Tom Troncone throws his own going-away party

Image by ojoqtv via Flick

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?

Readers fight to survive

Image via Wikipedia

"Charter schools fight to survive."

"Libraries feel pinch."

These headlines in The Record of Woodland Park today easily could have read: " Readers fight to survive" and "Readers feel pinch."

The more the lazy, incompetent editors ignore the diversity of Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other towns, the more readers find the paper irrelevant to their lives.

Even the stories they do run often are incomplete or superficial -- evidence that head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes and her sub-editors don't know anything about the 70 towns in Bergen County or simply don't care.

For example, the Page 1 story on charter schools doesn't say much about the Englewood initiative or why there aren't more charter schools there, given that city's segregated public elementary and middle schools. The Wayne library is featured in the story about funding on the front of Local, but there little detail about Hackensack or other Bergen libraries. And the L-1 story on Lyndhurst's downtown only serves to highlight the absence of stories about Hackensack's downtown, among others. (Photo: Church on the Green, Hackensack.)

When he took over in 2006, Publisher Stephen A. Borg ordered the desperate editors to institute daily education and food coverage -- even though everyone knew that was just hype and nothing of the sort happened -- but he forgot all about the paper's mission: local news. And so have the reporters and editors.

Editors who sing for their supper

A newspaper is only as good as its local assignment desk, those editors who largely determine the content of the paper by virtue of assigning reporters to cover certain stories. I had a lot of time to observe The Record's assignment desk when I worked there as a news copy editor for nearly two decades.

Copy editors are a lot like Toyota mechanics: Toyotas may have a reputation for reliability, but the mechanics see all the broken ones. The Record may have a good reputation, too, but the copy editors see all  the broken stories -- stories that have been promoted, edited and approved by those lazy assignment editors.

Here is a ditty I wrote about six or seven years ago that reflects my experience with assignment editors starting in September 1989, when I became a copy editor after 10 years as a reporter at The Record.

When I wrote this song, the newsroom was still in Hackensack and the assignment desk was run by Deirdre Sykes, an immovable force whose shrieks and peals of laughter echoed across the room late every weekday afternoon -- no matter how grim the news that day -- prompting homicidal thoughts in nearby staffers.

SONG OF THE ASSIGNMENT EDITORS

    We sit on our fat asses to scan the 

competing papers,
   
    Then order out for linguini, oil, garlic and capers;
   
    We run a newsroom that can’t write straight,
   
    And our copy’s arrival is frequently late;
   
    We can’t write a nut graf and we’re lousy at math,
   
    So we avoid reporting on community wrath;
   
    Challenge authority?
   
    No thanks. That’s not our priority!
   
    We assign reporters to cover lots of stories,
                           
    Rapes, council meetings, train wrecks, but never Tories;  


    Our unsteady publisher hits the sauce each and every day,
   
    So his attitude toward probing local news coverage is, 

What the hey!

   
    Our newsroom is busy, it’s often in a tizzy,
   
    With editors, photographers, reporters and graphics people 

running to and fro,
   
    Yet we’re just a bunch of journalism hos.