Less than earth-shaking news

Image by °Florian via Flickr

Map shows the epicenter of Tuesday's earthquake in Virginia.

I didn't feel the earthquake on Tuesday -- nor was I moved by the nearly three pages of coverage in The Record today. 


Editor Francis Scandale had more than 30 newsroom staffers -- including a photographer, a graphic artist, and an unknown number of assignment and copy editors -- working on the story, supplemented by The Associated Press.


The Record did manage to come up with one of the best quotes I heard on any media, the one from Bloomingdale's shopper Cheryl Alexander: "The mannequins were definitely moving .... I actually thought they were coming to life."


Staff infection


But two of the photos used -- of people standing around outside courthouses in Hackensack and Manhattan (A-1 and A-8) -- seemed redundant, and the long AP story on why the quake was felt from Georgia to Canada never actually answers the question.


Liz Houlton's news copy desk couldn't resist the cliche "shaken, not stirred" in the headline for a staff-written story on how the quake affected Washington, D.C.


Staff Writer Scott Fallon managed to find a seismograph near the Woodland Park newsroom (A-9). And I got a kick out of the tweet reporting "there's an earthquake in Hackensack ... so freaked out."


Of course, that was the second quake to hit Hackensack, the first coming when North Jersey Media Group and The Record pulled up stakes, leaving Main Street merchants high and dry, and depriving city residents of local news. 


The aftershock will be the demolition of that huge pile of bricks at 150 River St. to make way for a Walmart.


It so appropriate for the greedy Borg family that capitalism will trump journalism.


Road kill


The sad state of local news continues today with a story on the naming rights for the New Meadowlands Stadium on the front of Local.


In his L-1 column today, Road Warrior John Cichowski shoots himself in the foot and shows just how out of touch he is with commuting when he poses this question:


"Other than car-pooling, what are the options for avoiding" the Port Authority's Hudson River toll hikes?


The arrogant, office-bound columnist then answers his own question:


"How's your backstroke?" 


He goes on to mention swimming, taking a ferry, using PATH, driving out of the way to use the Tappan Zee Bridge or walking or bicycling across the GWB.


But the moron completely ignores NJ Transit trains and express buses that carry thousands of North Jersey commuters to Manhattan every day.


Who is to blame?


Karen Rouse, the transportation reporter I criticized on Tuesday, isn't fully to blame for the lack of meaningful reporting on mass transit. 


Most of the blame rests on Editor Deirdre Sykes' assignment desk, the laziest in North America, South America, the Caribbean and Antarctica.


When Rouse came to The Record several years ago, I read her brief bio, saw her photo on the bulletin board and introduced myself.


She had studied Spanish in Peru and had been assigned to the transportation beat, so I suggested she take NJ Transit's No. 780 bus from Hackensack to Passaic for lunch at one of that city's Peruvian restaurants.


In the process, she could develop a transportation story to answer this question: Why are the largely minority riders of local routes such as the 780 forced to rely on rickety, decades-old buses that are long overdue for replacement?


Rouse never took the bus to Passaic, and several weeks later explained her assignment editor wouldn't allow her to leave the building unless he was certain she would come back with a story.


"Nothing ventured, nothing gained" seems to be the motto of this dysfunctional news organization.

Another puzzler from Liz Houlton's copy desk

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Deirdre Sykes' assignment desk is the laziest east of the Mississippi River.

Giving the disabled full access to public parks and nature areas is a worthy story, though I don't agree with Editor Francis Scandale that it should be Page 1 news today.

And the main headline over the story makes you wonder if Liz Houlton's news copy editors sleep on cots in The Record's Woodland Park newsroom, and never get to explore North Jersey.

Equal access for the disabled 

not easy in the wild

"The wild"? Where is that, in their imaginations? Is there any "wild" left in the region? 

Who approved that head? What's wrong with using the word "parkland," which appears in the lead paragraph?


Houlton is the production editor and in putting out the paper each night, she has left a steady trail of typos, and lame and inaccurate headlines, and photo captions.


Instead of enforcing the paper's style and editing stories for clarity and accuracy, the news copy editors have been reduced to the role of spell checkers.


Hail Christie

Governor Christie continues a public relations tour to repair his image -- in the wake of deep budget cuts and his refusal to raise taxes on millionaires -- and the paper faithfully quotes his self-serving pronouncements (A-3).

