'Grateful' editors seek news handouts

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AOL offices in Palo Alto, Calif.

 

Giovanna Fabiano, who did such an awful job covering Englewood, Englewood Cliffs and Leonia for The Record, is the latest staffer to jump ship for the online local-news site called Patch.

 

Fabiano follows in the footsteps of former reporter Tom Davis and the gorilla steps of former Night Editor Tom Troncone in joining the AOL-financed effort. 

 

Troncone was dubbed the night editor for the numerous times he would say, "Good night."

 

You have to wonder why they would leave the Woodland Park daily for this ify news operation -- unless they just got sick and tired of working for, with or under Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes, and their clueless sub-editors.

 

Now, they've got their hands out looking for tips. I found this on the Ridgewood Patch site:

"Send us a news tip

"Enter your tip here and it will be sent straight to James Kleimann, Tom Troncone, Giovanna Fabiano, and Laura Bertocci, Ridgewood Patch's (incredibly grateful) editors."

Patch editors work from home. Can't you just see Troncone getting fat on beer and preservative-laden bratwurst?

Judging from how many stories she ignored or missed in Englewood, Fabiano must have spent the last few years working from home while on The Record's payroll.

Actually, the Woodland Park daily is good training for Patch aspirants. The assignment editors under Sykes honed the art of sitting back and waiting for the news to come to them.

From Big Cheese to small potatoes

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A couple of weeks ago, Tom Troncone was night editor of The Record of Woodland Park. Now, he is an editor at AOL Patch -- the local news site -- posting a photo of pumpkins with a story on a pumpkin patch on Ridgewood Patch.


All those patches confusing you? What does Patch mean, anyway? Patched up? Patched together? Pumpkin patch? Turf? Territory? Your guess is as good as mine. It just seems like small potatoes.


This is a link to the story about Ridgewood's only pumpkin patch. It's chatty, but not well-edited.

Pumkin patch on Ridhewood Patch

The first paragraph notes there is no hay ride, but there are plans for one next year. Later, we read this:

"There's no muss, no fuss, no expensive farm markets or rip off expensive hayrides."

 A little off-message, don't you think? 

Patch is covering only four towns in Bergen County now, and hardly represents a threat to The Record, even though local coverage in the paper is, well, patchy.

Tom Troncone throws his own going-away party

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What you'd look like after one of Tom Troncone's nitrate-laden brats.

Tom Troncone, an assistant assignment editor at The Record of Woodland Park, held his own going-away party Saturday at his home in Hillsdale.


Troncone, whose last day was Friday, originally was rumored to be going to Bloomberg News in Manhattan, but may have decided to go with Patch, the online, local news service from AOL (or is it, LOL?).


Troncone once worked as a police reporter under Jerry DeMarco, who at the time was law-and-order editor on the assignment desk in Hackensack. DeMarco sat next to his boss, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.


The barbecue was extremely well-attended by newsroom staffers, including Sykes and Projects  Editor Tim Nostrand.


With those two attending, let's hope for the sake of others Troncone didn't run out of food.


See previous post: You call this local news, Deirdre?

More inadequate reporting

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A three-paragraph promo on A-1 of  The Record today reports that a 12-year-old Hackensack boy was killed by an NJ Transit train on Tuesday afternoon, and readers are referred to the "complete story" on the Local front. But the story is far from complete, in another pathetic effort by a reporter, assignment editor, news copy editor, copy desk supervisor and Loafs A Lot Deirdre Sykes, the head assignment editor.

In Sykes' defense, she might have been stuck in a toilet bowl and could not get out to the newsroom in time to edit the story and possibly question why crucial information is missing, if she even noticed it. 

Unfortunately, she has a separate bathroom equipped with a custom-made crapper large enough to accommodate her big, white bottom, and her cries, whimpers and laughs couldn't be heard. Her toilet water: Eau de Mierda.


Readers have to search the story for clues as to whether Caesar Muloki was walking home from Hackensack Middle School when he was hit by the train around 3:15 in the afternoon, because Staff Writer William Lamb never says so. ( Hey, Lamb, how about more Lion in your work?)

If the boy was walking home from school, his death could have been avoided if Hackensack provided school busing; it doesn't. None of this appears in the story, either. 

After I bought a home in Hackensack, I suggested to Staff Writer Colleen Diskin that she do an environmental story on the lack of school busing, the attendant pollution and parents' frayed nerves, but she dismissed the idea, saying no group was clamoring  for change. She calls herself a journalist?

