The newsroom's big-butt sisterhood

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You don't have to be a woman or have a big butt to be part of the sisterhood nurtured by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, but it helps.

Staff Writer Jean Rimbach of The Record is an original member, getting away with as little work as possible year after year in a newsroom with many productive staffers. 

Today, her rare byline appears on Page 1 -- in a preview of an eBook on the murders of two women committed by Tenafly contractor Robert Reldan in 1975. Why is this on A-1?

Projects Editor Tim Nostrand is another charter member of the sisterhood. Having failed miserably in Sykes' job of bringing in local news, he somehow survived firing, and went on to smaller and worse things.

Four other members of the sisterhood, reporters Lindy Washburn, Pat Alex, Mary Jo Layton and Leslie Brody, are far more productive than Rimbach. 

Of course, a big butt doesn't guarantee admission into the society run by the fickle Sykes -- to the chagrin of many marginalized workers in the Woodland Park newsroom.

Hospital trauma

The big business of hospitals dominates the front-page today -- as interim Editor Doug Clancy continues a tradition of reporting every hiccup, burp and fart in the battles over the reopening of Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood and the expansion of The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood.

The hospitals fighting Hackensack University Medical Center claim that in the first year Pascack Valley is reopened, there will be layoffs and $15 million in losses at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center and $24 million in losses at The Valley Hospital.

Vice President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg was a member of the board at HUMC while The Record and NorthJersey.com reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue from the growing hospital campus.

Coverage of The Valley Hospital controversy has far exceeded any of the stories about HUMC's expansion over the years, even though homes were demolished in Hackensack and no demolitions were proposed in Ridgewood.

In fact, Layton, one of the medical reporters, has been careful in several recent stories about The Valley Hospital proposal -- including today's piece -- to omit or obscure the nature of the expansion: It would stay within the borders of the existing hospital campus. 

Port Atrocity

Clancy gives Page 1 play to what amounts to the Port Authority's legal arguments in an AAA lawsuit against the outrageous toll and fare hikes. 

How can The Record pass this off as agency policy, when it's merely a legal gambit to deflect criticism over the improper use of toll money to pay for the new World Trade Center?

Then, Clancy relegates to A-3 a story on the agency hiring outside auditors for $2.2 million.

Doesn't New Jersey and New York have auditors who could perform the agency-wide review of spending ordered by Governors Christie and Cuomo? 

Sykes' assignment desk appears to have asked Staff Writer Shawn Boburg to rewrite the agency's press release, so there's nothing in the story on whether the two firms -- Navigant Consulting Inc. and Rothschild Inc. -- are politically connected.

Has the paper become a mouthpiece for the powerful bi-state agency?

Chewing the fat

With Christie seeming to gain weight every day -- and Sykes and other editors trying to keep up with him -- who knew the state has an "Eat Right, Move More" contest sponsored in part by the Department of Agriculture (L-1).

Winner of the sixth-annual contest and $5,000 is Bogota's Lillian M. Steen School. 

Sykes and Nostrand have conspired with other editors against launching a newsroom project on the obesity epidemic -- to the detriment of readers.

Drives, but can't write

And Road Warrior John Cichowski has conspired with his assignment editor to avoid writing any columns about commuting in a region that cries out for better mass transit to ease traffic congestion.

In his lead paragraph on the Local front today, he writes: "Parents will have to work a little harder" under a legislative proposal on teen drivers. But his third paragraph says, "Too bad committee members chickened out by failing to make parents work a bit harder."

A story at the bottom of L-1 alerts new arrivals to "immigration services fraud" against those who come to the U.S. legally. 

The story is a testament to how little the paper has written about the legal immigration system in the past 15 years -- preferring hot-button stories on illegal aliens.

Scales of journalism

Sykes leads her section today with a $10 million jury award that apparently was missed on Monday by Staff Writer Kibret Markos, who is assigned full time to the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.

Markos was reporting and writing a story on $2.1 million in damages awarded in the shooting death of a Ramapough Mountain Indian for Tuesday's front page when the bigger verdict was returned.

Today's L-1 story says the $10 million verdict came in "Monday evening" and "late Monday." Without knowing the time, it's difficult to say with certainty that Markos' assignment editor should have gotten this jury award in Tuesday's paper, too.