There is no truth to the rumor the governor has petitioned the courts to allow him to add a "t" to his first name: "Christ."

New Mahwah mall?

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' minions have been closely watching the controversy over rezoning 100 acres in Mahwah for commercial development (L-1), but Local hasn't breathed a word about the future of North Jersey Media Group's 20 acres along River Street in Hackensack.

The big story on L-1 today is about a bridge in Ho-Ho-Kus, but where's the update on replacement of the Court Street Bridge in Hackensack?

Local news columns are filled with police news, not municipal news of Teaneck, Englewood and other towns.

This helps cement the assignment desk's reputation as the laziest east of the Mississippi River.

Dumbing down

In a restaurant review  on Friday, Staff Writer Elisa Ung describes Honey Mediterranean Gourmet and Market as a "little dining room attached to [a] Persian grocery store."

Then, she treats readers as if they are simpletons by adding the Teaneck restaurant wouldn't be "appropriate for anyone looking for a more formal setting."

Why not use that space for telling readers whether the place serves organic or naturally raised food -- not for stating the obvious?

Copy desk saves another reporter's ass

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Lawyers for long-suffering Upper Ringwood residents settled a huge negligence lawsuit, fearing Ford Motor Co. would declare bankruptcy. Why didn't The Record ever report this legal and financial miscalculation? Above, Henry Ford in 1919.

Just when you thought the marginalized copy editors were asleep at their computers, they saved the ass of a veteran reporter who thought she could peddle the same old news in a Page 1 story today.


Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton covered a meeting of Upper Ringwood residents and EPA officials, but buried the lead -- just like the Ford Motor Co. buried toxic sludge in their neighborhood four decades ago and made everybody sick.


It almost sounds as if Layton pre-wrote the story to beat The Record's ridiculously early deadlines, then was forced to leave the real news to the continuation page. 


Did her assignment editor go home early? Where was Editor Francis Scandale?


But in a rare save, the news copy editors told the story in the headlines:

TOXIC LANDSCAPE: UPPER RINGWOOD

'We're the living dead'

EPA urges testing, but residents want buyouts

The copy editors not only saved Layton's ass, they saved the larger posterior of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.

I read to the continuation page, A-6, and found something new in this long-running saga of government incompetence, corporate irresponsibility and media indifference:


Residents want Ford to use some of its huge profits to buy their homes so they can relocate away from the pollution.


One of the newsroom prima donnas, Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, has a rare byline today, but why is her story on a lawsuit judgment on the front page?

Clear age bias

What was the wire editor thinking? 

Why run a Washington Post story on President Obama's 50th birthday (A-5) that is full of "old" references, and reports "he still gets up and down a basketball court without reaching for an oxygen tank"?

A letter to the editor on A-8 describes the Tea Party as no editor has the guts to:

"The Tea Party is a joke," says Francis A. Tutelo of Teaneck. "... They are Republicans who don't care about the elderly and poor. They keep voting again taxing millionaires .... But the truth is: Would Republicans really tax themselves and their friends?"

Tutelo could extend his description to Governor Christie.

What's my line?

On the front of Sykes' Local section, Road Warrior John Cichowski has yet another column on long lines at the MVC. It's time for him to join a line -- the one at the unemployment office.

Readers won't find any Hackesnack, Teaneck or Englewood news today.

Look at all those morons from "Jersey Shore" on the front of Better Living today. Why does the worst of New Jersey gets such prominent play in the paper?

Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill recommends another charred hunk of beef, even though meat grilled at high temperatures has been linked to cancer (F-1, F-2).

Wealthy win another big tax battle

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Employees fear Publisher Stephen A. Borg
will move to a state without income tax.

You can bet Publisher Stephen A. Borg is toasting the debt-limit deal that leads The Record today -- secure in the knowledge that he and his wealthy friends will continue to get away with murder when it comes to paying taxes.

Just a month ago, he broke out the bubbly when Governor Christie signed a budget that spared him and other millionaires from paying a state income-tax surcharge, but cut programs for low-income and middle-class families alike.

Editor Francis Scandale is one of the clueless journalists who have swallowed all the lies from congressional Republicans and Tea Baggers, who claim the Bush tax cuts create jobs.

No. They create pain, as readers can see from the major element on Page 1 today -- 4,879 disabled people statewide waiting for housing.

Do the math

At the bottom of A-1 today, the headline declares: "School background checks in full swing." Yet, the story says only 29 out of 4,500 to 5,000 board members have been fingerprinted so far.

Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin continues to sprinkle his column with silly Broadway references, such as calling Christie's health scare last week "a Kumbaya moment" (A-11).

Doblin notes Christie's relationship with Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Glouchester, is "as strained as carrots in a jar of baby food," and says Sweeney "is someone who, like the GOP's elephant, never forgets."

Is Doblin suggesting Christie -- the GOP elephant in New Jersey -- push away his usual beer and pizza for some of those strained carrots?

What is she thinking?

Looking at today's Local section, you have to wonder at head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' priorities.

The lead is a process story on illegal pupils, and there is yet another story about a town's solar energy project (L-1).

The big element on L-1 is an inane column by Mike Kelly on a Pearl Harbor memorial. Is it Dec. 7th already?

But buried on Page L-7 is a story under the headline: "Using food as a uniting force."

A Teaneck block party speaks volumes about North Jersey's diversity and is one of the few signs of harmony amid all the partisan in-fighting and negativity that have  dominated the news for months.

This is the kind of story that belongs on the front of Local, but the incompetent assignment editors just don't get it.

Native son lampoons Christie's weight

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Satirist Bill Maher is proud of his New Jersey roots.

On his HBO show, satirist Bill Maher, who was born in New Jersey, riffed on Governor Christie's asthma attack and his brief hospitalization.


Recalling Christie had difficulty breathing on Thursday, Maher said, "He first noticed he had a problem when he had trouble inhaling a pizza."


On Friday night's "Real Time with Bill Maher," the satirist said the governor was in a supermarket and felt a tightness in his chest.


"And then he realized he got stuck in the dairy case."


The governor is OK, Maher noted, adding, "The hospital today upgraded his condition to gigantic." 


The doctors say he's up and about, "and taking helicopters to travel 20 feet."


One doctor told Christie, "You have to stop eating ice cream out of big, 5-gallon tubs.


"And he [Christie] said, 'Why.'


"And the doctor said, 'So I can examine you.'"


Clowning around


Admittedly, this kind of slapstick would pale in the face of a serious discussion in the media of the governor's health problems and obesity.


But Editor Francis Scandale and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin at The Record of Woodland Park have no interest in making the governor feel uncomfortable about his obsessive eating -- just as Scandale has avoided confronting fellow employees and the paper's restaurant reviewer about the same behavior.


Scandale apparently doesn't know -- or likely doesn't care -- that such grossly overweight employees as head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes call in sick a lot more than employees of normal weight, and that drives up health insurance premiums for everyone.


Sykes has been the real power in the newsroom for years, and no one is going to tell her to get healthy.


Debt-ceiling disgrace


On the congressional stalemate over the debt ceiling, Maher likened the debate to a pissing match that had reached an awkward moment.


Everyone is "out of piss" and they're "standing there with their dick in their hand."


"One party has no brains," he went on, and the other party "has no balls."

Do we need all these police departments?

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A Page 1 story on jury trials lacks statistics to back up the lead paragraph.

If you need a good laugh, read The Record's front-page coverage today and Sunday on the 911 caller whose hoax led to a "tense standoff in a quiet Wyckoff neighborhood."


It seems a lone house cat held off 30 officers from two towns and the Bergen County SWAT team for three hours.


Tear-gar canisters were shot through two front windows, ending the crisis and souring the pet's milk.


I looked for an editorial on Page A-11 today questioning the need for 70 police departments in Bergen County alone or perhaps calling on Governor Christie to cap the ridiculous salaries and benefits of all those petty police chiefs, as he did for school superintendents. 


Nada.


'More and more'


The lead paragraph of Staff Writer Kibret Markos' story on A-1 today reports "more and more mistrials are being declared in New Jersey, and throughout the country," because jurors improperly research their cases on the Web.


But on A-6, he lists only four cases since 2009 that ended that way for that reason.


Does Editor Francis Scandale ever read the stories he puts on A-1?


Religiously frugal


On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Orthodox Jewish parents will be prevented for at least another year from pulling off a scam on other taxpayers.


The Teaneck and Englewood parents had planned to open the Shalom Academy Charter School, which would be supported by school taxes they now pay to the two communities, even though they don't send their kids to public schools.


Now, they refuse to send their kids into minority classrooms. When the charter school opens, they'll actually be taking away funds from the public school children.


The black and Latino students are being taught to say "shalom" to programs that might be cut as a result.


