News media always delight in exploiting political divisions

The easiest way to ruin a beautiful day is to try to drive through downtown Englewood, where construction and a blocked lane slowed traffic today at Palisade Avenue and Dean Street, above and below.

This afternon around 1, as the temperature reached a comfortable 75, one Englewood police officer directed traffic as two others leaned against a traffic-light repair truck that blocked a through lane, bullshitting. Now, residents know one reason why the city's property tax bills are so high.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

After the nation's first black president took office in 2009, the racially inspired gridlock in Congress was evident to everyone.

And the news media couldn't have been more delighted, replacing any reporting about issues and what's good for the country with story after story about our political divisions.

A year later, Republican Chris Christie was sworn in as New Jersey's governor and faced a state Legislature controlled by Democrats.

Would he compromise? Fuggedaboutit!

The GOP bully unilaterally cancelled expansion of rail service under the Hudson River, and began vetoing every bill in sight -- from a tax surcharge on millionaires to hikes in the minimum wage to using tax money to purchase open space.

Again, the news media were delighted to report all of the conflict, and The Record's Charles Stile wrote column after column explaining Christie's every word, belch and fart in political terms -- even as the vetoes topped 500 and set a record.

Clinton v. Trump

Today, Columnist Mike Kelly repeats a frequent theme of his column -- that allegedly we are no longer united, as we supposedly were after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on America (A-1).

And once again he points to "an increasingly polarized presidential campaign."

But that's nothing new, just as the media's relentless focus on politics in the nation and New Jersey isn't new, and likely won't end in the foreseeable future. 

9/11 ceremonies

Today's front page, Local front and Better Living cover are dominated by stories related to the 15th anniversary of 9/11.

That's eight straight days of coverage, but I didn't seen anything on the hijackers who lived in Paterson, and obtained phony I.D.'s and licenses in the weeks leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Editors keep on treating photographers like shit

A reflecting pool installed in one of the Twin Towers' footprints in Manhattan.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The 9/11 attack on America -- visible from The Record's building in Hackensack -- was and is the biggest story ever handled by the staff.

Reporters and photographers in the field were competing against the world media.

And the towers of smoke in lower Manhattan were framed in the windows of the newsroom on River Street, where editors worked to put out an extra and then the next day's edition.

Scoops the world

Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin scored the scoop of a lifetime with his photo of three firemen raising an American flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center, advancing the story and offering a glimmer of hope that America was down, not out.

But in Hackensack, the Borg family and the editors let down Franklin by burying his iconic photo on a back page on Sept. 12, 2001, and they are still treating him and the rest of the photo staff like shit.

Dissing Franklin

On A-2 today, the editors run two corrections -- including a fix for a screw-up in a Mike Kelly column  -- but couldn't care less about repairing a major production error on Saturday.

A story on Franklin's 9/11 photo that began on Saturday's Better Living cover ended in mid-sentence, cutting off a quote from the photographer about the meaning of his incredible image to others (BL-3).

Why wasn't the last sentence of his quote run in complete form today, on A-2?

Ambulance chasers

Page A-2 also is where the SHOT OF THE DAY appears.

But the images aren't the best from the local photography staff, as they should be, but from AP photographers in Bangladesh and other far-off  places.

For the past few years, Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi and others have been employed as so many ambulance chasers by the incredibly lazy local editors, Deirdre Sykes, Tim Nostrand and Dan Sforza -- who use images of fender benders and non-fatal rollover accidents as filler.

More 9/11 coverage

Today's 9/11 anniversary coverage appears on Page 1 and the covers of Opinion and Travel.

Editor Marty Gottlieb and Staff Writer Shawn Boburg dredge up a 27-year-old deal on the World Trade Center naming rights (A-1).

Who cares? What does this mean to me?

Boburg completely ignores other Port Authority actions, rubber stamped by Governor Christie, that affect hundreds of thousands of North Jersey residents -- the bistate agency's refusal to expand mass transit and risk losing revenue from exorbitant tolls and parking fees.

More boring politics

In another silly political "ANALYSIS" on the front-page today, are readers expected to take seriously charges from Tea Pot crackpot Steve Lonegan that his opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, is an "extremist"?

Unfortunately for Staff Writer Melissa Hayes and the headline writer, state Sen. Barbara Buono never uses the word "extremist" in describing Christie, the GOP bully (A-1).

