Media refuse to look inward

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An impassioned editorial and an Opinion piece today call for reform of "our insane gun laws" (Pages A-8 and A-9), but you won't find any soul-searching by The Record of Woodland Park or Editor Francis Scandale on the media's role in perpetuating gun violence.

What has Scandale done since he was at The Denver Post covering the 1999 Columbine High School massacre but splash one shooting after another on the front page to sell papers? He's already tired of Saturday's rampage in Arizona, as readers can see from today's tabloid Page 1:

Man's head, torso

found behind church

Why waste the second line of the headline on where the body parts were found? Scandale once banned one-town stories from the front page, so is he afraid if the headline said "Cliffside," readers in other towns would ignore the story?

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes must be OK with the unprecedented, six-column auto dealer ad above the fold on the front of her Local section, because it continues to appear with the "2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH" (that's statewide people to watch, not local people to watch, of which there aren't any).

How others see Editor Francis 'Frank' Scandale

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The Pulitzer Prize.

Here are two comments on posts about Francis "Frank" Scandale, editor of The Record since January 2001:

Anonymous said...

As pointed out once before, Scandale likes to take credit for the Columbine Pulitzer, but he wasn't in the office when the news broke and an assistant made the initial assignments, not paging Scandale until later. "All I thought," Scandale later complained to American Journalism Review, "is why didn't they page me sooner?" Right, it's always all about you, Frank! I can guess why they didn't page him sooner -- probably didn't want the stumbling glory-hound getting in everyone's way and making assignments based on office politics rather than ability to do the job. http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=514

January 11, 2011 1:49 PM

Anonymous said... 

 

Really, a story ending in mid-sentence falls under the category of "shit happens." But the gross underplaying of the Arizona shootings is chimpanzee-level news judgment. I wish I could honestly say this qualifies Scandale as the dumbest top editor for whom I've worked, but sadly he remains the second-dumbest (you would not believe the stories about the dumbest). He remains No. 1 in overestimating his ability, though. The dumbest editor at least would recognize a screwup in hindsight, perhaps days later and not necessarily learning from it. But when Scandale badly botches a call, he rationalizes it as zigging while other newspapers zag and gives himself a pat on the back. This was an unquestionably stupid news call, unless you are editing some shit-kicker paper in South Dakota, someplace like that.

January 10, 2011 2:34 AM

Scandale was away at a conference when The Denver Post got word of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Here is the link to a long article on how the Denver paper and others reacted to big stories:

 "Why didn't they page me sooner?"

'The fish stinks from the head down'

Frank Scandale was named editor of The Record in 2001 after he helped the Denver Post win a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. He was the latest out-of-town editor hired to remake the Hackensack daily. (He grew up in Westfield and worked at the Elizabeth Daily Journal, both outside The Record's circulation area.)

Scandale replaced Vivian Waixel, a Queens native who had worked her way up through the ranks and who I believe was the first woman to become editor. She was named executive editor of The Record and Herald News. Eventually, she left after being offered an office in a converted storage closet with a large window on the Hackensack newsroom.

When he was tested by 9/11, Scandale took part in the bone-headed decision by editors to relegate one of the most powerful images captured by a photographer that day to a back page to save the paper money. (See post, "Major detour on the road to a Pulitzer Prize.")

His reign as editor has been marked by increasing tension and animosity between dayside reporters and editors such as himself  and the nightside staff of news, layout and copy editors, who have been frozen out of decision-making and handcuffed for trying to improve news stories written by an increasingly inexperienced staff. For this reason alone, he should of been replaced long ago. But there is more:

1. He launched news and feature coverage of 20-year-olds in order to win new readers,  ignoring young people's addiction to the computer and that the baby boomers are the ones who have the money to patronize advertisers. In 2006, Publisher Stephen A. Borg called this initiative a "failed strategy."
2. He banned local news stories about one town from the front page, an edict that apparently still stands.
3. He did little to boost the number of minorities in the newsroom (before The Record's and Herald  News' staffs were merged), but did hire three from his old newspaper. And his third managing editor, Frank Burgos, is Hispanic. Still, one black editor left, the paper's only black columnist was fired and the paper's only Latino columnist was told to return exclusively to reporting, leading to his eventual departure.
4. He failed to stand up for his newsroom workers after money for ergonomic furniture was taken out of the budget year after year. Yet enough money was found to buy a dozen or so new, ergonomic desks, chairs and computers for the digital news group, which puts out The Record's online edition, and they were placed smack in the middle of the Hackensack newsroom for all to envy as they continued to use and be injured by furniture dating to the typewriter era.
5. He was rumored to have taken to lunch on separate occasions two of the most attractive young women on the reporting staff. If that is true, was it appropriate for an older editor to have lunch with a young female reporter? Or would a group setting have been wiser, especially in view of  the sexual harassment of women in the newsroom that Scandale and other editors, notably head assignment editor Deirdre Sykes, had long tolerated?  It got so bad at one point that the supervisor of  news clerks stopped hiring young women for the job.

I  have always heard about a Sicilian saying, "The fish stinks from the head down." (It is so appropriate here, given Scandale's Italian heritage.) Now, it's time for The Record to lop off the head and go fishing for a new editor.