A BAD CASE OF THE '80S

The Record, published in Hackensack, New Jersey, has long enjoyed a reputation as both a good place to work and as one of the best small papers in the country.

It was a writer's paper, a place where young reporters could hone their skills before moving on to bigger markets. It was an aggressive paper whose influence was felt across the state. And it was a profitable paper that dominated its home turf, Bergen County, a collection of affluent bedroom communities across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Nearly half the households in the county read The Record, more than read all the other New York and New Jersey papers combined.

During the 1980s The Record embarked on an audacious expansion program, installing color presses and more than doubling the size of its staff. Profits soared, and Malcolm Borg, the owner of a paper handed down by his father and grandfather, started buying other papers in the state. The future seemed unlimited.

Now The Record, one of the highest flyers in an era of excess, has become a metaphor for newspapers in the '90s, struggling to regain its financial footing and its journalistic soul. "Something sad has happened to a once-fabulous newspaper," Michael Aron, a top television reporter in Trenton, wrote recently in New Jersey Reporter. He described the process as "the McPaperization of The Record."

The forces that have buffeted the paper are all too familiar to editors across the country. In the face of the industry's declining readership rates, virtually all newspapers are trying to reinvent themselves, and many see their salvation in low-cal journalism topped with color pictures and fancy graphics. Even the biggest papers have resorted to layoffs, buyouts, bureau closings, and other cutbacks as the financial well has run dry. Meanwhile, the freewheeling atmosphere of the old newsrooms has become editor-intensive, with copy massaged and compressed in the name of better serving the reader.

I worked at The Record for a year and a half in the mid-1970s. It was my first job out of graduate school -- I was hired for the princely sum of $ 10,000 a year -- and I was quickly struck by the range of talent amassed by a 150,000-circulation paper in rundown Hackensack. The Record had a fulltime investigative editor, top-notch bureaus in Trenton and Washington, a great sports staff, and a daily "patch" -- a boxed, front-page feature whose writing often rivaled that of The Wall Street Journal. Many staffers from that era have since gone on to award-winning careers at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, U.S. News & World Report, and other big news organizations.

Like all raw recruits, I worked the night shift, covering school board meetings and zoning commissions. Bergen County has seventy towns -- from the exclusive mansions of Saddle River, where Richard Nixon later lived, in the north, to the gritty meadowlands of East Rutherford in the south, where Giants Stadium was built in the '70s -- and The Record covered the hell out of each municipality. It seemed like small potatoes to a twenty-one-year-old kid, but I later came to understand that this was the paper's franchise, what made it indispensable to readers in Paramus and Teaneck and Fort Lee. While the Newark Star-Ledger was much larger, The Record was widely considered the best paper in the state, a niche that carried special influence because New Jersey had no major television station.

For three generations, the Borg family had taken good care of its employees. Paternalism had replaced unionism after the pressmen struck in 1933 and its members were replaced. The salaries were good, the benefits first-rate. Employees received an annual profit-sharing check that could amount to as much as three months' salary.

Borg's grandfather, John Borg, a wealthy Wall Street financier, bought into the Bergen Evening Record in 1920 and later gained sole control. When the paper exposed a major sewer scandal in 1930, John Borg was indicted on trumped-up charges that were quickly dismissed. He passed on the paper to his son, Donald Borg, in 1949. Mac Borg, who started work on the obituary desk, took over as president and chief executive officer in 1971, a day shy of his thirty-third birthday.

Unlike his father, who was always nervous about borrowing money, Mac Borg quickly set about expanding the family company, now called Macromedia. Within a year he took on substantial debt to buy three CBS affiliate stations, a weekly paper, and two shoppers. Two years later he bought a fourth TV station. "I wasn't concerned," says Borg, puffing on a Winston in his Hackensack office. "For a paper this size, we were really unbeatable."

A blunt sad-eyed man with thinning blond hair, Mac Borg never held himself aloof from the community. He even kept The Record's front-page slogan, "Friend of the People It Serves." He assumed the seats his father had held on the board of Bergen Pines County Hospital and as president of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. But whereas Donald Borg had treated the agencies like sacred cows -- The Record could publish nothing about them without his approval -- Mac criticized the management at both institutions and encouraged his paper to investigate them. A decade later, when he was arrested for drunk driving, Borg called the editors of The Record to make sure they got the story first. The message was clear: there would be no sacred cows under Mac Borg, not even the owner himself.

Borg greeted everyone by name and sometimes had a few beers with the pressmen. Employees were always coming to him with personal problems, and Borg tried to help them. If a Record employee was buying a house, the paper worked with its bankers to arrange a mortgage. If a staffer went back to college, the paper picked up the tab. Borg introduced longer vacations and dental benefits, and fattened pensions to the point that some employees could retire with more than their salary.

Then, in 1979, Borg took a major gamble. He spent $ 110 million -- a third more than The Record's $ 70 million in annual revenue -- on expansion, including state-of-the-art Japanese color presses. The Record began using color in 1982 -- two months before the debut of USA Today. Meanwhile, The Record's building on River Street grew, as Borg built new executive offices, a new mailroom, and a bigger parking lot.

At the same time, The Record was burnishing its journalistic reputation. With Borg's approval, the paper published fraud allegations involving its biggest automobile advertiser, a local Chrysler dealer, who promptly pulled his $ 1.6 million a year in ads. The Record also took on Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, who sued the paper for $ 50 million after it raised questions about his qualifications for an Atlantic City casino license. Guccione, whose license was denied, settled the suit with no payment by The Record.