Buono says Christie is "anything but" the social moderate he likes to call himself (A-6).  

And as another story shows, Christie simply hates minorities -- poverty in New Jersey continues to grow, especially in Passaic County (A-3).

On Friday, to balance the lead A-1 story on Christie hiding important tax-revenue data, The Record ran another front-page story, an upbeat account about the governor's meeting with  schoolchildren in Monachie.

When asked why he wanted to be governor, Christie didn't compare himself to such predecessors as Jon Corzine, but said "he thought he could do a better job ... than some of the politicians he put in prison" as U.S. attorney (Friday's A-6). LOL.

Wrong tip

On the front of Local today, Road Warrior John Cichowski has a light column about drivers who tip gas station attendants, ignoring all the poor gas jockeys who have been murdered for a fistful of dollars (L-1).

Why is "The Addled Commuter" wasting readers' time again?

The editors didn't think much of the obituary for Franklin Lakes artist Cornelia "Corny" Baker, who died "recently" at 84, demoting it to L-3.

Did layout minion Jim Cornelius, also known as Corny, have anything to do with that?

More on chefs

On the Better Living front, another column by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung ignores challenges faced by consumers and focuses instead on two local chefs' menu ideas (BL-1).

Why is the column called The Corner Table? 

Another screw-up

Did anyone stick with Mike Kelly's rambling column on the naming of the new World Trade Center all the way to the end (O-1)?

Of course, the biggest question is why does "The Shit-Eating Grin" call the tower "1 World Trade Center" when it is described as "One World Trade Center" in Boburg's story on Page 1 today?

These are the kinds of problems that are supposed to be fixed by Production Editor Liz Houlton, the six-figure "Queen of Errors" and supervisor of the copy desk.

But as readers saw on Saturday -- with the fractured quote from Franklin, the photographer who can't get any respect -- the Borgs continue to pay Houlton, despite all the paper's production screw-ups.

Related articles

• It's raining on Christie's Jersey shore parade
• More words, but not always the right ones
• Readers scream, Who the F cares?

Further adventures in mass transit

On Exchange Place in Jersey City, near the PATH station, is a powerful memorial to thousands of Poles who died of starvation in Siberia in 1939, and to the more than 15,000 Polish soldiers, intellectuals and others massacred in 1940 by invading Soviet troops in Katyn, Poland.

The down escalator at the Exchange Place station.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey took over the Trans-Hudson lines in 1962, but the bi-state agency apparently has never expanded its reach, despite increasing traffic congestion in the region, thus denying drivers an escape from increasingly higher tolls.

Commuters who use the stairs on the right to reach the street at PATH's World Trade Center stop in Manhattan don't need a gym membership.

The Port Authority is using toll revenue to help build the new World Trade Center, whose completion is behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget.

The luggage racks on the upper level of double-decker rail cars used by the Long Island Rail Road, above, and NJ Transit are too low,  and even daily commuters hit their heads hard on them. When I stood up, my baseball cap brushed the ceiling of the car.

You won't find much mass-transit news in The Record:

The Road Warrior is fixated on potholes, tinted windshields and other driving trivia, and the other transportation reporter continues to file hundreds of column inches on Superstorm Sandy damage to rail cars and locomotives.

You'd think the Borgs have conspired with North Jersey car dealers, including those lining Hackesnack's Tin Alley, to keep news of packed trains and buses, and choking traffic congestion, out of the paper.

The payoff: Hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue from automobile dealers.

The message to readers is clear: Get in your car at every opportunity, and floor it. 

Columnist emerges from journalism's sub-basement

One of the reflecting pools at the site of the original World Trade Center in Manhattan.

Staff Writer Mike Kelly was given access to the top of the new World Trade Center, and flaunts it in the face of readers on Page 1 today.

Why did Editor Marty Gottlieb waste so much space on The Record's front page for a column that has so little news value?

Kelly, who has been writing his column for more than 20 years, has been stuck in the fourth sub-basement of journalism for years, and is unable to write a coherent sentence.

He refers to "12 unenclosed flights of stairs into crisp air" as a "ladder on steroids." 

If readers have the stomach, they can find their own example of Kelly's unfocused news writing, and a complete lack of editing.

Glorious greed

Why is The Record giving a million dollars worth of free advertising to a couple who are flipping Englewood's Gloria Crest mansion, which they bought in 2000 for $4.7 million (A-1 and L-7)?

