Good riddance to bad rubbish

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The Pulitzer Prize eluded Editor Francis Scandale during his decade at The Record.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

After more than a decade of mediocrity as editor of The Record, Francis "Frank" Scandale has been given the old heave-ho by Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

When Borg took over in mid-2006, Scandale had already been editor for about five years and had tried to reverse falling circulation with coverage aimed at 20-year-olds. 

Calling that a "failed strategy," Borg embarked on a series of major editorial decisions that reshaped the daily, then headquartered in Hackensack. 

Still, Borg promoted the editor to vice president, and paid him more than $200,000 a year. 

The end came on Halloween, two days after a snowstorm that paralyzed the region. Coverage in The Record by a skeleton weekend crew was pathetically weak -- typical of Scandale's recent performance.

Scandale, 54, came to The Record from The Denver Post, where he helped the staff win a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Columbine massacre. 

But he fell flat on his face covering the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on America -- the biggest story of his life -- when he failed to publish Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin's unique flag-raising photo on the front page.

In the years that followed, Scandale's flawed news judgment was evident time and again, especially when he gave Page 1 play to sports and the "business of sports," pushing New Jersey and North Jersey news inside.

He also played second fiddle to head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who many consider the real power in the newsroom.

Sykes and her clueless minions presided over the greatest erosion of local news coverage in the paper's history, especially after the move to Woodland Park in 2008.

In a trick-or-treat announcement on Monday from North Jersey Media Group, Borg said he is looking for a new editor who will show "bold and decisive leadership and relentless focus on the consumer."

Which is another way of saying Scandale had none of those qualities.

Scandale got rid of the paper's only Hispanic and black columnists, as well as the only female news columnist, and later took part in the spoiled Borg siblings' wholesale firing of older newsroom employees with 20 years to 30 years or more of service.

Now, it's his turn. It couldn't happen to a nastier guy.

ADD knocks disaster in Japan off front page

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Rock Road in Glen Rock. This is the size of the rock in Editor Francis Scandale's head. 

It took only about eight days for Editor Francis Scandale and all the other editors at The Record with attention-deficit disorder to find an excuse to knock the disaster in Japan off Page 1 today. It's buried on A-14.

Reporters and photographers presumably had complained about how exhausted they were leaving the Woodland Park newsroom in search of the Japanese who live in North Jersey -- as the clueless assignment desk under Editor Deirdre Sykes tried desperately to localize the story. 

King-size and then some

We know Governor Cristie is in bed with all the police chiefs whose salaries aren't capped, but now we find out the mattress must be the size of Hackensack to accommodate all of those snobby charter school officials (A-1).

Food prices have been rising for several weeks now, so the news copy desk is from hunger with that outdated head on A-1 today: "Higher food prices coming your way."

Office-loving columnist

You know by today's L-1 Road Warrior column that Staff Writer John Cichowski has never spoken to NJ Transit bus drivers who compete with all of those privately owned commuter vans. 

They're grateful for the help, because the bigger buses are standing-room-only during the rush hour and simply can't accommodate more passengers.

Sour-grapes journalism

In the years after Scandale left The Denver Post for The Record (2001), the former Hackensack daily always seemed to carry an inordinate number of stories about the Mile High City.

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Scandale moved to Glen Rock then, because he couldn't afford Ridgewood on his six-figure salary. 

The other day, he discovered Glen Rock has a sister city in Japan, and milked that for three days. Today, Glen Rock's talented youth are all over the Better Living front. So is Ridgewood talent-less?

What's next? Glen Rock as the ideal American town? 

Fractured writing

Reporter Jean Rimbach writes infrequently, but she really breaks news when she does, as in today's L-2 story, which reports that Gore Vidal, Barbie, King George III and the Rolling Stones -- all go to high school in New Jersey.

Here's her lede:

"From Gore Vidal to Barbie, King George III to the Rolling Stones, teenagers from around the Garden State tested their knowledge on an eclectic array of history questions Saturday in an academic competition at Ridgewood High School."