Poor excuses


Hey, Columnist Mike Kelly, why should anyone sympathize with the commercial property tax problems of an antique-car dealer who can afford to live in Saddle River (L-1)?


Why isn't a story on a businessman who hopes to market a Turkish street food made from lamb intestines on the Business page (L-6)?


Oh, I guess Sykes' assignment editors couldn't find enough local news, from Hackensack and other communities, to fill the section. 


Local food


Today's Better Living cover story on "local" food is too narrowly focused.


Shoppers should be told organic strawberries flown in from Chile are far better for them -- because they aren't tainted with pesticide residue -- even though the locally grown strawberries may taste better.

See previous post: Second look at BCC stories

Have con men taken over Page 1?

Image via Wikipedia

Thanks to President Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy, federal rates are the lowest they've been in more than 50 years. The GOP still clings to them.

From the top to the bottom of The Record's front page today, readers are introduced to an alleged confidence man, an elected con man and a convicted con man.


Unseen is a fourth con man, Editor Francis Scandale, who gained the trust of readers, only to bombard them with inconsequential sports news while Governor Christie launched an unprecedented attack on the middle-class way of life in New Jersey.


But Scandale, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin and other editors and columnists have been apologists for the GOP governor's mean-spirited budget policies.


Here comes the judge


Leading the paper today is another story about North Jersey Municipal Judge Harold P. Cook III's growing financial problems, but the reporter doesn't explain why he hasn't been suspended during the state inquiry.


The biggest element on Page 1 really belongs inside. It's about an ad by the state Republican Party claiming the state's "comeback has begun," despite continued high unemployment and the nation's highest property taxes.


The bottom A-1 story is about Saddle River rapper Ja Rule, who is getting more time in prison for not paying back taxes, as well as being fined $1.1 million. (The photo caption incorrectly runs his name together.)


Taxed while black


You have to be surprised the rapper (Jeffrey Atkins) doesn't know the only legal way to get away with not paying your federal or state taxes is be a millionaire who is in the good graces of Christie and Republican congressional leaders.


Blacks need not apply.


Scandale's flawed news judgment is evident every day. 


Why put the promotional ad about Christie on today's front page and banish the opinion column on the wrongful acquittal of Passaic City Police Officer Joseph Rios III, who beat a man who wasn't wearing a shirt (A-9)?


The Record's own columnists get to spout their opinions from Scandale's front page all the time. Why not a Freehold attorney who specializes in police brutality claims? 


Oh, I guess lawyer Thomas J. Mallon isn't part of a conspiracy of failed journalists.


Local river news


Readers have to check out the earth-shaking news all over head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local front -- 40 teachers from across the country came here to study the Hudson River. There's even room for a listing of their itinerary through Friday (L-1).


A Jewish charter school has been delayed for a year, meaning parents in Englewood and Teaneck will be forced to continue paying municipal school taxes, even though they don't dare send their kids into classrooms with blacks and Hispanics (L-1).


Old fogies


Sykes treats as a photo-op the collision of an 85-year-old man's car with a firetruck in Rutherford (L-3).


She has consistently refused to do anything on the challenges facing older drivers, or the help available to them, and Scandale has turned his back on Alzheimer's victims. 


When readers call, they tell them to check the obit pages for news of seniors or read occasional pieces on unusually active people in their 90s or 100s by Jay Levin, the local obituary writer. 

Mac's pal gets front-page play again

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It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Mac Borg and Jon Hanson.

Today brings another Page 1 bully pulpit in The Record for wealthy real estate developer Jon F. Hanson -- a close, jet-setting friend of  Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg and Governor Christie's adviser on the state's sports and entertainment industries.


How cozy. Thanks to Christie, Borg and Hanson don't have to worry about a millionaires tax, giving them more money to buy fuel for the business jet they co-own -- the one that roars overhead just as you're trying to enjoy your backyard.


Editor Francis Scandale indulges Staff Writer John Brennan, whose endless pieces on Hanson's panel often land on the front page. Of course, hundreds of calls have flooded the news desk, clamoring for such coverage.


Another lie


If "truth-serum" statements were barred from a recent cold-case murder trial in Hackensack, and courts have consistently ruled them inadmissible, why bore readers with a long story on A-1 today?


Can anyone make heads or tails of a column by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin on Tom Hanks and Bergen Community College President G. Jeremiah Ryan (A-11)?