It's unclear why this story wasn't handled by the Hackensack reporter, Monsy Alvarado, who wrote another L-1 story today. Does Alvarado know there is no school busing in Hackensack? Did she tell Lamb, the night rewrite reporter, or clueless Tom Troncone, the night assignment editor? 

Sykes has smothered Alvarado so long, the reporter apparently has a one-story-per-day limit. She didn't even manage to write a Hackensack municipal story today.

If past practice is any guide, there won't be a follow to the death of the Hackensack boy, just as no follow was ever done on the death of a 21-year-old Korean woman from Glen Rock who was killed by an NJ Transit train last month.


Oh, Desk Warrior John Cichowski wrote a column blaming the half-dozen or so victims of NJ Transit trains this summer, never questioning the adequacy of fencing and other safety measures provided by the transit agency. Today, Chick, as he is known around the office, is off in La-La Land writing about electric cars that aren't for sale yet.


On Page 1 today, readers are treated to another expose of massive pay-to-play at a Bergen County agency.  But this story, written by Jeff Pillets with the help of four other reporters, amounts to little more than journalistic masturbation as orchestrated by Castrated Francis Scandale, the editor.


Municipal reporting is shoved aside for these projects, yet despite hundreds of such exposes over the years in The Record and other papers, little has changed. 


The really important story on A-1 is about the dying, debt-ridden Transportation Trust Fund, which repairs roads and benefits mass transit. Governor Christie refused, after he took office, to raise the low gasoline tax to bolster the fund, and now Democrats are pressuring him to do something.


Christie knows the Borgs and his rich friends would be disproportionately hit by a higher gas tax, because virtually all of them drive gas guzzlers. Curiously, the story omits any mention of mass transit or the gasoline tax.


On A-12, an editorial urges readers to contribute to the food drive sponsored by the North Jersey Media Group Foundation, headed by prim and proper Legal Beagle Jennifer A. Borg, one of the Silver Spoons running the papers.


Can her kid brother, Greedy Stevie Borg, the publisher of The Record and Herald News, assure readers that the downsizing he ordered didn't put former employees in the same dire straights of people who will benefit from this annual drive?


Has anyone seen the byline of Susan Sherrill, the new food editor, in the Better Living section since she joined the paper a few weeks ago? All I've seen are the highly promotional press releases from restaurants and food and wine stores she rewrites for Second Helpings, a blog on northjersey.com.

Front-page correction

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Under Publisher Stephen A. Borg and Editor Frank Scandale, The Record of Woodland Park discarded high standards for its front page.

Recall the shameful episode on 9/11, when Scandale put money over journalism and buried Tom Franklin's incredible flag-raising photo at Ground Zero on a back page. And since Borg took over in 2006, Page 1 has reeked more and more of the locker room. (I'm not referring to the helmet scam story at the bottom of A-1 today.)

So what happens when a a cop is shot and a police chase ends in the death of an innocent? Do you discard your lead front-page story and go tabloid? If you are The Record, you go for it, especially if Tom Troncone, a former police reporter, is the assignment editor on duty, as he might have been on Monday night.

But the bold headline that was designed to sell papers Tuesday morning -- "Cop shot; woman killed" -- came back to bite the incompetent editors the next day, when law enforcement officials said a man, not a woman, was killed. So today, the story goes back on A-1 with a real clunky headline -- "Cops unravel tragedy." I submit it's the family and the editors who are unraveling what happened.

Jerry DeMarco's Cliffview Pilot.com reported the incident correctly.

This story didn't belong on The Record's front page to begin with, and its placement there again today is questionable. (On the jump page, A-6, editors run not one but two photos of cops "canvassing" the scene of a fatal accident. What a waste of space.) The correction on A-2 notes "incorrect information from a law enforcement official," but doesn't refer to the A-1 story, where the reporter blames the error on police "confusion."

If Borg, Scandale and their lazy, incompetent minions had any standards, Governor Christie's slash-and-burn cost cutting would command space on Page 1 every day, joined by such important stories as looming fare hikes and service cuts at NJ Transit, which will affect tens of thousands of people in North Jersey, many of whom have to rely on the wheezing local bus system because they can't afford cars.

In Local, three-quarters of a page is devoted to listing the names of school board candidates in Bergen County and part of Hudson County. I guess you have to do this a day after you assign eight reporters to the same story, and give readers little information. 

The Record can't hide how its editors and reporters are bored with covering municipal and school board elections.

Click on this link: The Record's front page today