I guess the news copy editors -- who are treated like shit by Scandale, Sykes and the other dayside editors -- deliberately overlook such obvious errors so that Rimbach and other bad writers look like fools.

Either that or they're asleep.

Media refuse to look inward

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An impassioned editorial and an Opinion piece today call for reform of "our insane gun laws" (Pages A-8 and A-9), but you won't find any soul-searching by The Record of Woodland Park or Editor Francis Scandale on the media's role in perpetuating gun violence.

What has Scandale done since he was at The Denver Post covering the 1999 Columbine High School massacre but splash one shooting after another on the front page to sell papers? He's already tired of Saturday's rampage in Arizona, as readers can see from today's tabloid Page 1:

Man's head, torso

found behind church

Why waste the second line of the headline on where the body parts were found? Scandale once banned one-town stories from the front page, so is he afraid if the headline said "Cliffside," readers in other towns would ignore the story?

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes must be OK with the unprecedented, six-column auto dealer ad above the fold on the front of her Local section, because it continues to appear with the "2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH" (that's statewide people to watch, not local people to watch, of which there aren't any).

How others see Editor Francis 'Frank' Scandale

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The Pulitzer Prize.

Here are two comments on posts about Francis "Frank" Scandale, editor of The Record since January 2001:

Anonymous said...

As pointed out once before, Scandale likes to take credit for the Columbine Pulitzer, but he wasn't in the office when the news broke and an assistant made the initial assignments, not paging Scandale until later. "All I thought," Scandale later complained to American Journalism Review, "is why didn't they page me sooner?" Right, it's always all about you, Frank! I can guess why they didn't page him sooner -- probably didn't want the stumbling glory-hound getting in everyone's way and making assignments based on office politics rather than ability to do the job. http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=514

January 11, 2011 1:49 PM

Anonymous said... 

 

Really, a story ending in mid-sentence falls under the category of "shit happens." But the gross underplaying of the Arizona shootings is chimpanzee-level news judgment. I wish I could honestly say this qualifies Scandale as the dumbest top editor for whom I've worked, but sadly he remains the second-dumbest (you would not believe the stories about the dumbest). He remains No. 1 in overestimating his ability, though. The dumbest editor at least would recognize a screwup in hindsight, perhaps days later and not necessarily learning from it. But when Scandale badly botches a call, he rationalizes it as zigging while other newspapers zag and gives himself a pat on the back. This was an unquestionably stupid news call, unless you are editing some shit-kicker paper in South Dakota, someplace like that.

January 10, 2011 2:34 AM

Scandale was away at a conference when The Denver Post got word of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Here is the link to a long article on how the Denver paper and others reacted to big stories:

 "Why didn't they page me sooner?"

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 hides his incompetence

Did you see Editor Frank Scandale's column on the front of Opinion today -- an elaborate explanation of why The Record of Woodland Park ran a photo showing a female suspect giving the finger to the photographer? 

He mentions his involvement over the years in deciding what photos to run, going way back to the Columbine massacre in 1999, when he was at The Denver Post. But he conveniently ignores his biggest blunder -- relegating Record Photographer Thomas Franklin's incredible flag-raising shot on 9/11 to a back page. How shameful. 


Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais has probably written about the solar panels he had installed at his home a half-dozen times, including today's takeout on the front of Business. 

But because his story only refers briefly to the experience of one other homeowner, readers never learn how the process of getting solar panels is frustratingly slow, because of a stubborn state and local bureaucracy. Yet, he's familiar with my experience, because I sent him e-mails.


I had to lay out more than $40,000 to get solar panels put up on the roof of my Hackensack home. From the day I applied for a state rebate and put down a $10,000 deposit with the installer, 1st Light Energy, it took more than two years to get the panels onto the roof, and a couple of more months to get them online (in October). 

I still have not received any solar renewable energy credits, which I  anticipated will repay me in six to seven years.

-- VICTOR E. SASSON