Gannett to lay off more than 200, go after younger readers

The moving notice of North Jersey Media Group and The Record still is visible at the public entrance of the landmark headquarters at 150 River St. -- seven years after they abandoned Hackensack. The building and nearly 20 acres of the land were not part of the sale to Gannett, the nation's biggest newspaper chain.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Gannett, the payroll-slashing newspaper publisher, is delivering bad news to about half of the 426 employees left at North Jersey Media Group and its flagship daily, The Record.

More than 200 of them "will see their jobs end in mid-November," according to a story on the first Business page today (L-7).

News of the so-called restructuring appeared on NorthJersey.com on Wednesday morning.

NJMG includes The Record, Herald News, NorthJersey.com, 50 weekly newspapers, (201) magazine and "an Events Group," Gannett says.

The New York Post, which reported Gannett paid the Borg family $40 million for NJMG, has said layout, news and copy editors would be getting pink slips by mid-October after production of The Record is moved to Neptune.

That's where Gannett has been putting out the Asbury Park Press and five other New Jersey dailies the company publishes.

Now, it seems, those layoffs have been pushed ahead to mid-November.

Digital, schmigital

Today's story also delivered bad news to The Record's older readers -- who are believed to be the majority -- especially those who don't own smart phones or text or use computers.

In fact, many believe "app" is short for "appetizer" on an early bird dinner menu.

According to Gannett, the goal of the restructuring is to make the "newsroom and sales department more responsible to the growing digital demands of readers and advertisers" (L-7).

Sure to sail over older readers' heads is Gannett's pledge to deliver "a broader array of story-telling techniques and advertising solutions" to "the sophisticated and increasingly digitally minded New Jersey audience and advertisers." 

No. 1 source?

"We are proud to be North Jersey's No. 1 local news source," one Gannett executive boasts in today's story.

But it's clear from the looming layoffs, Gannett's main goals are lower labor costs, more ad revenue and higher profits.

Readers don't see any "local news" on Page 1 today, only mindless coverage of New York baseball teams under this headline.

"BASEBALL BACK FROM THE DEAD"

Yet it's doubtful Gannett will be able to resurrect The Record, once a leader in delivering municipal news to readers.

Reading the paper is bloody murder

George Washington Bridge at night. (wallyg)

For the fourth day in a row, Editor Marty Gottlieb leads The Record today with a real whodunit -- the murder of a 70-year-old real estate broker whose East Rutherford home was set on fire.

Why so many stories about Barbara Vernieri?

Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, the lazy editors in charge of local news, appear content to wait for the latest handout from tight-lipped Prosecutor John Molinelli then to mine other sources or even talk to neighbors about what they may have seen.

Christie in denial

On Monday, Gottlieb gave front-page play to Governor Christie's elaborate denial of how the state economy is struggling on his watch -- complete with an incomprehensible graphic on the continuation page (A-6).

Today, Page 1 carries the other side of the story -- a profile of sorts of the Legislature's non-partisan budget analyst, David Rosen, a target of Christie's verbal abuse in the face of shrinking tax revenue.

Clunky headline

A third story on A-1 today carries another awkward headline from Editor Liz Houlton's copy desk:

Barnabas puts  

kidney transplant

office in Bergen

Comes while HUMC unit is suspended

"Comes"? That doesn't belong here. Was the copy editor having a sexual fantasy while writing the sub-headline?

The Record should give a free subscription to any reader who can guess what the story is about.

Municipal news 


The Local sections today and Monday have a good deal of municipal news for a change, but nothing from Hackensack.

Monday's section had two stories from Teaneck. 

Once over -- superficially

Image via Wikipedia

How many Fair Lawn synagogues have closed or merged with others?

The Record's front page today continues to pour thousands of words on the heated debate over teacher tenure, but where is the discussion of family life, parents and other outside influences on student success?

I guess Editor Francis Scandale and Staff Writer Leslie Brody have swallowed Governor Christie's argument that teachers have to go unless they perform miracles in the classroom.

Is it really Page 1 news -- in the form of a large photo, caption and refer to L-6 -- that a Fair Lawn family gave a new torah to their synagogue or should editors be assigning reporters to find out how many Jewish temples in North Jersey have closed or merged with others in recent years?