Who is foolish enough to throw away $39 million on this glorious pile of stone on 5 acres, and who cares where owners Edward and Jan Turen will live next?

Maybe Publisher Stephen A. Borg is finding his $3.65 million McMansion in Tenafly a little cramped, and will buy Gloria Crest as a family homestead and retirement home for his father, Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, who lives nearby on Englewood's East Hill. 

They could call it Borg Crest or Crested Borg or Stephen Gloria. 

More fluff as news 

This story and Kelly's column are examples of the gee-whiz journalism the editors rely on in the absence of local news.

Kudos to Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi for the terrific photo of a 74-year-old woman holding a small dog after their car rolled over in Fair Lawn (L-3).

But this is yet another gee-whiz filler photo from head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who day after day seems unable to find enough news for Local.

Grazing in Ridgewood

On the Better Living cover, freelancer Joyce Venezia Suss quotes the owners of Raymond's in Ridgewood as saying "we grind and blend our own meat for the burgers" (BL-1).

Suss is silent on whether the restaurant owners actually raise cattle, and doesn't say if the meat contains antibiotics and growth hormones or if the place serves any organic produce.

Monday's paper

I didn't get to Monday's paper until this morning, but I'm relieved the book drive for Paterson children finally ended on Sunday after four weeks of daily coverage (Monday's A-1).

The drive was sponsored by North Jersey Media Group and its two daily papers, The Record and Herald News.

Overreacting? 

The big Hackensack news on Monday was a fire that destroyed two homes on Park Street.

Residents who see their property taxes rise every year wonder why 55 city firefighters -- plus an unknown number of others from three neighboring towns -- were needed to put out the wind-whipped blaze at around 5 in the morning?     

 

Readers scream, Who the F cares?

The Record's former headquarters in Hackensack. The newsroom was on the 4th floor in the taller structure on the right, affording a view of an elevated section of the New Jersey Turnpike and the Manhattan skyline. On 9/11, news copy editors putting out an "extra" would glance up and see a column of black smoke rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center's twin towers.

Bewildered readers rubbed the sleep out of their eyes as they stared in disbelief at Editor Marty Gottlieb's choices for Page 1 of The Record today:

Politics, more politics, an athletic competition, and the feeding habits of crabs and fish in the polluted Hackensack River.

Who the F cares?

Governor Christie's heavily censored report on state revenue didn't raise an eyebrow in the Woodland Park newsroom, and the matter-of-fact story landed on the State News Page (A-3).

Where is the news for readers saddled with inefficient home-rule government, high property taxes, high unemployment and an overburdened mass-transit and road system? 

Get me rewrite 

Staff Writer John Cichowski's Road Warrior column on older pedestrians (L-1) reminds me of the time I saw him walking slowly and unsteadily through the corridors of Bergen Community College in Paramus.

Young students raced by Cichowski, who looked befuddled and lost. Later, he delivered an animated talk full of traffic statistics to a class of seniors enrolled in the Institute of Learning in Retirement.

Critical condition

Hackensack readers looking for news of their city or what will happen to the 20 River Street acres owned by North Jersey Media Group come up empty again -- thanks to head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza.

Instead, there is a seemingly misplaced story on Wall Street's rating of Hackensack University Medical Center (L-3).

On L-2, the latest chapter of utility pole news comes in the form of a photo.

Related article

• Drought worsens for local-news readers

Boring front pages two days in a row

Former Editor Francis Scandale put on blackface and played in the New York City subway before landing a job as vice president of print production for Digital First Media.

The Record's front page today isn't much of an improvement over Page 1 on Monday, when a whopper of an error appeared in the first paragraph of the lead story on cold-case murders.

The most dramatic story on A-1 today -- a worker who was rescued from a vat of acid -- is totally oversold by Editor Marty Gottlieb, though readers don't learn that until deep into the continuation page; the diluted acid wouldn't have killed him (A-6).

Recycled news

A rare story on recycling focuses on Fair Lawn and Clifton, but there's no explanation why Hackensack, the most populous Bergen County town, was omitted (A-1).

Although readers have had it up to here with 9/11, the editor of the Editorial Page keeps hammering away at the anticlimactic trial as a follow-up to news stories and columns that no one bothered to read (A-10).

