Editor Frank Scandale's decade of failure

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On Sept. 11, 2001, smoke rising from the Twin Towers after they were hit by passenger jets was visible from The Record newsroom in Hackensack.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR 

Francis "Frank" Scandale will mark his 10th anniversary as editor of The Record on Jan. 24. 

He may have outlasted all the others who were brought in from bigger, out-of-town papers to run the former Hackensack daily, but he also holds the distinction of being the worst editor ever.

Sunday's front page spoke volumes about his failings. Instead of clearing the decks for a story of national and international importance, he conducted business as usual: 

He crammed the shooting of a congresswoman under a one-column head to make room for a huge photo of a professional football player and a minor scandal over land purchases for the defunct Hudson River rail tunnels. 

He even relegated to an inside page his own Washington correspondent's story -- comments from the New Jersey congressional delegation on the sharp partisan rhetoric that has divided the country since the election of Barack Obama.

A day late

Today's front page tries to make up for the woefully inadequate coverage of the Arizona rampage on Sunday, but it's a day late. Why didn't the assignment desk under Deirdre Sykes know on the day of the shootings that a North Jersey woman was among those killed? 

But even today, instead of giving the entire front page to the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords and the slaying of six others, including a federal judge, Scandale runs yet another A-1 story about DuPont pollution in Pompton Lakes. 

And where is the story on the failure of gun-control laws to keep weapons out of the hands of mentally unstable people like the suspected gunman?

Failed journalist

Still, the flawed coverage comes as no surprise to anyone who saw Scandale fall flat on his face when he faced the biggest story of his life -- the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan. 

Barely eight months after he came to The Record, Scandale rolled over and played dead for the business side, rejecting a potentially Pulitzer Prize-winning photo for the front page on Sept. 12, 2001. He was told it would "cost too much" to remake A-1 for the photo.

Given the  chance to score a clear beat with the photo and make the paper stand out from every other daily across the country, he turned his back on Staff Photographer Thomas Franklin's image of an inspirational flag-raising over the ruins of the World Trade Center. That set the tone for all the failures that followed.

Palooka Prize

Scandale was assistant managing editor for news at The Denver Post, where he led coverage of the Columbine High School massacre, for which the staff won a 2000 Pulitzer Prize, according to a Web site called NJ Creatives Network.

Did Publisher Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg hire Scandale, hoping he could win a second Pulitzer for The Record? 

If so, all the paper has won is the Palooka Prize for endless investigations that signified little or nothing, such as the nearly three year probe of former lawman Michael Mordaga under the unsteady guidance of Sykes, the head assignment editor.

20-year-olds

When circulation started to slip, Scandale ordered special coverage of 20-year-olds -- a "failed strategy" that was condemned by Stephen A. Borg when he took over from his father in mid-2006.

Scandale spurned readers in the baby boom generation who had the money to buy advertisers' good and services, and also showed disdain for baby boomers on the staff, including their need for ergonomic furniture. 

His "ageism" produced numerous stories about autism, few about Alzheimer's disease and nothing about the challenges facing older drivers.

Mobile journalists

Scandale's mobile journalist initiative led to decentralization of news gathering and the staff's loss of a shared purpose. 

It also resulted in a huge plunge in productivity, as reporters with laptops, mobile phones and cameras were scattered far and wide, and no one seemed to know that they were doing everything but covering their towns.

Minorities in the newsroom

Scandale dumped the paper's only Hispanic columnist, Miguel Perez, and its only black columnist, Lawrence Aaron. 

Minority reporters came and went, and the minority journalists he brought from Denver were poor replacements.

In a related matter, Scandale threw objectivity out the window by allowing two Castro-hating Cuban exiles to cover Cuba almost exclusively for the paper.

  

Editor has blood on his hands

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

A cardboard display advertises "Call of Duty: Black Ops."

Isn't it likely that Editor Francis Scandale saw visions of another blood-stained Pulitzer Prize in his future when he heard about the Columbine-like threats at a high school in Demarest? After all, Scandale was one of the editors who helped the Denver Post win the ultimate journalism award for its coverage of the original massacre in 1999.

Is that why the story is all over Page 1 in The Record of Woodland Park today? How credible was the threat at Northern Valley Regional? There is hardly anything more in the story than an anonymous tip that "four Asian males had been overheard discussing a planned school shooting."

Let's hope the discussion wasn't about "Call of Duty: Black Ops," the violent video game that sold 7 million copies on Tuesday.

The rest of A-1 is dreadful. Governor Christie apparently remained barricaded in his office for a second day without commenting on federal officials' demand that NJ Transit repay $271 million, plus interest and penalties, already spent on the Hudson River rail tunnels he killed.

To make matters worse, the story regurgitates seven or eight paragraphs of the Christie administration's line on the state's "fiscal challenges" -- with absolutely no reference to the hundreds of millions of dollars lost because the Republican refuses to impose a special tax on millionaires or raise the low gas tax a few cents on his wealthy, gas-guzzling buddies to rescue the Transportation Trust Fund.

The third A-1 story is another well-reported piece by Staff Writer Elise Young, but does anybody in North Jersey give a hoot about the Union County Improvement Authority or a low-income housing project in Elizabeth. Oh, wait a minute. Scandale worked at the Elizabeth Daily Journal, too.

All Scandale has done in nearly 10 years at The Record is talk about what he did in Denver and as a business reporter for Reuters wire service -- while failing at just about everything he tried in Hackensack. 

Sykes falls on her face again

If A-1 is much ado about nothing, what explains today's Local section, the pride and joy of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes?

There are four major stories about development here and there, but I have seen nothing about several residential or commercial construction projects in Hackensack. The most prominent story on L-1 recounts testimony at a murder trial. 

The lead paragraph of the Closter Plaza story on L-1 could have been done in a sentence instead of weighing down readers with the stiff formality of a court ruling: 

"Closter won't be getting a Whole Foods Market any time soon." 

But, of course, Sykes' lazy, incompetent assistant assignment editors are incapable of such clear and concise journalism.

Also on L-1, Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski writes about pedestrian safety in Tuscon, Ariz., and Woodbridge, but nothing about North Jersey. And he ignores a two-day forum the National Transportation Safety Board opened on elderly driver accidents.

Downplaying Teaneck merger

Why does Sykes bury the unraveling of the biggest consolidation move in years on L-3, where Staff Writer Joseph Ax reports Teaneck is bowing to opposition from the police union on the approved merger of the Police and Fire Departments? 

That would have saved taxpayers $250,000 a year, and could have been replicated in Englewood and Hackensack, though the paper's lazy editors never explored those possibilities.

Silence of the lambs

In Better Living, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill's "In Your Kitchen" column dissects a long cookbook recipe for lamb chops, but provides absolutely no guidance on finding meat that has been raised naturally. 

"In my household ... we love lamb," she tells readers. Isn't that nice?