Tuesday, March 6, 2012

More crime in paper than in life?

Elephants performing at the Ringling Bros. and...
The afternoon news meeting in Woodland Park.



Here is another edition of The Record filled with police and court news or what the editors like to call Law & Order coverage. 

The amount of Law & Order news in The Record seems to increase in proportion to decreasing municipal news from the desk of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.

Sykes has her talented staff photographers chasing ambulances, seemingly to capture every damaged utility pole or rollover accident, and loves to fill local news pages with those gee-whiz photos.

A new elephant

Today, the front of the Local section shows readers a new elephant in the newsroom -- from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus' arrival in East Rutherford -- but the photo caption's reference to "Dragons" is puzzling.

To show how few dragons Sykes is slaying, four other elements on the Local front are Law & Order stories. Four more police or crime stories appear inside, as does the obituary of a local police chief -- likely just a coincidence.

Columnist Charles Stile is running out of ways to describe his hero, Governor Christie, so today he argues the elephant-like GOP bully is an "all-seeing, all-knowing yogi" (L-1). What a joke.

There is no Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck municipal news, but readers find yet another story on a Fort Lee traffic study in connection with proposed 47-story residential towers (L-3).

More Law & Order

On today's front page, Editor Marty Gottlieb relies on three Law & Order elements, including the invasion of privacy trial in the suicide of Tyler Clementi of Ridgewood. 

Here's another example of a long, poorly edited lead paragraph, which lower cases "bacardi," a brand name.

The big A-1 photo of synagogue fire-bombing suspect Aakash Dalal in his prison jumpsuit makes readers wonder why Gottlieb couldn't come up with a better photo from his talented photographers.

Talking turkey


Even the "bright" Page 1 story about a missing, one-legged wild turkey in Washington Township makes some readers ask why this tiny community gets far better coverage than many larger towns.

In Better Living today, a cover story on "eating right" is just what the doctor ordered after numerous restaurant reviews and recipes have promoted artery clogging desserts and other dishes loaded with butter and heavy cream.

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