The irrepressible Jennifer Borg

Place de La Sorbonne in Paris.

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As the chief legal officer of North Jersey Media Group, defendant and witness, Jennifer A. Borg attended every day of the jury trial of my age-discrimination lawsuit. 


Her restrained "good morning" to me contrasted with her uninhibited conversation with NJMG's in-house lawyer, Dina L. Sforza, and its hired gun, Samuel J. Samaro of Pashman Stein in Hackensack.


Borg, 44, talked about children, her nephews and lots of other subjects. Eventually, she started talking to me about her Upper West Side lifestyle, the upscale food stores she patronizes, her husband's visa problems and more.


She asked me if I had a problem getting a visa for my wife after I met her in Jamaica, then recounted the long, expensive legal process of her husband's immigration to the U.S., and recommended the lawyer she used. 


When I asked where her husband is from, she said "Africa" -- twice. Later, she said he's from South Africa (probably not from Soweto). 


During this conversation, it never occurred to her to ask why The Record has never launched a project on the dysfunctional legal immigration system, which is responsible for a lot of illegal immigration. 


I recall telling Projects Editor Tim Nostrand in late 2003 that it took 16 months to get my stepson here from Jamaica and that the federal office in Newark had lost hundreds of files, forcing relatives and immigrants to start over again, and suggested we do series on legal immigration. He advised me to write an op-ed piece.


I knew Jennifer Borg had led a life of privilege before she took the witness stand (you can hear it in her accent). But when I asked her to tell the jury "briefly" about the schools she attended, she rattled off a half-dozen degree and non-degree programs, including law school and "the Sorbonne in Paris." Hearing that, I looked at the jurors, but none reacted visibly. 


At her second deposition, conducted by my attorney, she was unrestrained in condemning my behavior and work performance at The Record, talking on and on in a scolding tone. 


But even though she had sworn to tell the truth, she distorted many things and gave the wrong year for my probationary period -- she said 1985; it was 1995. It was clear she was trying to smear me.


In front of the jury, she was far more restrained. She said she was mistaken about 1985.


Her younger brother, Stephen A. Borg, 41, had testified first. 


After they finished, I felt the jury understood how neither Borg was "minding the store" -- the newsroom. 


I hoped the jurors felt as I did that the Borgs were merely two spoiled siblings working for their multimillionaire father who paid no attention to who was hired and who was promoted, and whether the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing editors -- notably Frank Scandale, Deirdre Sykes and Barbara Jaeger -- were complying with company policy condemning age-discrimination and sexual harassment. 


The younger Borg, NJMG's president and publisher, testified that he never approached me or spoke to Human Resources after he learned I had filed a lawsuit. The employee manual says the president is obligated to investigate any such charges. 


He also testified he did nothing when he received my April 4, 2008, e-mail alleging mistreatment of older workers -- except send it to his big sister for inclusion in a final, written warning given to me April 9, 2008.


Stephen Borg, who wore a suit and tie for his courtroom appearance, also told the jury the only thing experience gets you at The Record is more vacation -- almost exactly what his father said to me many years before.


Company patriarch Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg appeared in the courtroom last Friday, the morning of the verdict. Jennifer Borg wouldn't allow him to answer when I asked what he thought of the photo The Record published the day before, showing a woman making an obscene gesture.


"I don't know when you're Victor Sasson and when you're a blogger," she said. 


Both Jennifer and "Mac" Borg rushed out of the courtroom after the jurors were polled on their  verdict, which rejected my age-discrimination and retaliation claims. 


I didn't get a chance to tell them I am down, but not out.

More chest thumping from JerryD

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Here is the comment Jerry DeMarco wrote after my last post. The former assistant assignment editor and breaking news editor for The Record has always been full of bluster, but just how much of what he says can we really believe? And isn't he trying to gloss over incidents of sexual harassment of several women he supervised?

DeMarco has boasted of sleeping with women high and low. His pursuit and harassment of women were well-known to his supervisor, head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, who sat next to him and saw on his desk the photo of the news clerk who was about half  of DeMarco's age when he dated her.

His activities also were well-known to Dina Sforza, corporate attorney for North Jersey Media Group, and Jennifer A. Borg, NJMG vice president and general counsel. Yet as far as I know, De Marco was never disciplined, despite an explicit company policy against sexual harassment.

These three women didn't even stand up for the young women who were being exploited by him.