But it's clear the assignment desk has no intention of asking Markos to tell readers that attorneys for the plaintiffs may receive up to one-third of the damages. 

Or, explain why the life of a visiting 13-year-old Korean boy is worth nearly five times more than a Ramapough Mountain Indian.  

With Hackensack reporter Stephanie Akin assigned to Tuesday's unexpected power outages in Bergen and Passaic counties (L-3), there is no municipal news from The Record's former home in Local today.

Related article

• Christie is the butt of jokes -- not N.J. (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)

Jock itch invades news meeting

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The Bergen County Courthouse is in what town?

Editor Francis Scandale's well-known jock itch appears to have infected all of the editors in the news meeting by the looks of today's front page -- the second day in the row of above-the-fold sports.


When I still worked at The Record, Scandale said a survey showed sports was 12th on the list of what subscribers wanted to read. He ignored that then, and he ignores that now.


Governor Christie's White House ambitions also are back on Page 1 today, and the story reports a "public announcement" may come soon.


The A-1 story to the right of the big high school football photo probably has readers doing a double-take. 


Training wheels


In the same position on Friday, Staff Writer Karen Rouse reported the federal transportation debt facing New Jersey had grown to nearly $274 million, and the story contained no hint of a deal.


What a difference a day makes. Today, Rouse reports U.S. and New Jersey officials have ended their 11-month standoff over the aborted Hudson River rail tunnels, and the state can get off the hook with a payment of $95 million.



Did Rouse's sources tell her, earlier in the week, a settlement was near, but she couldn't report it? Or did her story on Friday shake something loose? Pretty strange.


Today, Rouse does her best to polish Christie's anti-mass transit image, leaving to nearly the end of her story the resultant loss of billions in federal funds, as well as tens of thousands of jobs, not to mention how commuters will be standing in the aisles on rush-hour trains for years to come.


When he killed the rail tunnels, Christie cited potentially devastating cost overruns, but also noted his overweight wife, first lady Mary Pat Christie, had complained she would have had to walk too far to make her subway connection in Manhattan.


Major Latino news


Putting aside that the sentencing of a gang leader is the most important local news today, the poorly written lead paragraph of the story confuses readers with both an "after" and a "before."


The L-1 lead says Juan Rosario was removed from a courtroom "after an expletive-filled outburst before a judge sentenced him on attempted murder charges."


This would have been much clearer: The gang leader was removed from the courtroom for an expletive-filled outburst at the judge who sentenced him.


Also, he was convicted of attempted murder, so the word "charges" are unnecessary. 


The first paragraph also says the courtroom is in "Bergen County," and nowhere else are readers told that means Hackensack. It's "Superior Court in Hackensack" or a "Hackensack courtroom," not a "Bergen County courtroom."


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' supremely lazy assignment minions also use non-fatal accident photos to fill holes on L-3 and L-6, and the only Hackensack news is a police story on L-1.


Reliving 9/11


The story on journalists giving their eyewitness accounts of 9/11 to students at Ramapo College doesn't mention that Jim Dwyer of The New York Times once worked at The Record (L-3).


Readers also aren't told Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin's "iconic image of three firefighters hoisting an American flag" over the debris was relegated to a back page through a massive failure of new judgment by Scandale, the editor, who -- then and now -- simply lacks the gumption for the job.

NJMG ordered to identify writer of post

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The Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.

North Jersey Media Group has been ordered to identify a northjersey.com reader who assumed a pseudonym to comment on a political column.

The motion -- to compel the newspaper publishing company to comply with a subpoena seeking the identity of "Kittykiernan" -- was brought by Alan Marcus. 

Marcus is a prominent public relations man and Republican Party bigwig who filed a defamation suit against "Jane Doe (aka 'Kittykiernan')." NJMG is not a defendant in the case.

Republican Kathleen Donovan, the new Bergen County executive, was sworn in on Saturday at Marcus' Saddle River home. The Record of Woodland Park, a NJMG newspaper, didn't explain why the official swearing in took place at a private home. 

The motion was unopposed by NJMG, according to the Aug. 6 order signed by Superior Court Judge Rachelle L. Harz  in Hackensack. 

