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Francis "Frank" Scandale, editor of The Record, apparently learned nothing from Columbine.

Who is Magdy Elamir and why is a story about this doctor leading The Record of Woodland Park today? Well, you get a hint in the drop headline's "latest brush with law," but wait until you turn to A-12 and find out he's allegedly been breaking the law for more than 12 years and has been practicing medicine all along. 

Now, that's Page 1 news, not a story focusing on weeds in the driveway of his empty multimillion dollar home in Saddle River. Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her minions are on autopilot again.

You'd think Editor Francis Scandale would be ashamed of how he downplayed the Arizona shootings to run a huge photo of a Jets football player on the front page last Sunday, but here is another big photo of a Jets "rally" on A-1, while the shooting rampage story has been shoved inside the paper.

In fact, there are so many good stories and and at least one column that should have appeared on A-1 today, all this bonding Scandale is doing with the other male editors over sports is getting really irresponsible. 

Rich will get richer

Governor Christie is vowing to give another tax break to the wealthy -- corporations and small businesses this time -- and that should have been all over Page 1. There is no evidence tax breaks create jobs, and a A-1 refer doesn't cut it. 

The profile of Tuscon in the wake of the assassination of a federal judge and the attempted murder of a congresswoman, now on A-5, also should have been outside, especially in view of all the letters to the editor on the shootings from North Jersey readers (O-3).

This still is the most talked-about story in the region and the nation, even if Scandale can't hear it for all the ass-slapping and high-fiving he's doing over the Jets' playoff game.

Readers are constantly asked to wade through drivel on Page 1 from Columnists John Cichowski and Charles Stile. So why didn't Scandale put a powerful package -- Mike Kelly's column on our weak gun laws (O-1) and Margulies' cartoon on the gun lobby (O-2) -- out front today? 

How many more massacres will it take?

That question is the headline on Kelly's column, but it could just as well be posed to Scandale, who covered the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 when he was an editor at The Denver Post -- as he never let anyone at The Record forget in the decade since he arrived here. 

I'm no fan of Kelly, but here, for a change, he writes directly and effectively:

"America is awash in too many handguns, too many angry nut-jobs, too many gun laws with loopholes and too many politicians who fear the narrow-mindedness of the National Rifle Association."

More jock itch

Even Sykes is succumbing to jock itch, putting Yankee captain Derek Jeter on the front of Local today as one of the 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH, along with a six-column auto dealer ad above the fold, an abomination. Sykes doesn't get out much, if she can't find any local people to watch.

How is local news covered by her clueless assignment desk? 

The towns assigned to her pets -- such as Hackensack and Englewood -- languish, while the towns covered by energetic staff members flourish. One of those, Denisa R. Superville, has three stories in the section today, but there are none from Monsy Alvarado and Giovanna Fabiano.

An emotionally cold editor

Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

The Arizona shootings are back on the front page again today. 

Even though it's the most talked-about story in the nation, Editor Frank Scandale again demonstrated his famously flawed news judgment by underplaying it badly on Sunday on The Record's front page.

Then, he played catch-up on Monday, allowed it to play second fiddle on Tuesday to the dismemberment of a Cliffside Park man and knocked it off the front altogether on Wednesday.

Running a huge photo of a Jets football player on Sunday's front page -- and squeezing the attempted assassination  of Gabrielle Giffords under a one-column headline -- is so insensitive that it could only come from an editor like Scandale.

Remember, he shamelessly wallowed in the bloodshed of Columbine in 1999,  took credit for the Pulitzer Prize awarded to The Denver Post for its coverage of the high school massacre and did nothing to advance the nation's gun laws. 

Even the choice of today's A-1 photo is suspect. It shows astronaut and husband Mark Kelly seated and first lady Michelle Obama standing as both applaud during a memorial service for Giffords. 

Contrast that to what I saw on TV: The first lady seated next to Kelly and grasping his hands after President Obama told the gathering the congresswoman opened her eyes for the first time Wednesday.

A cold fish

When I worked at The Record, before the move to Woodland Park, many newsroom workers found Scandale to be emotionally cold. (On a personal note, he avoided my gaze completely during his 90-minute deposition on Dec. 9, 2009, in my age-discrimination lawsuit, which named him as a defendant.)

Also on A-1, a different perspective on snowstorms and the challenges they pose for funeral homes and cemeteries comes from Staff Writer Jay Levin, who writes local obituaries. He also answers the question every newsroom has at this time of the year: Why do so many people die after Christmas?  

Juvenile journalism

A Charles Stile column on the state Supreme Court also starts on Page 1, and it contains one of the most ridiculous and inappropriate comparisons a journalist can make: "Associate Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto ... is evolving ... into a judicial version of Paris Hilton, the moth-to-flame exhibitionist who thrives on notoriety." What is Stile thinking? Why is this drivel on A-1?

Again today, Stile's column is color-blind when discussing the departure of Associate Justice John Wallace, who was the only black on the high court, and a Star-Ledger story on A-4, the continuation page, also doesn't identify him as black and Governor Christie's nominee to replace him as white. 

