If you're gay, newsroom is your refuge

Fort Lee police are alarmed by a recent spike in "pedestrian-involved vehicle collisions," The Record reports today.

How does Editor Marty Gottlieb explain an apparent attempt to get a Page 1 photo of "M.B." after he testified about his intimate sexual encounters with Tyler Clementi of Ridgewood?

M.B. is "considered the victim of a sex crime," The Record reports today, but isn't he being victimized by the media? 

I believe Gottlieb would have published a photo of the witness, if his staff photographer had gotten one.

As it is, the photo of M.B. being shielded from photographers outside the New Brunswick courthouse mimics those of criminals and other defendants who flee the media, but M.B. has done nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, the newspaper has protected the identity of gay staffers, even when they write about such issues as gay marriage. That seems contradictory, but journalists always hold themselves above everyone else.

Something missing

NJ.com, the news Web site of The Star-Ledger, identifies Aakash Dalal as a "religious agnostic," but nowhere in The Record's long account of his arrest or in a profile is there any reference to his religion (A-1, A-8 and A-9).

At least 10 reporters worked on the stories. Dalal, the alleged "instigator" in the January synagogue firebombings, has known suspect Anthony Graziano since middle school.

But a line on the front page -- referring readers to Dalal's profile -- sends them to the wrong page, A-6. 

In the A-1 story about testimony in the trial of Dharun Ravi, poor editing of the lead paragraph produced this awkward phrase: "trysts at the privacy invasion trial of Clementi's college roommate."

More Christie 

Following upbeat coverage of Governor Christie's visit to Westwood this week (two news stories and a column), head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes asked Staff Writer Leslie Brody to get up before dawn to cover Christie's appearance on a Friday talk show (L-1).

Brody's text and the photos took up so much room in the Local news section, the layout editor had no space for stories from Hackensack and many other towns.

On L-3, the lead paragraph of a Fort Lee story reports "a recent increase in pedestrian-involved vehicle collisions."

As this edition shows, readers can always count on top-notch editing from Sykes' assignment flunkies and rigid quality control from Editor Liz Houlton's news copy desk.