Old news: Lead story has big flaws

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The lead paragraph of the lead story on Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park today calls a Teaneck woman's death an "apparent homicide." In the third paragraph, the prosecutor confirms it is a homicide. Why "apparent homicide"?
 
The lead paragraph says the body was discovered by firefighters "battling a blaze," but none of the photos of the house show the effects of fire. Couldn't have been much of a fire. The lead paragraph begins, "Authorities are investigating" the death. We should hope so. You don't have to say so; it doesn't advance the story one bit.
 
The time of the fire is never given ("late Tuesday," whatever that means). This certainly is of no help to anyone who drove down that street or neighbors who need help associating a pedestrian or a stranger with the crime. By omitting the time, readers won't wonder why this major crime story wasn't in the next day's paper.

The lead paragraph of a story is the most important, but this one was botched, as so many have been. Just the other day, Staff Writer John Brennan's lead on the first game at the new Meadowlands stadium was incomprehensible, besides being dull.

Whether a reporter is a good one like Staff Writer Joseph Ax, who covers Teaneck, or a bad one, like Brennan, all need eagle-eyed editors backing them up. Sadly, The Record -- an editor-driven newspaper -- has some of the biggest turkeys in journalism. 

The local assignment editors under Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes likely were the first to edit Ax's and Brennan's Page 1 stories. They blew it big time on both pieces. Then, the stories would have been seen by four more sets of eyes: a news/layout editor, a copy editor, a copy desk supervisor and the Page 1 proofreader. All were on autopilot or brain dead.

When The Record was printed in Hackensack, the first copies were rushed up to the news copy desk, where copy editors read every headline, caption, lead paragraph and more to find typos and other errors, and most of them were fixed during the press run.

After genius Publisher Stephen A. Borg moved printing to Rockaway Township in 2007 (and dumped 55 press workers in the process), the news copy desk in Hackensack and later Woodland Park no longer saw the first copies off the press. Errors big and small are now delivered to readers.


There are other problems with today's lead story, especially with the A-1 headlines giving no clue the victim was a well-known gadfly in the township. 

There are other problems with Page 1. Why a front-age story on a $40 million stimulus grant for first responders? Far better in that space would have been the state's anemic economic progress, banished to L-7. 

Unless Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale -- Borg's chief "yes man" -- didn't want to draw attention to how North Jersey Media Group contributed to the severe unemployment and to emptying storefronts  along Hackensack's Main Street, while giving the boss $3.65 million to buy a McMansion in tony Tenafly.


Gee. I thought The Record reported a couple of months ago the legislative proposals to break up Teterboro were non-starters. But we continue to see front-page stories about them. 

The only Hackensack news today is a follow-up to the arrest of a former teacher's aide who disrupted one of the rare school board meetings covered by the paper. Why are 15 inches of precious space on L-3 devoted to this? Did anything happen in Englewood? Ridgewood? 


I got a laugh out of the lead paragraph in the L-1 story about a Lyndhurst homeowner who tried to pay his property tax hike with coins and dollar bills. It begins, "After receiving an unexpected hike [in] his property taxes...."


Unexpected? He lives in North Jersey, and didn't expect a hike? Everyone knows property taxes only go up. Does anyone who voted for Governor Christie really believe he can keep his pledge to lower property taxes?

(Map: Far-off Rockaway Township in Morris County, where North Jersey Media Group owns a printing plant that churns out The Record, Herald News and other publications.)