If you need any more evidence of how little reporting The Record does on mass transit, take a look at an editorial praising NJ Transit's use of "quiet [rail] cars" -- written off a story in The New York Times (A-18).

The selling out of Local

Two ads appear across the front of Local, one above the fold and one at the bottom of the page, as head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes again rolls over and plays dead for the advertising department.

On L-3, a story on "the final investigative report" -- released after a public records request filed by the newspaper -- is silent on defects in the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor that crashed at high speed and killed Teaneck Officer John Abraham on Oct. 23. 

None of the many stories on Abraham reported the Ford police cruiser has a history of safety problems, including power steering that "freezes up" in high-speed turns, the defect that killed a Paramus police officer. Here is an excerpt from an online forum called Officer.com:

When Paramus, N.J., police officer Vincent Brock skidded out of control on New Jersey's Route 4 in 1993 and died after hitting a pole, it set off a chain reaction that caused jurisdictions in New Jersey, Connecticut and Ontario to pull their cruisers off the street or refuse delivery of new ones.

Bergen County Prosecutor Fahy and U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., called for a recall investigation.

Eight departments filed formal complaints with the NHTSA. Four police deaths were blamed on the failures, and several more cited them as cause for accidents.

The NHTSA recall investigation found the four deaths — including Brock's — were not caused by the steering problems. It decided against a recall because the steering lockups occurred during "extremely aggressive but foreseeable driving maneuvers."

Ultimately, a jury awarded a $1.9 million judgment in 2003 against Ford in favor of Brock's widow. Ford appealed and later settled.

 You'll find more at the following link:

Crash that killed Paramus officer

There's nothing in today's story on Officer Abraham about whether his family will be filing a lawsuit against the Teaneck department, Police Chief Robert Wilson and Ford Motor Co.

How many editors does it take?

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The Record's coverage of a Cliffside Park murder could have been produced by a  journalism class at the high school, above. The story also brought reporter Monsy Alvarado out of hibernation.

How many editors does it take to get the name right of a man whose body parts were found scattered around Cliffside Park? How many editors does it take to find out if he lived alone or with another man, and whether that man was questioned by police on Monday, the day of the grisly discovery?

Today, as on so many days in the past, The Record of Woodland Park's assignment desk under Editor Deirdre Sykes demonstrates just how clueless it is.  

Eye on The Record doesn't know if Sykes or one of her minions (Dan Sforza, Rich Whitby, Christina Joseph et al.) supervised news gathering for this Page 1 story on Monday and Tuesday. But the result is the same: a first-day story that is so woefully inadequate -- a story that tells readers nothing meaningful -- it could have been produced by high school- or college-level reporters.

Misspelling the victim's name is bad enough. Are we to believe Staff Writer Matthew Van Dusen also couldn't find anyone besides the victim's employer to tell readers who this man was and what may have led to his death? 

Even today's story doesn't answer the obvious question of whether the two men arrested in the slaying and dismemberment -- the victim's roommate and "another man" -- formed a love triangle with the victim, robbed him or what?

Sykes' name tag on her computer in Hackensack said "Laughs A Lot." It probably should have said "Laughable."

Late news -- very late

On Saturday's Arizona shootings -- which Editor Francis Scandale underplayed so badly on Sunday -- did none of the editors think to scour the victims' list for a New Jersey grandmother who was one of six people slain, instead of getting the story a day late? North Jersey snowbirds have flocked to warmer climates for decades. Do the assignment editors even know that?

Governor Christie's State of the State speech Tuesday is the lead A-1 story today. It's where Christie pats himself on the back for the state's "changed direction," without hardly any mention of all the financial pain he has visited on the middle and working classes, all the cuts in mass transit, education and other programs; and all the breaks he gave to millionaires.

The final element on A-1 today is on the third winter storm. At least we don't have to wade through more mindless neighing by Staff Writer John Brennan, whose horseshit on the future of racing led the paper Tuesday.

Mercedes-Benz news page

Another six-column Benzel-Busch auto dealer ad is splashed across the middle of L-1, the front page of a section that once was Sykes' pride and joy.

Columnist John Cichowski writes again about the new crosswalk law, and seems to be firmly in the corner of all those impatient, angry and time-challenged drivers who have made pedestrians an endangered species in North Jersey.

The only mass transit news I could find today is a brief on L-2 about a woman who sat on a needle on an NJ Transit bus in Englewood.

Police, fire and court stories dominate Local again. There is no Hackensack or Teaneck news today. 

Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado hasn't written anything about the city for three weeks now, but she helped Van Dusen play catch-up today on the dismemberment story -- likely because her Spanish-speaking ability was needed on a story in which the victim, relatives and suspects are Hispanic.

Food deprivation

In Better Living, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill tells readers that to make up for holiday excesses, she is giving up wine with dinner during the week and eating "minimal sweets."

Sherrill also has put readers of the food pages on a crash diet, producing even less than her predecessor, Bill Pitcher, if you can imagine that. Pitcher was paid $71,000 a year. 

Sherrill's salary is unknown. She works for both (201) magazine and The Record, publications of the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group. Her husband, photographer Ted Axelrod, also rides on the NJMG gravy train.