 

If NJMG has identified the northjersey.com reader, it could have a chilling effect on all readers of online news sites and blogs who feel safe commenting under pseudonyms or the ubiquitous "Anonymous."

Marcus filed suit in May, alleging statements made by defendant Kittykiernan on the NJMG Web site were "false and defamatory."

He further alleges the "false statements directly impugned Plaintiff's honesty and integrity, were injurious to his reputation, subjected him to contempt, caused others to lose good will or confidence in him, and placed him in a false light highly offensive to Plaintiff and any reasonable person." 

He is seeking the defendant's name, address, ISP and IP address, as well as unspecified damages.

The suit says Kittykiernan posted a comment online referring to "Alan Marcus" in reaction to a "Political Stile" column by Staff Writer Charles Stile published Feb. 2, 2010, in The Record. It also appeared online at northjersey.com. 

Although the column is still available online, Kittykiernan's comment has been removed. Here is the link to the Stile column.

Democrats can't call GOP leader a 'boss'

How to ruin the front page

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The Dakota as seen from Strawberry Fields in Manhattan's Central Park.

Any reporter knows how lucky The Record's Mike Kelly was in finding a North Jersey connection for his story on the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's death in Manhattan. Then, the veteran journalist loses readers in just his second paragraph on Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily -- as he desperately tries to craft an introduction that will hook them.

That's Kelly big flaw. He can't write it straight and allow the power of the event to come through. He has to push around words, and in the process, his awkward, occasionally inaccurate sentences stun readers with their stupidity.

On his assignment Wednesday, he encountered Bill Purdy, a former Passaic County assistant prosecutor who specialized in homicide cases, so he reports in his first paragraph that Purdy "made his way to an old murder scene." Interesting, even if Kelly is unclear on whether the onetime prosecutor went to the Dakota, where Lennon was shot dead, or to Central Park. 

Then, Kelly blows it:

"He [Purdy] didn't carry his prosecutor's tools, though -- no handcuffs or law books or subpoenas. Purdy carried his guitar."

Reporting is laughable

Can you hear lawyers and detectives guffawing in North Jersey prosecutor's offices? Prosecutors don't carry handcuffs. And they wouldn't bring their heavy law books with them. It's also unlikely they would bring a subpoena to a murder scene. Who would a prosecutor serve -- the body?

Where was Kelly's assignment editor or the news copy editor on weeding out this laughably inaccurate copy?

The headlines were a puzzle, too, but at least they got me into the story. But Kelly stopped me cold. If he was so inaccurate there, where else did he err? Quotes, observations, conclusions?

Editor Francis Scandale allowed Kelly and Road Warrior John Cichowski to continue as columnists, but got rid of the former Hackensack daily's only Hispanic and only black columnists, and its only female news columnist. What a great editor he's been.

List all cast members

The lead story on A-1 -- about the Democratic-controlled Bergen County Freeholder Board bailing out bergenPAC in Englewood -- makes no mention of the role of Frank Huttle III, a lawyer who now is mayor of that city, in reopening the John Harms Theater, the performance venue. 

Huttle, listed as founder on the bergenPac Web site, is married to Assemblywoman Valerie Vaineri, a former Democratic freeholder in Bergen County.

News about police

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section has another L-1 story on the Hackensack police -- the best-covered police department in North Jersey, though Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado keeps residents in the dark on just about every other city agency.

The Local section is filled with police, accident and court news, as is becoming commonplace. An L-1 story on a plea by an ex-councilwoman doesn't say she appeared in state Superior Court.

Kibret Markos, the reporter covering the courts, again fails to include any information on how much of $1.5 million awarded to an Oakland woman injured in a three-car pileup might be going to the lawyer (L-3). 

Also on L-3, you'll find a gripping story on leaf removal in Paramus.

Contact with jurors draws warning

Image by Whistling in the Dark via Flickr

Last weekend, I checked the telephone book and found listings for six of the eight jurors who heard my age-discrimination lawsuit in Superior Court and returned a verdict in favor of the defendants, including North Jersey Media Group.


I left messages on answering machines, but reached only one of them. He hung up on me. A second juror's husband said she was upset by my message, and didn't want to talk. A woman who sounded like the mother of a third juror said she didn't know when he would be returning.

