest rate on a Tenafly McMansion?

Is the mortgage related to the layoffs of 20- and 30-year newsroom employees that followed several months later, in the first half of 2008?

When I opened today's paper to see how much A-1 space was given to the Black Friday story, I was surprised to see a touching sidebar by Staff Writer Leslie Brody, who still is mourning the December 2008 death of her husband, Elliot Pinsley, whom she met at The Record, where he was an assistant assignment editor and she was one of the reporters he supervised.

What are Brody's reminiscences about Pinsley doing on the front page with shopping news? She says she couldn't bring herself to move his sweaters out of his dresser drawers until a co-worker gave her a reason -- a church collection. The connection to shopping? The economy? 

Or it it bloodless Scandale's desperate way of trying to hook readers? 

On the continuation page (A-8), Brody reports: "The five children we brought to our marriage have shared some happy milestones lately." But she says nothing about how her ex-husband or his ex-wife are doing.

Another former staffer shows up in a prominent position on the front of Travel, which is delivered with the Saturday paper. That's Rich Rainey, onetime graphic artist and an accomplished banjo player, shown in Seattle in a promo for "Record on the Road." Inside on F-3, as usual, you won't find any African-American travelers pictured. 

The story on the front, by Travel Editor Jill Schensul, is accompanied by a badly outdated photo. But she admits her visit to Philadelphia was a "press trip" -- a junket that cost the paper nothing. I guess that's another way The Record is cutting costs. 

That raises the question of whether last Sunday's odd Travel cover story on "glamorous camping" in Montana also was a junket for The Record editorial assistant who wrote it? Or did the paper pay her way, as its ethics policy dictates, because thousands of readers are lining up to take vacations at that expensive resort?

On the front of Local, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes finally confronts the obesity epidemic with a story-and-photo roundup of towns that have joined the Mayors Wellness Campaign.

On L-7, you'll find the dark side of all that shopping coverage on A-1. A woman returning from shopping is confronted in her Alpine driveway and bound before the suspect steals items from her home. 

There is no local food coverage in Better Living today.