Gannett botches coverage of 2 fatals, demotes U.S. senator

From CBS New York, a photo of Belinda Mercado Loughlin, a labor-and-delivery nurse who was killed in a two-car collision in Teaneck on Thursday afternoon blocks away from an aunt's house, where she was planning to have Thanksgiving dinner before going to work.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's amateurish, four-paragraph story on a fatal two-car Thanksgiving Day crash in Teaneck speaks volumes about how Gannett has royally screwed up local-news coverage in The Record.

Even though the victim was identified in a TV news report on Wednesday night, the story in The Record (1L) and on NorthJersey.com as of late this morning doesn't identify her.

Belinda Mercado Loughlin, a labor-and-delivery nurse at Holy Name Hospital, was killed in the collision at Degraw Avenue and Queen Anne Road in Teaneck, only blocks from her aunt's house, where she was planning to celebrate Thanksgiving.

2nd fatality

In The Record on Wednesday, editors finally identified a woman who was struck and killed in a River Road crosswalk in front of  the Fairleigh Dickinson University campus early Monday morning (3L).

They said Weiqi Wang, 27, was from China and was living in Teaneck after completing graduate studies at FDU.

The driver, Carlos A. Poole, 49, of New Milford was charged with careless driving, failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk and having an obstructed view.

Wang's death is similar to the deaths of other pedestrians in Hackensack and Leonia in recent years that demonstrate the need for criminal charges when a driver strikes and kills someone in a crosswalk.

But Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin and Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski have treated their deaths as so much road kill, judging from their lack of comment.

Sen. Menendez

In a story about feeding the homeless on Thanksgiving, The Record today misspelled the name of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., as "Sen. Bob Mendez" in the text (3L).

A photo of the senator on the same page showed him pushing a cart with Thanksgiving dinners at Eva's Kitchen in Paterson.

But the caption demoted him to a U.S. representative.

When Gannett redesigned the newspaper last week, the production and much of the editing was moved to a Neptune design center, where the company's six other New Jersey dailies are put out.

The design center might as well be on the planet Neptune, judging from how Gannett screwed up the senior New Jersey senator's name and title.

Gannett's 'great new look' for print edition means a lot more white space, far fewer stories and much less news -- period

Today's New York Post cover  reports that after Ivanka Trump appeared on Sunday's "60 Minutes" with her father the president-elect, her jewelry company sent out an email blast to fashion reporters about her $10,800 bracelet.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The payroll-slashing Gannett Co. today springs a surprise makeover of The Record's print edition on readers who were already wondering where all the local news went.

Page 1 carries only three stories -- compared to eight stories and briefs on Tuesday's A-1 -- and a cleverly worded Gannett  promotion to mask how the changes will reduce content even further:

"More great news, great new look."

Local or Section L carries only a handful of local-news stories -- if you don't count 2.5 pages of death notices -- and those stories are outnumbered by wire-service and staff stories in an expanded Business section.

In addition to employing a great deal of white space and larger photos, Gannett even revised page numbers: A-1 becomes 1A, L-1 is 1L and so forth. 

Under The Record masthead on Page 1, Gannett has replaced the Borg family's boastful but inaccurate motto -- "North Jersey's Trusted Source" -- with the address of the North Jersey.com website.

Staff slashed

The editorial changes coincide with Gannett cutting in half the remaining 426 positions at North Jersey Media Group.

That resulted in a great many retirements among employees in their 60s who received only one week of severance pay for each year of service.

And production of The Record was moved from Woodland Park to a Neptune design center, where six other Gannett New Jersey dailies are put out in the headquarters of the Asbury Park Press.

NJMG publishes The Record, Herald News, (201) magazine, a reduced number of weekly papers and North Jersey.com, which was revised on Tuesday.

Those reporting and editing staffs have been consolidated in Woodland Park.

In July, Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper publisher, purchased The Record and other NJMG assets from the Borg family for a reported $40 million.