Towering journalist

Every few weeks, it seems, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg writes a story about the 9/11 memorial or museum, and it appears on A-1. You'd think the Port Authority, the agency he covers, does nothing else.

A story on how Christie slashed legal services for the poor appears on A-3. 

When you have to make up nearly $1 billion you're not getting from taxing millionaires, all other residents suffer.

Local yokels

No Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck municipal news appears today in head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section.

But Columnist Mike Kelly has another 9/11 piece on L-1 today as he reaches for his goal of writing about every one of the nearly 3,000 victims who died that day.

More poor news judgment

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Why doesn't somebody arrest "Baby Doc" Duvalier?

Here's something for readers starved of local news: Charter schools apparently aren't the magic bullet Governor Christie is making them out to be in his assault on public-school teachers. The lead story in The Record of Woodland Park reports some of them under-perform, even in such troubled districts as Paterson.

From there, today's North Jersey Page 1 is all down hill, thanks to the skewed priorities of desperate Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who have led the staff stampede away from covering local municipal news.

Mike Kelly's Sunday column on our weak gun laws belonged on A-1, but his overlong, overwritten piece on Glen Rock unfurling a new flag for a dying Vietnam War veteran has Local front written all over it. Is it on the front page today out of Scandale's loyalty to the borough where he lives?

Every word a gem

Poor Peter Sampson, one of the hard-working newsroom veterans and a former United Press International reporter. What is all this on A-1 about the FBI using cellphone calls to track suspects' movements -- a story that takes up three-quarters of a page inside, complete with complicated graphics?

Readers already are intimately familiar with the tracking technology from "Law & Order SVU," "Fringe" and many other TV dramas. 

A really powerful package of international news appears inside -- the puzzling return of former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and the new government that replaced the corrupt Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his rapacious wife in Tunisia.

Surely, there must be Haitians and Tunisians in North Jersey to tell the story through, if the clueless assignment desk would just send a couple of reporters out to find them.

Putting the twin dictators on A-1 would show readers that Scandale just doesn't exploit the human misery of earthquakes, floods, mudslides and disease when he scrambles for a powerful image the inflexible Page 1 designers demand every day.  

News killer

For months, The Record and other media have quoted Republicans as saying they want to repeal health-care reform because it is a "job-killer." On A-7, a story quotes experts saying that claim is basically unfounded -- even as the effort is getting under way in Congress.

What took everyone so long? I guess the sound bites and hot buttons are too hard for news people to resist.

Conflicting messages

Readers of Sykes' Local front must be wondering whether the Englewood-based Benzel-Busch Motor Car Corp. -- that's the six-column ad above the fold attached to the 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH series-- is the kind of responsible company discussed by consumer advocate Malaak Compton Rock, the subject of today's article.

Also on L-1, Columnist Charles Stile finally identifies John Wallace as the only African-American on the state Supreme Court when he was denied renomination by Christie, but he refuses to confront the governor on the nonsensical reasons cited for his removal.  

Stile and other reporters consistently fail to explore the racial angle, given that Christie's nominee to replace Wallace is a white woman. 

Drive-by reporting

On L-3, a brief identifies the 16-year-old Ramsey girl who was killed by a train, and her death is called a suicide. Readers are told nothing else about her. 

As far as The Record is concerned, her life, and the lives of innumerable others who died in one-car accidents or were run down crossing the street, have no news value.

We have mandatory insurance now

Image via Wikipedia

The Richard J. Huges Justice Complex in Trenton, seat of the Supreme Court.

What's all the fuss on the front page of The Record today about the constitutionality of mandatory health insurance in 2014? Automobile insurance has been mandatory for decades, though you won't see anything about that in the Associated Press story. Is that unlawful, too?

Another issue not raised in the lead story is whether parents who do not buy health insurance are endangering the welfare of their children.

Another ass-slapper

Even if you don't question Editor Francis Scandale's decision to put a big photo of football fans on the front page, you'll wonder why the news copy editor mentioned Viking or Vikings three times in three sentences.

How many asses did Scandale slap in the news meeting Monday afternoon in Woodland Park after ordering layout editors to put that photo on A-1? 

Here is how Scandale's peculiar male editor-bonding ceremony goes:  "I got the Giants on the front again, Gary." (Smack!) "I got football on the front again, Randy." (Smack!) "I got rabid fans on the front again, Ron." (Smack!) 

