Saturday, September 10, 2011

On 9/11 anniversary, newspaper stumbles

Light beams were used to symbolize the missing...Image via Wikipedia
Two beams of light represent the former World Trade Center's Twin Towers.


On Sept. 1, The Record began publishing a series of stories to mark Sept. 11, 2001, and today, a day short of the actual anniversary of the attack on America, exhausted readers are hit with at least four more.


The most effective story so far was lavishly illustrated with photos of the attack and its aftermath by Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin and others. Those images trumped tens of thousands of words of text.


Indeed, the still and video images I have seen on TV and in the paper and on its Web site moved me and others to tears in a way text rarely does. 


With a story this big, The Record and other print media have a hard time keeping up. And who knows what's in store for Sunday.


I was just looking at the superb northjersey.com video by The Record's David Bergeland, showing family members holding photos of loved ones who died on 9/11. One man displayed his son's photo on a gold heart he wears around his neck.


A-1 trickery


Editor Francis Scandale is up to his old tricks with Page 1 today.


The terrific story by Staff Writer Justo Bautista on Iraq and Afghanistan vets living and working in our midst in North Jersey certainly belongs on A-1, but why is a retrospective on the region's Muslims relegated to the front of Local?


I guess that kind of unfair  play is guaranteed when head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes is running the laziest news operation in the universe, and can't generate any other local news.


Missing the big story


And despite the tens of thousands of words Scandale has published so far, nothing in the paper has had the impact of a "Frontline" investigation on public television, reporting the government employs 1 million people in 17,000 locations to gather intelligence and track suspected terrorists.


Is the Prudential Center story on A-3 today the first in a series on where commercials and promotional spots are filmed in North Jersey? Why is that news?


On A-9, Liz Houlton's dysfunctional news copy desk wreaks more havoc with a photo caption describing a police officer patrolling "at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on Friday."


With clueless editors like Scandale, Sykes and Houlton, 10 years have passed and nothing has changed.


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2 comments:

  1. what is wrong with the photo caption about the police officer?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It needed the word "new," as in new World Trade Center.

    The old one was destroyed, and the new one isn't finished.

    ReplyDelete

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