Another snafu at a blood-thirsty paper

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North Jersey restaurants love the big profits they get from serving squid.

If you need more evidence people working for Production Director Liz Houlton are on autopilot, just turn to Page A-12 of The Record, where today's story on the shooting of a congresswoman ends in mid-sentence. 

On Page 1, the thumb-nail photo of the suspected gunman appears over his last name, even though his full name isn't given until the continuation page. And the big, sunny smiles on his face and Gabrielle Giffords' face seem inappropriate in view of the shooting deaths of a federal judge and five others during the rampage.

You can't get any sloppier than that, especially in view of the promise Publisher Stephen A. Borg made to readers about providing education and food news every day. Instead, the Woodland Park daily continues to damage its reputation and credibility with embarrassing production errors and inaccurate headlines and captions almost every day.

Borg crows about his decision several years ago to move printing from Hackensack to Rockaway -- far from the newsroom -- but the cost-cutter in him apparently was too stupid to realize, or didn't really care, that he had sacrificed a crucial step in the production of the paper.

Once, as many as 10 copy and layout editors in Hackensack pored over the first copies off the press, looking for and fixing errors, but apparently no one does that today. And Houlton -- notorious for all the errors her cursor passed over and her proofers missed when she ran the features copy desk -- was promoted to production director of the whole newspaper. 

How ugly. She's now known by the informal title of Queen of Errors.

Blood on his hands

The A-1 play of the Arizona shooting story is relatively modest. Editor Francis Scandale helped direct the Denver Post's coverage of the massacre at Columbine High School more than a decade ago, and shared in the paper's Pulitzer Prize.

That probably figured in his winning his job at The Record in 2001, but can this editor claim to have done anything to advance gun control or has he simply splashed one bloody shooting after another all over the front page? 

Today, apparently, his lust for sports overcame his baser instincts or was he just disappointed the congresswoman didn't die?

Elsewhere on A-1, Staff Writer Jeff Pillets has another expose -- this one on land purchases and consultants' fees in connection with the Hudson River rail tunnels Governor Christie killed.

Bowing to King Christie

At the bottom of A-1 and all over A-10, the paper cranks up its public relations machine for Christie, reporting his "big plans" for this year in advance of his State of the State speech Tuesday.

Four of his colorful quotes appear on the front and more appear on A-10. Four photos of his body and face show just how large this man is. But nowhere does Staff Writer John Reitmeyer ask Christie whether the governor, who loves the limelight, might be presenting the wrong image during the obesity epidemic.

And it's difficult to understand how Reitmeyer can claim to be a journalist. Again, he leaves out of his Supreme Court synopsis (A-10) the salient information that the governor dumped a black associate justice and nominated a white woman to take his place. Charles Stile, in his overlong L-3 column about the high court today, also omits these highly relevant racial identifications.

On A-3, a Star-Ledger story reports on the sad state of Rahway's downtown, even though The Record has completely ignored Hackensack's and Englewood's struggling downtowns.

Deirdre Sykes and bimbos

Does head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes identify with the bimbos on "The Real Housewives of New Jersey"? How else to explain the appearance of one of them as a "2011 People to Watch" on L-1 today.

Are there no local officials or residents we should be watching this year? Are all of them the chopped liver Sykes thinks they are? And there's that six-column auto dealer's ad across her L-1 page again.

Fortunately, L-1 also carries an inspirational story on the dedication of Community Baptist Church, which put up a $13 million building in Englewood. 

Sykes and Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano have virtually ignored that city's African-American and Jamaican residents, but this story was written by Sachi Fujimori, a talented features section writer who was on periodic weekend duty.

Readers sound off

In Opinion, almost a full page of letters from readers discuss Christie's absence during the post-Christmas blizzard and botched cleanup -- pro and con -- a story it took Scandale and Sykes almost a week to catch up to and they still failed to run a photo of the governor at Disney World.

In the letters, readers call the Republican governor "lazy and incompetent," equipped with "an ego as large as his belly," "never wrong," and "out of touch" with average citizens. 

Hmm. Sounds just like Sykes.

Cheap ingredient, big profits

In Better Living today, "The Corner Table" column from Elisa Ung publicizes nearly a dozen chefs and restaurants that offer new and imaginative squid dishes, but curiously, she fails to mention one of their chief motives is the big profits they make from this cheap seafood (F-4). 

Isn't she supposed to be in the consumer's corner?

'Unforeseen problem' delays delivery

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"Due to an unforeseen problem, the delivery of today's paper will be late."