Here is what DeMarco said:

Horniness requires a pulse, Veektor. And what's wrong with having attractive QUALIFIED women on your staff? People always accused me of deliberately hiring hot babes -- oh, like one who came in with a Pulitzer and others who've gone on to much greater accomplishments, like NG and LK and the dazzlingly talented AK (even though I brought in KM, PL and PP, among other dudes). Admittedly, the honey wasn't as sweet once MT left, although AH took up the slack before bolting, as well (I can say that, cause I dated both). Then again, neither was a reporter. Nor are MH and KM -- both of them gorgeous inside and out, and more skilled than you and me put together, bud. So what if MK -- my all-time crush and the sexiest woman in journalism not named Rachel Sklar -- happens to work there? Or the blinding SA? (Sorry, SB. Just statin' fact.) The joint has some good-looking men, as well. I'm sure. I think. No? OK, since I left the male hottie level has dropped considerably, but what did you expect? Losing OC on the distaff side was a blow -- although those of us lucky to be her FB friends get to share each and every smooch and cuddle as she and new hubby J.P. Gotrocks III trot the globe (Were he and Peter Sellers separated at birth?). In fact, unless there've been defections from Hooters, I don't think the sexual tension is anywhere near what it used to be -- at least not since skunk hair and Pearl White were caught canoodling on the Great Lawn. My guess is there are more clock blockers than heart stoppers. Which reminds me: Is K Five Cents still there?

January 28, 2010 2:27 PM

Victor E. Sasson said...

To readers: Your assignment, if you wish to accept it, is identifying all the people here now named only with initials. Victor Sasson

January 28, 2010 6:04 PM

More inside stuff from JerryD

Jerry DeMarco, the former assistant assignment editor at The Record who is the moving force behind cliffviewpilot.com, had a lot to say about my "Eye on The Record" post Thursday on Englewood coverage and the Borg family, "A lot of paper to recycle." He refers to The Record as "the Wreck It," though I prefer "The Wretched," which works on a couple of levels. "OxyGen" and "OJ" apparently refer to Jennifer A. Borg, Daddy's little girl, who grew up to take the cushy job of  vice president and general counsel at North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record and Herald News.

To read his comments, click on "1 COMMENTS" at the end of the post from Thursday, "A lot of paper to recycle, 11/26/09," or on the following link:

http://eyeontherecord.blogspot.com/2009/11/lot-of-paper-to-recycle-112609.html#comments


This will also give you the opportunity to react to his broadside.

'The fish stinks from the head down'

Frank Scandale was named editor of The Record in 2001 after he helped the Denver Post win a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. He was the latest out-of-town editor hired to remake the Hackensack daily. (He grew up in Westfield and worked at the Elizabeth Daily Journal, both outside The Record's circulation area.)

Scandale replaced Vivian Waixel, a Queens native who had worked her way up through the ranks and who I believe was the first woman to become editor. She was named executive editor of The Record and Herald News. Eventually, she left after being offered an office in a converted storage closet with a large window on the Hackensack newsroom.

When he was tested by 9/11, Scandale took part in the bone-headed decision by editors to relegate one of the most powerful images captured by a photographer that day to a back page to save the paper money. (See post, "Major detour on the road to a Pulitzer Prize.")

His reign as editor has been marked by increasing tension and animosity between dayside reporters and editors such as himself  and the nightside staff of news, layout and copy editors, who have been frozen out of decision-making and handcuffed for trying to improve news stories written by an increasingly inexperienced staff. For this reason alone, he should of been replaced long ago. But there is more:

1. He launched news and feature coverage of 20-year-olds in order to win new readers,  ignoring young people's addiction to the computer and that the baby boomers are the ones who have the money to patronize advertisers. In 2006, Publisher Stephen A. Borg called this initiative a "failed strategy."
2. He banned local news stories about one town from the front page, an edict that apparently still stands.
3. He did little to boost the number of minorities in the newsroom (before The Record's and Herald  News' staffs were merged), but did hire three from his old newspaper. And his third managing editor, Frank Burgos, is Hispanic. Still, one black editor left, the paper's only black columnist was fired and the paper's only Latino columnist was told to return exclusively to reporting, leading to his eventual departure.
4. He failed to stand up for his newsroom workers after money for ergonomic furniture was taken out of the budget year after year. Yet enough money was found to buy a dozen or so new, ergonomic desks, chairs and computers for the digital news group, which puts out The Record's online edition, and they were placed smack in the middle of the Hackensack newsroom for all to envy as they continued to use and be injured by furniture dating to the typewriter era.
5. He was rumored to have taken to lunch on separate occasions two of the most attractive young women on the reporting staff. If that is true, was it appropriate for an older editor to have lunch with a young female reporter? Or would a group setting have been wiser, especially in view of  the sexual harassment of women in the newsroom that Scandale and other editors, notably head assignment editor Deirdre Sykes, had long tolerated?  It got so bad at one point that the supervisor of  news clerks stopped hiring young women for the job.

I  have always heard about a Sicilian saying, "The fish stinks from the head down." (It is so appropriate here, given Scandale's Italian heritage.) Now, it's time for The Record to lop off the head and go fishing for a new editor.