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.

Editor Frank Scandale's decade of failure

Image via Wikipedia

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.