Screwed for decades by Ford Motor Co.'s toxic dumping, by the legal community and by the media, adults in a mixed-race Upper Ringwood community may be tested for lead poisoning (Local front). Duh.


Second opinion


The Record's editors and columnists can't write dispassionately about Christie, but Brigid Harrison, a political science and law professor, doesn't have that problem.


In her column on Page O-2 of Sunday's Opinion section, Harrison talks about the governor's style:


"Brashness we found charming 18 months ago is wearing. And divisive. And indicative of deep-seated insecurity. And unpresidential."


Just think. If the GOP bully runs for president in 2012, we'll be rid of him in about 16 months.

Welcome to the United States of Ford

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Eric Cantor, left, gives a bad name to cantors. John Boehner or Boner?

The brutal treatment of a close-knit North Jersey community by Ford Motor Co. is a tortured tale of corporate greed and racism, of government inaction and media indifference.


Now, the lead Page 1 story in The Record today reports the automaker also used Rockland County, N.Y., as a dump site for tons of toxic paint sludge from a Ford plant in Mahwah, and a cleanup will start soon.


How long has it been there, Editor Francis Scandale? More than 30 years. What a great corporate citizen Ford is, what a great journalist Scandale is.


The story by Staff Writer Scott Fallon is filled with lots of background and numbers, but the cleanup is reported matter of factly, as if he had just covered a Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting.


On A-4, an Associated Press story reports suspect Levi Aron, 35,  "has denied molesting" 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky, "but police still consider that a possibility," contradicting the Daily News story that ran Thursday.


Grand Old Bullshit


On A-14, an Associated Press photo shows House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., covering part of his face with his hand, suggesting he is getting ready to tell more lies about debt negotiations.


Months after Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Oh., took over, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin finally seems to have grasped the full meaning of their obstructionist tactics.


His hard-hitting editorial appears on A-20 -- a day after letters from readers made many of the same points. Here's part of it:


"These [Republican] politicians with their blind insistence [that taxes should not be raised] are not making America better, they are sacraficing it."  Tea Partiers and hard-line conservatives "are saddling Republicans with the image of a party run amok ...."


But Doblin speaks out of both sides of his mouth, and on the page opposite the editorial, his column portrays Republican Governor Christie as a more pro-active leader than President Obama (A-21).


What about Christie's blind insistence that taxes on millionaires shouldn't be raised or his assaults on programs for working- and middle-class families, the poor, the old and others who can't defend themselves?


Deja vu news


On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski has his umpteenth list of survival tips for a visit to the MVC office, even though local readers are crying out for a survival guide to the paper itself (L-1).


Smelly fish


Why would anyone want to go to Tani in Glen Rock, a Chinese-run restaurant that tries to serve food  from six different Asian cuisines, especially when the reviewer got a "tough, fishy smelling piece" of raw tuna?


In her two-star review (Good) in Better Living today, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung recommends the five-flavored Chilean sea bass, without noting that one of those flavors comes from elevated levels of harmful mercury.

When editors lose their courage

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What secrets are hidden by Orthodox Jews in Borough Park?

You know the editors of a local newspaper have lost their way when letters from readers and OpEd pieces expose official incompetence or corruption more than the paper's own editorials and columnists.


Three letters to The Record's editor today blast Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan for giving a $53,000 raise to a "crony," who is already making $121,350 (A-18).


His job is to head an office that fights waste. What a farce.


D.C. gridlock


Four other letters comment on the sickening partisan gridlock over extending the nation's debt ceiling. 


The Record has printed one story after another filled with Republican he said and Democratic she said, but Herbert Jacobs of Teaneck says, " ... Republicans are ready to plunge the world into another Great Depression unless they get their way."


Hear Scott W. Stahlmann of Ramsey: "House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., the tea partiers and the right-wing fringe are trying to sell America with another 'big lie' ...."


It's time for President Obama, Stahlmann continues, "to stop negotiating and come out swinging. Raise revenue [by] taxing the wealthiest, close the corporate loopholes, reduce military spending and foreign aid, and leave Social Security and Medicare alone."


Rupert's cube


Another letter, this one from J. Andrew Smith of Bloomfield, calls Rupert Murdoch's empire a "God-awful propaganda machine that redefines bottom-feeding for conservatives."


An OpEd piece exposes Governor Christie's attempts "to allow municipalities where the wealthiest New Jerseyans live to continue to keep out working families" by imposing large minimum lot sizes (A-19).