The three stories on Page 1 are process stories -- a federal judge's ruling on health-care reform that doesn't change anything, despite the AP's attempt to create a crisis atmosphere; a stalled bill to provide more access to defibrillators and an upcoming state referendum on sports betting that flies in the face of federal law and Christie administration policy. My eyes are glazing over.

On A-2, two embarrassing errors are corrected.

No municipal news

Has head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes ever produced a Local section before today that is so completely devoid of municipal news? Readers get a mix of police and court news, two local obituaries, a sob story and other tripe.

The major L-1 story reports suspended Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa, his ex-girlfriend and two others pleaded not guilty in Superior Court to official misconduct charges. 

Zisa's attorney, Patricia Prezioso, is the law partner of Bruce Rosen, who has represented North Jersey Media Group, which publishes The Record, and Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg.

Wrong-way Stile

The Political Stile column on L-1 has Staff Writer Charles Stile foaming at the mouth over New Jersey Supreme Court Associate Justice Roberto A. Rivera-Soto being paid for not doing his job, but Stile himself is getting paid for not doing his.

He not only calls the justice "Soto-Rivera," an error picked up by the news copy editor who wrote the incorrect last names under the L-1 photo.

But he fails to identify John E. Wallace, the justice bounced by Governor Christie in May, as an African-American or report that the woman the governor tried to replace him with is white or that some observers called Christie's decision racially motivated.

In a Page 1 story on Saturday, Staff Writer John P. McAlpin also failed to report that Wallace is African-American and was the court's only black member.

Lucky to have the Borgs

Image via Wikipedia

Will Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., run for governor in 2013?

I can't remember a Monday paper with so little real news -- on the front page and in the Local section. 


Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes of  The Record of Woodland Park are lucky they work for the Borgs -- absentee landlords who are oblivious to what is going on in the newsroom and what is going into the newspaper.

For the second day in a row, the major photo on Page 1 is of a triumphant high school athlete. 

Below that, a feature story raises the question of whether the company has asked overweight news and layout editors to take a health survey in order to qualify for the health plan.

At the bottom of A-1, a glowing profile of New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez sounds like Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson is grooming him for a run to become the state's first Hispanic governor.

Of all the people with money problems, why is state Education Commissioner and Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler's sob story of so much interest to Columnist Mike Kelly (Local front)? Doesn't Kelly have anything else to write about?


Sykes' Local section carries three weak municipal stories from three small communities, including a major story on the ambulance corps' need for funds in Harrington Park, where Sykes lives. That follows Sunday's story on sidewalk repairs in her small town.

Which volunteer ambulance corps doesn't need money?

'Ageism' determines news coverage

The Record today is a prime example of how "ageism" may determine what news is covered by the former Hackensack daily.

The front page is filled with a truck-car safety crackdown under the scary headline, "Drivers beware." But a far more troubling phenomenon is on Page L-1, where a story reports that a 77-year-old man woke up from a coma four days after ramming his car into a building.

In recent years, the paper has carried numerous individual stories, like this one, about elderly drivers hitting stores, other cars, even pedestrians, sometimes with fatal results. But The Record has never written a series of articles on the challenges facing older drivers and whether driver re-training or other state or private programs are available to help them.

Another example of apparent ageism is the newspaper's devotion in recent years to covering autism, giving hundreds of hours of staff time to articles that often run on Page 1. But has The Record made a similar effort in covering Alzheimer's disease?

The second big story on Page 1 today reports how conservatives are pinning their hopes to radically remake government on Governor-elect Chris Christie. "He has ... to be prepared to close government," one former mayor says. Close government? Is there some reason The Record didn't report this story before the election.

The Local section continues its boycott of municipal news from highly diverse Teaneck, Englewood and Hackensack. An annual story about white suburban high school students spending the night in boxes to get a firsthand look at homelessness doesn't explain why the newspaper has missed the apparent completion of a new homeless shelter in Hackensack, next to the county jail.

Better Living today has the usual single recipe for vegetarians to represent food coverage in a Monday paper, but there's also an item about a free pie-tasting in charming Chester. I wonder if restaurant reviewer Elisa Ung -- who has made no secret of her affection for dessert -- will claim her share?