Kicking Paterson when it's down

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On a clear day, Manhattan is visible from West Milford.

It's usually Editor Francis Scandale who kicks Paterson when it's down, but now the impoverished city's own mayor and three aides are getting into the act, prompting The Record to run more front-page coverage and an editorial today.


According to the A-1 story squeezed under a one-column headline, Mayor Jeffrey Jones and his three top administrators will return more than $20,000 in overtime pay they received after Hurricane Irene hit the Silk City. 


On Friday, the payment of overtime was Page 1 news in the Woodland Park daily. Today, as incredible as it may seem, the mayor left open the possibility he might in the end deserve overtime.


Moral outrage


In the past decade, Scandale has done a great deal to shape Paterson's image in the eyes of his largely suburban readership, claiming in two major series that drug dealing and prostitution were corrupting North Jersey residents. 


In both cases, the overwhelmingly negative stories were published without any balancing material on Paterson's rich and storied history:


How the Great Falls drove it to become America's first industrial city; the architectural riches of its Eastside mansion district or its bustling Middle Eastern and Turkish bazaar in South Paterson.


Paterson isn't just a city that has been "battling crimes, drugs and poverty for decades," as today's editorial says. Here is a link to the history of Lambert Castle, built by the most successful silk baron:


The Story of Catholina Lambert's Castle 


But that sort of thing bores the simple-minded Scandale, who often fails miserably in his responsibility to readers. 


And I don't know if the editor paid overtime to his reporters and photographers, but the series was so detailed that one day, a user-friendly map was published showing the street corners where drug dealers operated.


Getting it wrong


The paper has been covering the Tyler Clementi story for more than a year, but still struggles to get its facts straight, as noted in an A-2 correction today.


The editorial on A-11 treats the Paterson mayor and his aides harshly, but stops short of calling for their resignations. I can't find anything in the coverage on what Jones has done since he was elected.


Nor is there any mention today of how state aid to the city is tied up by political squabbling in Trenton. 


And while Scandale has exposed all of the city's flaws, he's directed no coverage of unscrupulous landlords, redlining banks and the other forces that keep down the predominantly minority residents.


Police news out front


The major news on Page 1 and on the Local front today basically are police stories -- a 15-year-old boy hit by a school bus in foggy West Milford and a manhole blast in downtown Ridgewood -- complete with photographs.


The latter story reports no one was injured, but quotes the police chief as saying the underground explosion had "enough force to rip up the manhole cover partially and leave it ajar."


The L-1 photo caption reports "severe power outages," but the reporter calls them "sporadic."


The Ridgewood story really is a waste of space, but a desk laboring under head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes couldn't come up with anything more legitimate from the 90 or so towns in the circulation area.


Borgs gulp


Congratulations to Staff Writer Andrew Tangel for getting the phrase "class conflict" into his lead paragraph on the firing of unionized office cleaners in Teaneck -- without quote marks (A-10).


That must be a first on the Business page of The Record, whose owners have fought tooth and nail to keep unions out and to preserve their right to fire workers with 20 to 30 years or more of service.


What the F?


I must be really out of it not to realize that every high school football team represents not the town or the county, but the entire Garden State, and that unbeknownst to me, teams compete every week in a statewide Olympics of High School Football.


At least, that's what I took from Scandale's lame Page 1 photo package last Saturday under the headline:

Jersey wins 1, loses 1

Below the headline, photos show a single play during a winning game and a losing game. 


Maybe the small-minded, sports-obsessed Scandale means football "jersey." Or, maybe he finds the cheerleaders too distracting.