Editor should hang his head in shame

Image via Wikipedia

A U.S. Navy photographer captured this image on Sept. 13, 2001.

For Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin of The Record, it wasn't enough to beat all of his competitors by capturing a unique image of hope amid the despair of 9/11.


Today, in an inspiring Page 1 story on 9/11 photographers, Franklin eloquently describes the flag-raising photo he made on Sept. 11, 2001:


"Three resolute firemen on the edge of a battlefield, hoisting a tattered flag -- more than 300 of their fallen brethren buried in the debris behind them."


"Buried" is also a good word to describe what happened to Franklin's photo nearly a decade ago as The Record's Hackensack newsroom raced to put out the first edition.


Any editor worth his salt would have torn apart the front page for Franklin's image -- instead of settling for a paper with the same, old image of the smoking Twin Towers, the A-1 photo nearly everybody else used on the day after the attack on America.


He's no prize


But Editor Francis Scandale isn't any editor. He brought to the job a deeply flawed news judgment and an inability to stand up to the bean counters. 


Franklin's photo ended up on a back page on Sept. 12, 2001 -- so the iconic image's appearance on the front page today is nearly 10 years overdue. 


No one can say whether burying Franklin's unique 9/11 photo meant the difference to the jury that awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography to The New York Times.


Instead of hanging his head in shame, Scandale continues to stonewall and deny readers the inside story of why Franklin's photo was treated so shabbily on 9/11.


And his news judgment hasn't improved. 


As recently as this past Jan. 9, Scandale squeezed the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona under a one-column headline on the front page of a Sunday edition to make room for the large photo of a Jets football player.


Today's story by Franklin is moving and well-written, but his video on northjersey.com is especially powerful: "Witness to History"


Fixing a boo-boo


A correction on A-2 today acknowledges a news copy editor working for Editor Liz Houlton was hallucinating when he wrote "4.5 million" unemployed people, instead of "4.5" unemployed people, in a headline on Monday. LOL.


Red-light district


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes seems determined to use the Local section to chronicle every red-light camera (L-3), just as she has been running stories on every solar panel put up on schools, town halls or businesses.


Her assignment minions still are unaware of a deep drop in the price paid for so-called solar certificates, which are earned by homeowners who have installed solar power.


On L-5, a major story on the "new face" of the heroin trade -- focusing on a Fort Lee home -- is from The Associated Press, not the paper's local staff.


Business news is squeezed into less than a half-page of L-7 today.

Low drama, high drama and political hype

Image by TalkMediaNews via Flickr

Gabrielle Giffords six months after the shooting.

The anti-climactic approval of the debt deal is a minor footnote to the surprise appearance of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to cast her vote on the House floor, as captured by The Record today in A-1 and A-6 photos.


Unspoken in the Associated Press story is the stark contrast between her values and those of the Tea Party conservatives who paralyzed the process for so many months and who may face defeat in 2012, just two years after they helped the GOP take control of the House.


Giffords' dramatic appearance also served to remind readers how Editor Francis Scandale treated her and the Arizona shootings nearly eight months ago.


Here is an excerpt from Eye on The Record on Jan. 13, 2011:

"The Arizona shootings are back on the front page again today. 

"Even though it's the most talked-about story in the nation, Editor Frank Scandale again demonstrated his famously flawed news judgment by underplaying it badly on Sunday on The Record's front page.

"Then, he played catch-up on Monday, allowed it to play second fiddle on Tuesday to the dismemberment of a Cliffside Park man and knocked it off the front altogether on Wednesday.

"Running a huge photo of a Jets football player on Sunday's front page -- and squeezing the attempted assassination  of Gabrielle Giffords under a one-column headline -- is so insensitive that it could only come from an editor like Scandale."

 Read the entire post here: An emotionally cold editor

Image via Wikipedia

Gabrielle Giffords before the shooting.

Editors love Chris Christie


Scandale and other editors fell all over themselves to give Page 1 play today to Governor Christie actually doing something good for seniors and the disabled.


The story by Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton is careful to omit mention the $100 to help pay energy bills comes not from Christie, but from the federal government, as readers learn from the Political Stile column on L-1.


An editorial on A-8 blasts "a core of Tea Party-aligned House Republicans [who] held their party and the nation hostage," but that's diluted by an OpEd piece on the next page, A-9, claiming the Tea Baggers scored "a key victory."  What B.S.


F.U. to old people


The big photo of an old car in a pool on the front of Local again dramatizes the challenges facing elderly drivers, but don't expect head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes to awake from her nap and direct the staff to do a series on the subject (L-1).


Another L-1 story reports Passaic County ranks extremely low in a quality-of-life poll -- likely because of the presence of the editors and managers who run The Record, Herald News and North Jersey Media Group in Woodland Park.


At the bottom of the Local front, a story on changes to school-bus routes in Teaneck leaves readers wondering why they should sympathize with parents who spend $15,000 to $20,000 a year to send their kid to private school, on top of paying public school taxes.


Not a suspect


Tenafly police are dismissing a tip the polite robber at the NVE Bank was Publisher Stephen A. Borg, scrambling to make the mortgage and property tax payment on his $3.65 million Churchill Road McMansion (L-3). 


On the first Business page, the Your Money's Worth column -- on spending by 10 charities -- has readers questioning what happened to the full-time newsside reporter assigned to non-profits (L-7).