Stuffed shirt


Compare all this compelling reading to what Editor Francis Scandale had to say at the screening of an HBO documentary, "Mann v. Ford" on the decades-long struggle of the Ramapough Mountain People against Ford Motor Co.


Scandale took a break from golfing to moderate a panel discussion with the filmmakers and said not a single quotable word (L-1, L-6).


In fact, the cowardly editor left it to one of the filmmakers, Micah Fink, to put the saga in perspective: "It's a very powerful story. There are basic themes of injustice, racism, poverty ...."


How could Scandale be at a loss for words? He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries on The Record's "Toxic Legacy" series in pursuit of a Pulitzer Prize, but failed to win one.


There's also no mention today of how The Record's editorial page quickly abandoned the community when the largest civil suit in New Jersey history was settled -- netting Ringwood residents a maximum of $34,500 a person -- and urged them to take it and move on.


Today's front page


The newspaper's tarring and feathering of BCC President G. Jeremiah Ryan may lead to his firing, even though he spent "significantly less" than his annual $50,000 expense account and raised $3.8 million last year for the community college (A-1).


What the paper calls an "investigation" included a scurrilous attack on Ryan for buying "top-shelf liquor" for himself and donors. 


This from editors who once labored under a now-reformed drunk, Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, and who now work for his spoiled children, investors in an Englewood wine bar. How rich.


Orthodox Jews


The grisly A-1 story on the murder and dismembering of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky by a member of his ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, delicately avoids any discussion of homosexuality among unmarried Hasidic men.


On A-4, a photo caption doesn't say whether the giant sand dragon shown won the contest in Belmar on Wednesday.


Go fish


In Better Living, the owner of Pearl Restaurant in Ridgewood doesn't explain why he serves artificially colored farmed Atlantic salmon when wild-caught salmon is abundant and cheap this summer (Starters, F-1 and F-8).

How much does Stephen Borg make?

Image by purpleslog via Flickr

How much does North Jersey Media Group pay President and Publisher Stephen A. Borg, son of company patriarch Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg? 

How much does NJMG pay Editor Frank Scandale, who was promoted to vice president -- after Stephen Borg repudiated many of Scandale's news policies? How much does Stephen Borg's assistant publisher, Mala Lawrence, make? What about Features Director Barbara Jaeger, who hounded many of her most experienced staffers out of her department?

The better question is how much are they really worth, and did anyone of them take a salary cut during a company downsizing that included lower salaries for many new positions or unilateral cuts of as much as $10,000 for veteran newsroom workers?


$40,000 ceiling

Recall Stephen Borg's statement -- overheard by a sports reporter -- that his goal was a newsroom where no one made more than $40,000. Obviously, he wasn't talking about the editors.

Stephen Borg called Scandale's initiative on news and gossip to attract 20-year-old readers "a failed strategy." Borg also started "every day" coverage of education (except during summer recess). Frank just kept asking young female reporters to lunch.

Stephen Borg folded the Food section, moved printing to Rockaway Township and decentralized news gathering -- as he licked his chops over the tens of millions he could bring in by selling 150 River St. and surrounding acres. Unfortunately, the recession put a kabosh on that plan, and Mac insisted on keeping a presence in Hackensack, even if it's only his office.


Low morale

Scattering reporters and editors probably ended any sense of shared purpose the news staff had in Hackensack. Has moving the paper's headquarters to Woodland Park been responsible for the lack of Bergen County coverage? Only the lazy, incompetent editors can answer that one, but readers look in vain day after day for news of their towns.

The recession didn't stop Stephen from selling his $2 million home in Tenafly and buying a $3.65 million estate in the same town. As with the first house, he got a mortgage from NJMG.

So how much do Stephen, Frank, Mala and Barbara make? I know, but can't say. Their salaries were disclosed in depositions given under oath in the pretrial stage of my age-discrimination lawsuit, and anything said was covered by a confidentiality agreement. You can be sure Stephen and the editors are paid a lot more than they are worth.


'I don't know'

Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg refused to disclose her salary and other executive compensation when she was deposed nor would she say whether any of the vice presidents took a salary cut. 

When Stephen was asked how much he is paid, he said he didn't know -- three times. He was prodded by my attorney until he gave an estimate. Despite his unkempt look -- messy hair and wrinkled white, open-collar shirt  -- you can be sure it is a ton of money.