Bridge loan

Readers are wondering why the paper is wasting so much space on 9/11, and devoting so little space to cost overruns at the World Trade Center and the higher tolls and fares we pay to cover them.

Gottlieb must be pulling down so much money as editor, he is laughing off the daily $12 Hudson River toll on the way home from Woodland Park. 

Tru-hack

The ACLU may have blocked the TRU-ID program at the Motor Vehicle Commission, but Road Warrior John Cichowski has vowed to write another 20 columns about licensing standards -- anything to avoid reporting on commuting problems (L-1).

On L-3 today, readers get a fourth straight day of coverage on the arrest of a suspect in the March 2011 murder of a Teaneck man, and another story on the trial of suspended Hackensack  Police Chief Ken Zisa. 

The other big news in Teaneck is the trapping of a coyote (L-3).

Sleeping it off

Newsroom staffers, meanwhile, have been unable to rouse head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes from a deep slumber.

On the Better Living front, a story on how to re-use beer bottles is a nice tie-in to the Page 1 story on lower recycling rates in North Jersey.

Murdering English

On Monday, the first paragraph of the lead A-1 story on two cold-case murders said:

"But two cases -- each involving an woman who was stabbed before her home was set ablaze -- are still a mystery [italics added]."

Also a mystery is how this glaring Page 1 error got through all the editors the newspaper employs to catch reporters' mistakes.

Francis Scandale

According to his LinkedIn page, former Editor Francis "Frank" Scandale -- who left in disgrace after last October's surprise snowstorm -- has gotten a job as vice president of print production at Digital First Media. 

More Linanity

In other employment news, Jeremy Lin's family have refused to release the Knicks player from delivery duties for the family restaurant on East 23rd Street in Manhattan (S-1).

Lin's height makes him ideally suited to delivering Chinese food, allowing him to hand orders through first-floor windows rather than trying to get into the building.

9/11 is all about selling cars

The New World Trade Center is a single tower reaching for the sky.

A decade ago, Editor Francis Scandale blew the chance of a lifetime to scoop his competition with a front page carrying a unique image of hope from Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin of The Record.

Today, amid all the 10th anniversary coverage in the Sunday paper, readers are given a copy of Franklin's photo showing three firefighters raising the American flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

But the copyrighted photo -- roughly 8 by 10 inches on glossy paper stock -- is sponsored by a car dealer, and on the other side, readers find an ad for All American Ford on River Street, less than a mile from the old headquarters of The Record and North Jersey Media Group.

Is there some reason the NJMG Foundation couldn't sponsor a non-commercial distribution of Franklin's photo? How low can the Borgs go?

A week's reading

It will probably take a normal reader a week to plow through all the 9/11 anniversary coverage today, though some people will just take it straight to the recycling bin.

Many sections carry 9/11 stories, including Sports, which claims the attack on America "affected sports forever." What a hoot.

Then, there's a 20-page special section filled with the accounts of family members who lost someone on 9/11. Tim Nostrand, the Sunday/projects editor, refers to them as "survivors."

Front-page flop

Scandale gives Columnist Mike Kelly top billing on Page 1 today, and Kelly disappoints again. Would you get a load of that phony smile in Kelly's photo.

Kelly's first paragraph takes readers to Texas, where two survivors of 9/11 who once lived in New Jersey meet for dinner and .... I've lost interest already.

There are more 9/11 stories through Page A-9.

Local law-breakers

On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Road Warrior John Cichowski, a former radio reporter, peddles a column about another radio reporter on 9/11.

The main element on the page is about a motorcycle club honoring a fallen Port Authority cop after more than 75 members broke the anti-noise ordinances of every town they rode through to get to the cemetery.

Praising Mac's pal

In Business, a glowing 16-inch story about real estate executive Jon F. Hanson makes no mention of his close relationship with Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, or their joint ownership of a corporate jet (B-5).

In Better Living, Staff Writer Elisa Ung's Sunday column, The Corner Table, is supposed to be about challenges facing restaurant goers, but today she turns her back on readers again and writes about challenges facing a chef who runs a farm-to-table restaurant in far off Somerset County (F-1).

On the front of Opinion, readers find two self-serving columns by Kelly and Scandale on the experiences of reporters, editors, photographers and other journalists on 9/11.