That's the message I heard this morning around 8 when I called the 201 number I usually dial if my paper is missing, wet or late (201-646-4444).

Does "unforeseen problem" refer to the depth of the snow that fell  most of Sunday and overnight? A front-page story in The Record of Woodland Park on Sunday predicted a blizzard.

Were there problems with the presses in far-off Rockaway Township? The Mercedes-Benz  trucks that haul the papers back to Bergen County? 

What about the rag-tag crew of independent home deliverers, whose cars and trucks test the limits of the vehicle-inspection regulations?

I remember when my hometown daily newspaper was put together by reporters and editors in a Hackensack newsroom and printed in the same building. Then, the first legible copies -- the so-called good copies -- were rushed upstairs and pored over for typos, bad headlines and other problems, and fixes were made as soon as possible.

 

What a concept.

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.)

Hackensack doubts its existence

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Trenton. Edison. Monmouth Beach. Warren Township (wherever the hell that is). Far-off New Jersey place names or datelines appear on Page 1 in The Record of Woodland Park today and with regularity, but when is the last time you saw a Hackensack story there? 

President Obama's offshore drilling plan and its threat to the extraordinary Jersey Shore is squeezed under a one-column headline, when it should be taking up most of the page. Shame on the lazy, incompetence editors for running a sensational, A-1 story on the gang rape of a 7-year-old girl in the state capitol.


Some news editor wrote a "What's next" blurb for the oil-drilling story that refers to Obama's "government," instead of administration. Some news copy editor and supervisor also must have been napping.


In Local today, there is lots of Passaic County news, including police and fire stories, but, for yet another day, nothing about the city where the newspaper was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years, and still nothing about how state aid cuts are going to affect Hackensack schools. The headline on Mike Kelly's column should read, "Ignore this drivel."


My son attends school in Hackensack, and my street has long needed paving. I've been wondering for many months whether the City Council is going to address the police chief's mounting legal troubles and his alleged use of police staff in his business affairs -- the one story clueless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes has allowed Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado to cover.
 
I've watch Main Street businesses struggle or close -- apparently affected by Publisher Stephen A. Borg's decision to pull hundreds of employees out of the city and move printing to bucolic Rockaway Township, wasting gallon upon gallon of diesel fuel on his Mercedes delivery trucks and worsening North Jersey's already polluted skies.


I am beginning to doubt Hackensack's existence.

Printed in Rockaway, published where?

Although it's been several years since printing of  The Record was moved to Rockaway Township, Page 2 of the paper still lists 150 River St., Hackensack, N.J., as the daily's home, under a new motto: "The Trusted Local Source."

The giveaway is the telephone number with a 973 area code -- the new headquarters on Garret Mountain in Woodland Park, where top managers and editors, the legal staff and most of the reporters and copy editors were moved.

Elsewhere on Page 2, it says, "Published daily by North Jersey Media Group Inc. at 150 River St., Hackensack, N.J. 07601-7172" and "postage paid at Hackensack, N.J."

Abandoning River City

Several years ago, The Record slowly began moving out of Hackensack, the city where it was founded in 1895. First, it shifted the printing of the newspaper from River Street to a press building it owns in Rockaway Township, a 60-mile round-trip.

Then, top managers and editors began merging the staffs of The Record and its sister publication, the Herald News, another daily, assigning virtually all of them to a building on Garret Mountain, in Woodland Park; a newsroom in Rockaway and offices of the weekly newspapers published by the North Jersey Media Group (NJMG), owner of the two dailies.

But Malcolm A. Borg, the ailing chairman of NJMG, whose father and grandfather ran The Record before him, still keeps his office in the mostly empty, four-story brick building in Hackensack; he has to drive only 6 miles to reach his home on the East Hill of Englewood.

The daily and weekly newspapers are now being run from Woodland Park by his spoiled children, Jennifer A. Borg, general counsel and vice president of NJMG, and Stephen A. Borg, Record and Herald News publisher and NJMG president. 

Readers have never been told of the printing and staff moves.

Moving the printing of  The Record to Rockaway forced NJMG to give up one of  its biggest profit centers: printing other newspapers, including USA Today. 

But it allowed the company to lay off more than 50 press workers. 

It also ended a tradition of rushing the first edition up to the Hackensack newsroom, where copy and news editors could read the paper, find errors and fix them. Thus began The Record's precipitous slide in quality, which continues today.

-- VICTOR E. SASSON