I was more interested in their interpretation of the evidence I had presented than in their deliberations.

When I covered state and federal courts in New Jersey as a reporter, I recall contacting jurors after trials or interviewing them on courthouse steps. But now, one of the jurors in my case was "upset" and wrote a letter to the judge. The judge then informed me in a letter faxed and mailed to my home that a court rule barred me -- a party to a lawsuit -- from contacting jurors without his permission. He asked me to come to court.
 
During a break in another jury trial today, Judge Joseph S. Conte ordered me to refrain from any further contact with jurors or face contempt of court charges. I said I was totally unaware of the rule. He said that reporters in New Jersey also are barred from contacting jurors.

NJMG's hired gun ($300 to $400 an hour) -- attorney Samuel J. Samaro, head of the employment practice at Pashman Stein in Hackensack -- also was in court. He continued his complaints about the "Eye on The Record" blog, which he used against me during the trial.

Samaro informed the judge that I had been blogging about the trial, and "blamed" him and the jurors for the unfavorable outcome April 9. He said I continued to use the blog "to punish" people I didn't like.  He also objected to my listing jurors' hometowns and occupations I gleaned in open court.

I replied that I was reporting what happened at a public trial, and didn't blame anyone for what happened. However, I did say in this blog I disagree with rulings that allowed Samaro to present evidence I felt was unduly prejudicial -- as he mounted a slash-and-burn defense that put me -- the pro se plaintiff -- on trial.


Samaro gives the impression he has never read a newspaper, and knows nothing of satire and critical journalism. He seems genuinely offended by my blog, and my criticism of The Record's editors and owners. He also portrays himself as a klutz when it comes to maintaining an automobile, and told me he hates to eat healthy. He certainly looks it.

Advisory on comments

Image by Ari Hahn via Flickr

I welcome your comments, as I have said before, but I will no longer publish any personal attacks or other mean-spirited sniping. If you want to bury yourself with your own words, you are welcome to do so. Just leave me out of it.

I have deleted or edited some of the comments published previously, and I'll feel free to reject any comment in the future -- especially the schoolmarmish ones that scold me for my manners and so forth.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of anything anyone says in a comment.

Also, I am not interested in your interpretation of the Superior Court jury's verdict in the trial of my age-discrimination suit, the evidence or anything else. There is a strong New Jersey law against age discrimination, and I had a right to file suit and try the case to the best of my ability. 

I don't regret anything I did, and I am weighing an appeal of some of the judge's rulings that I objected to -- with the goal of winning a new trial.

Utterly alone in the courtroom

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

During the eight days my age-discrimination suit was tried in Superior Court, I sat alone at the table reserved for the plaintiff, and no one showed up to sit on the benches in a sign of support. I noticed the eight jurors watching me on occasion as I sat by myself, taking notes, looking for documents or just listening. Now, I wonder whether they drew any conclusions from my isolation.

The defendants were represented by Samuel J. Samaro, head of the employment practice at Pashman Stein in Hackensack; Dina L. Sforza, the in-house attorney for North Jersey Media Group; and Jennifer A. Borg, NJMG vice president and general counsel.

I objected to Borg's presence, because she was scheduled to testify and would gain an advantage from hearing other witnesses, but the judge said that as a defendant, she had a right to be there. Normally, witnesses are sequestered.

Samaro was hired during the discovery phase and took two of the three depositions I gave in my lawyer's office in Morristown. He acted tough at times, taking off his glasses, staring right into my eyes and  telling me I had to answer all of his questions. He joined the defense after NJMG apparently lost confidence in Sforza to see the case through to the end. Sforza didn't attend the entire trial.


Borg took copious notes, spoke to Samaro frequently, suggested questions and possibly motions, and made numerous calls to her office. At other times, she spoke to her fellow lawyers unselfconsciously about children, her nephews (Stephen Borg's four sons), her orange Land Rover sport-utility vehicle, which she referred to as an "Orange Beast" that attracts police like a magnet; her driving record, a speeding ticket she received and other subjects.