Flawed journalist

Scandale's trite column is flawed from the outset, with a first paragraph that is awkwardly written and missing a word or two:

"Not in my wildest imaginations could I have envisioned what life would be like 10 years after the Twin Towers collapsed in the distance from my office window."

He meant to write that he saw the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan collapse from the window of his office on the fourth floor of the old newsroom in Hackensack.

But then Scandale isn't big enough to admit that he failed miserably as a journalist on 9/11, when he relegated Franklin's incredible flag-raising photo to a back page, instead of ordering the layout editors to tear up the front page to accommodate an image no other newspaper had.

"I remember our photo chief, Rich Gili, yelling, 'That's it!' when [P]hotographer Tom Franklin's now-famous image" appeared on the computer screen "where we retrieved our photos from the field."

Scandale doesn't tell readers Gili was waiting all day for a unique image that would advance the story for The Record and help the paper stand out among the competition, and he saw it in Franklin's photo.

Scandale also doesn't tell readers how he bowed to pressure from the bean counters, who told him it would cost too much to re-make the front page for Franklin's photo.

More than a decade after he joined the paper in early 2001, Scandale remains an uninspiring leader.

See previous post on new features director

On 9/11 anniversary, newspaper stumbles

Image via Wikipedia

Two beams of light represent the former World Trade Center's Twin Towers.

On Sept. 1, The Record began publishing a series of stories to mark Sept. 11, 2001, and today, a day short of the actual anniversary of the attack on America, exhausted readers are hit with at least four more.


The most effective story so far was lavishly illustrated with photos of the attack and its aftermath by Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin and others. Those images trumped tens of thousands of words of text.


Indeed, the still and video images I have seen on TV and in the paper and on its Web site moved me and others to tears in a way text rarely does. 


With a story this big, The Record and other print media have a hard time keeping up. And who knows what's in store for Sunday.


I was just looking at the superb northjersey.com video by The Record's David Bergeland, showing family members holding photos of loved ones who died on 9/11. One man displayed his son's photo on a gold heart he wears around his neck.


A-1 trickery


Editor Francis Scandale is up to his old tricks with Page 1 today.


The terrific story by Staff Writer Justo Bautista on Iraq and Afghanistan vets living and working in our midst in North Jersey certainly belongs on A-1, but why is a retrospective on the region's Muslims relegated to the front of Local?


I guess that kind of unfair  play is guaranteed when head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes is running the laziest news operation in the universe, and can't generate any other local news.


Missing the big story


And despite the tens of thousands of words Scandale has published so far, nothing in the paper has had the impact of a "Frontline" investigation on public television, reporting the government employs 1 million people in 17,000 locations to gather intelligence and track suspected terrorists.


Is the Prudential Center story on A-3 today the first in a series on where commercials and promotional spots are filmed in North Jersey? Why is that news?


On A-9, Liz Houlton's dysfunctional news copy desk wreaks more havoc with a photo caption describing a police officer patrolling "at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on Friday."


With clueless editors like Scandale, Sykes and Houlton, 10 years have passed and nothing has changed.

Rubbing salt in his wounds

Image via Wikipedia

A great newspaper acknowledges its mistakes. But at The Record of Woodland Park, editors do everything possible to hide their boneheaded decisions from readers. A perfect example is the brief story on Page A-4 today reporting that readers of the New York Post voted a Record staffer's 9/11 photo as the tabloid's cover of the decade.

Of course, The Record story carefully omits any mention of  how Editor Frank Scandale -- handling the biggest story of his life -- shamefully put money over journalism on Sept. 11, 2001, keeping Record photographer Thomas E. Franklin's unique flag-raising photo off of the front page and shoving it so far back in the paper, it ran on Page A-32 on Sept. 12, 2001. Although the photo was available in plenty of time for The Record's first edition, Scandale was told it would "cost too much" to remake Page 1.


The Post ran the photo on its front page the next day, Sept. 13, without giving credit to Franklin or The Record. The photo was used later on a U.S. postage stamp, but failed to win the Pulitzer Prize -- maybe because The Record and Scandale treated it so shabbily. It shows three firefighters raising the American flag over the ruins of the World Trade Center -- an image that has become one of the most famous in the history of photojournalism and recalls the iconic photo taken during World War II on Iwo Jima (photo below shows monument.)

Image by dbking via Flickr

This may be why Scandale talks incessantly about what he did at the Denver Post more than a decade ago or at Reuters wire service before that, but never boasts of what he has done since he came to The Record.

