Saturday, June 18, 2011

Lots more advertising than news

Flood Road ClosedImage by freefotouk via Flickr
In New Jersey, prison inmates make flood signs, not license plates.

I've got two sections in front of me, totaling 20 pages of news and advertising, all that's left of The Record's Saturday edition.

I eliminated 34 pages of classified and auto advertising; a fluffy, food news-less, 8-page Better Living section; and the 12-page Sports section, which, as usual, does a piss-poor job of covering automobile racing, especially Formula 1.

Cars v. water

I love that Page 1 photo of stranded Route 3 motorists -- actually by one of the paper's photographers, as opposed to the many front-page images from around the world favored by Editor Francis Scandale.

The drivers must be from out of state, because they seem bewildered at the flooding that closed the highway. 

Garden Staters, on the other hand, are so resigned to decades of official inaction they wouldn't even get out of their cars and might try to back up to an exit. 

Taking the oath

What's the hot local news today?

The front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section is dominated by two court stories and the naturalization of 29 Bergen County residents from (wow) 16 countries. Is that a record?

Good cop, bad cop

On L-3, a story on how many school superintendents are leaving because of Governor Christie's salary cap only reminds readers he hasn't capped the ridiculous pay packages of hundreds of police chiefs.

But the assignment desk produced so little local news on Friday, L-5 has three long, wire-service obituaries of people most readers have never heard of.

Another great job by Deirdre, Dan, Rich, Christina and all the other assignment editors.
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2 comments:

  1. Even more about Better Living was the Edel story on gardeners gifts for Fathers Day. All the items conveniently located on the internet on the day before the holiday. Might any of these items be located in a nearby retailer? Talk about lazy! Let's just search the web. It's no wonder there's not a whiff of local business in the paper. Why shop local when all the merchandise is apparently on the web.

    And keeping goldfish healthy? This is clearly a staff out of touch.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, the department (Better Living) stinks from head down, and the head is Barbara Jaeger.

    You would be hard put to find an editor who is more unpleasant to work with.

    ReplyDelete

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