None of my former colleagues appeared in the courtroom (besides Patricia Mack and Aaron Elson, both of whom testified). Nor did Joshua L. Weiner, the attorney who helped me prepare for trial and who had represented me along with his father, Paul, since last summer. My 12-year-old son, Roshane, was off from school, but he threatened to shout out at the defendants' witnesses, "Lies! It's all lies!" He stayed home. A couple of times, I saw and spoke with Kibret Markos, the paper's courthouse reporter, but he didn't write a word.

When Stephen A. Borg testified in front of the jury, he wore a dark suit and tie -- in contrast to the wrinkled white shirt, open at the collar, and slacks he wore to his deposition on Dec. 7, 2009, at 1 Garret Mountain in Woodland Park. His hair was a mess. He spoke about his grandfather on his mother's side, Charles Agemian, who was born in Aleppo, Syria, and how he was writing a story about him for (201) magazine.

Of course, Stephen Borg wasn't aware that my both of my Jewish parents were born in Aleppo, or that the day of his deposition also was the anniversary of my mother's death in 1993.

At the trial, he testified that Dec. 7, 2009, was the first time he had met me, despite all the e-mails I had sent him for many months before I left The Record in May 2008, or as he put it, This is the first time I can pick him "out of a lineup." Asked to explain to the jury what he meant by lineup, he said it was merely a figure of speech.

Preference for younger workers

Image by JaymezB via Flickr

On the witness stand in Superior Court the other day, Barbara Jaeger denied that she prefers younger workers. But Jaeger, a lifer who worked her way up from news clerk to head features editor of The Record and Herald News, was contradicted by the evidence.

Over the years, she has had problems with such experienced newsroom employees as Trudy Walz, John Zeaman, Patricia Mack, Bob Dixon and Joe Diz. They and others left her department, including Joan Verdon. As a result, young Theoden and Amanda Janes came to work for Jaeger, replacing Joan and Trudy.

According to testimony in Sasson v. The Record, in a five-year period, Jaeger hired Bill Pitcher (replacing Mack), Marlaina Cockroft, Alfa Garcia, Robert Biesilin, Elisa Ung, Mike Kerwick and Terecille Basa-Ong, and Sachi Fujimori came into her department from the Herald News. All were in their 20s and 30s.

Yet, Jaeger denied in front of the jury that she prefers younger workers. Case law says an apparent preference for younger workers is circumstantial evidence of age discrimination. Pitcher was 31 when he got the food editor's job I had applied for.

Jury: No cause for action in age-bias case

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A Superior Court jury said this afternoon there was no age discrimination in the selection of The Record's food editor in 2006 or retaliation in the firing of Victor E. Sasson for filing a lawsuit against executives and managers.

Sasson, author of "Eye on The Record," represented himself at the trial, in consultation with Joshua L. Weiner, the plaintiff's Morristown attorney since last summer. (Photo: Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.)

Jennifer A. Borg, a defendant, and Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg were in court to hear the 8-0 verdict shortly after 5 p.m. The jury of four women and four men, all of whom were allowed to deliberate, returned their decision after only an hour of discussion.

The elder Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, is over 70. During breaks, he was asked about his childhood in Hackensack, where he lived in a home at Summit and Fairmount avenues. He said his father bought the house and many  acres of land behind it during the Depression. He was born in 1938.

Jennifer Borg, who attended the trial every day and testified, would not allow Mac to comment on the color photo that ran in the Woodland Park paper yesterday showing a woman making an obscene gesture at the photographer.

At trial, NJMG was represented by Samuel J. Samaro, a veteran litigator who heads the employment practice of Pashman Stein in Hackensack. He said he billed "in the vicinity" of $300 to $400 an hour, and boasted of a $1 million settlement he won in a sex-bias case filed by two women who were William Paterson University professors. His said his fee exceeded the money paid to the plaintiffs.

"You're in my house now," he said during a break in the proceedings this week, referring to the courtroom.

Judge Joseph S. Conte in Hackensack said the plaintiff did a "fine job" for a pro se, but noted it was a "tough case." The eight-day trial began March 29.

The judge preserved NJMG's right to file suit against "Eye on The Record," about the fourth or fifth time such an action has been threatened. Samaro alleged recent comments in the blog about the elder Borg constituted "a threat."

Weiner said he looked forward to defending Sasson, a former news copy editor and freelance food writer for The Record, and the blog. Sasson's lawsuit was served on the defendants in January 2008.