The Record v. 'Eye on The Record'

A lawyer for North Jersey Media Group, which publishes The Record, has asked me to remove the 9/11 flag-raising photo I used in an earlier post, "Major detour on the road to a Pulitzer Prize," claiming the photo is copyrighted. Isn't that rich?

The editors of The Record thought so little of this dramatic image on the day of the suicide attacks -- even though it was taken by their own photographer, Thomas E. Franklin -- they relegated it to a back page, a huge error of  judgment that probably doomed Franklin's chance of winning a Pulitzer Prize.

In any case, I have substituted a photo of the World Trade Center in the post.

Dina Sforza, the NJMG lawyer, also contacted my lawyer, Joshua L. "Josh" Weiner in Morristown, and threatened to file a lawsuit unless I take down this blog.

Major detour on the road to a Pulitzer Prize

World Trade Center, New York, aerial view March 2001.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every time I looked up from my seat on the news copy desk, the black column of smoke rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center was framed in the tall window of The Record's fourth-floor newsroom in Hackensack.

I had worked until 12:30 a.m. and had slept through the suicide attacks, but when I awakened at 10:30 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, there was an answering machine message from an editor to come in right away. I got to work at 11:45 a.m. and helped put out an 8-page extra with a bold, front-page headline over a photo of the buildings in flames: "Terror Hits Home." Then we turned our attention to a special 32-page section with no advertising for the next day's paper.

This was the biggest story of my life and the biggest for everyone else at The Record, including the new editor, Frank Scandale, who shared a Pulitzer Prize the Denver Post won for coverage of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. The atmosphere in The Record's newsroom on 9/11 was electric, with everyone walking around and talking to each other, rather than using the Atex message system we usually relied on.

As afternoon turned into evening, chief photographer Rich Gigli reviewed the images sent in by his photographers and those from other sources. Manhattan's Twin Towers, smoking, on fire or with an explosion of flames as one of the passenger jets tore inside, predominated. At 8:30 that night, he finally saw a photo different from all the rest, the one he had been waiting for all day -- three firemen defiantly raising the American flag above the rubble only hours after the attacks -- and it came from one of his best photographers, Thomas E. Franklin.

He raced out into the newsroom and ran into a wall. Even though Franklin's exclusive photo on Page 1 of The Record would be unique, even though it would advance the story and even though it would make the small Hackensack daily stand out among worldwide competition, the editors told Gigli it would be too expensive to remake the front page. In a monumental error of news judgment, The Record's editors put money before journalism, relegating this extraordinary image to a back page.


Some observers think that decision doomed Franklin's chance of winning a Pulitzer, the most prestigious prize in journalism; indeed, he was only a finalist in 2002.

But other newspapers saw the value of the photo. It ran on the front page of the Oregonian in Portland, on the West Coast.

And the New York Post also ran Franklin's photo on its front page, without credit. The Today Show on NBC in New York did a piece on the photo, again without crediting The Record. Finally, on Friday, three days after the attacks, Gigli and Franklin appeared on Today to set the record straight.

When The Record decided to reprint the 8-page extra we put out on 9/11, Nancy Cherry, one of the news copy desk chiefs, announced to me and the other copy editors that the higher-ups told her the front-page photo caption, which misidentified which WTC tower was which, would not be corrected in the thousands of reprinted copies, because it would cost too much.

Life Magazine listed Franklin's image as one of the "100 Photographs That Changed the World," and the photo is part of the permanent collection of the Library of Congress.

In 2002, the United States Postal Service introduced the "Heroes" stamp, featuring the flag-raising photo. Proceeds from the stamp have raised over $10 million dollars to help families and rescue workers of 9/11. Also in 2002, an autographed original print signed by Franklin and the three firemen pictured in the photo sold for $89,625 at Christie's Auction House, with proceeds benefiting two 9/11 charities.


What role Scandale, editor of The Record, had in keeping the photo off Page 1 is unknown. But in the ensuing years, he launched coverage of 20-year-olds that failed, reduced the amount of local news in the paper and widened the rift between dayside (reporters and editors like himself) and nightside (news, layout and copy editors, the so-called production staff).

The Record asked 'Eye on The Record' to remove the flag-raising photo from this post.


Coming soon: Should The Record's editor be replaced?