For reporters, there were plenty of good projects and opportunities for travel. Political reporters roamed the country with presidential candidates. If there was an oil spill in Texas, a Record reporter might spend a week there.

"Over the years, Mac Borg and his father before him were willing to spend for quality," says Robert Comstock, who became the editor in 1977. "To take chances. To do hard-nosed investigative work and analytical reporting. We would spend months on a major series to examine some aspect of society or government. We also put a couple of people in jail. I'm not sure we could defend it on a cost-benefit basis, but we were very proud of it."

During the '80s, Borg recalls, "the growth was explosive, absolute explosive." In 1985 he bought the Woodbridge News Tribune, a small daily south of Newark, for about $ 25 million. Soon he doubled its staff. "I saw it as another Bergen County of the future," he said.

As housing prices doubled and then tripled in Bergen County, where many Wall Street executives made their homes, The Record shared in the wealth. In 1988 the paper made $ 20 million in profits before debt service, the most profitable year in its ninety-three-year history. It was putting out 360-page Sunday papers, the absolute limit of its printing capacity.

"Newspapers got fat, dumb, lazy, and happy in the eighties," Borg says. "I could have fired my whole advertising staff and saved all that money. We were publishing Sunday papers with 118 pages of classified ads."

The more money he made, the wider his eyes grew. In late 1988, Borg borrowed another $ 110 million and signed a contract to build a mammoth new printing plant in Rockaway Township, thirty-two miles to the west. Borg wanted the added capacity so he could switch The Record to morning publication and service the growing western suburbs. He was also eyeing the Central Jersey Home News, whose purchase would give him control of a broad swath of northern New Jersey and encircle the Star-Ledger's home base in Newark.

Borg, who had always served as de facto publisher, made one other fateful move during this period: he hired Byron Campbell, publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News, as The Record's first publisher -- and promised to stay out of his way.

"Firin' Byron" lived up to his name. After replacing Borg's father-in-law as chief financial officer, he fired Bob Comstock as editor. Comstock's greatest strength, his knowledge of Trenton, was denigrated as inside baseball.

In the summer of 1988, Campbell hired David Hall, who had run The Denver Post and the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch. Hall had achieved journalistic notoriety at the Pioneer Press when he insisted on naming a source who had been promised anonymity, triggering a celebrated lawsuit -- Dan Cohen v. Cowles Media Company -- that the paper took to the Supreme Court and lost.

Hall, a Tennessean with a no-nonsense manner, describe himself as one of the leading fans of USA Today. He quickly took The Record in a new direction. Stories got shorter. The "patch" was abolished. Page 2 was devoted to Liz Smith's gossip column and a People column. Both Dear Abby and Ann Landers were added, along with Jeane Dixon's horoscope. Local coverage was deemphasized. The liberal editorial page was toned down, with the editorials shortened and all columnists pigeonholed as either "from the left" or "from the right." The investigative editor was moved to a desk job.

Over breakfast in early April at a Washington hotel, where he was attending an American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, Hall, forty-nine, offered no apologies for the paper's new philosophy. "I don't think people are going to read a newspaper that is self-important and dull and patronizing to them, however journalistically excellent it might be," he said. "I'm looking to put out a newspaper that's satisfying for readers rather than gratifying to the reporters."

Hall had little use for the long series and take-outs that were once The Record's signature. "We spent an awful lot of time on them, and I questioned the relevance," he said.

"I'm not looking for a write-up in Columbia Journalism Review," he went on. "The Columbia Journalism Review is put out by a bunch of people with their heads up their ass who know nothing about how people live their lives. If you want a newspaper that wins a lot of plaudits in the journalism community and wins a lot of prizes, that's one thing. That's not what I'm after."

But many reporters and editors saw Hall as an autocrat who had no understanding of The Record's proud culture. "That son of a bitch stand against everything good journalists have ever stood for," said Mark Howat, who retired as a senior editor in 1991, after more than forty years at the paper. "The editorial page has no bite. They do no real investigative work anymore. The Lifestyle page is all wire. The food page is all wire. We use canned stuff from Hershey's and Chiquita Banana. It's just awful."

One reporter says that, under Hall, The Record became "very much an editor-driven paper. Stories would go in the blender and come out sounding the same. Color and graphics really drove news decisions. If you didn't have a good picture, forget it, your story would get buried."

Hall gave weather stories so much prominence that reporters joked about winning a Pulitzer Prize for weather coverage. "It went soft," another staffer recalls. "There were a lot of stories about dogs and pictures of kiddies. A lot of market research, focus groups, catering to readers."

Hall's next move was to launch Your Town Record, a twice-weekly tabloid (later reduced to once a week) that was little more than a vehicle for local advertising. The ten zoned editions featured weddings and engagements, a police blotter, school sports, school reunions, and a "scholar of the week." The stories included such fare as MARCHING BAND IS STEPPING HIGHER and TEEN IS DRIVEN TO SUCCEED.

Many people were troubled by The Record's new identity. "They cover births and real estate transactions; not everyone thinks that's a step forward," said Comstock, who now teaches at Rutgers University. "There is less space for county government and local news." Even Hall conceded he was frustrated by "our failure" to cover government and public affairs "as well as we should." He also acknowledged that he was partly to blame saying he had not communicated well with the staff. "My excuse is I didn't have enough time. That's not a very good excuse."

The paper gradually lost its edge. One reporter learned that the local head of Blue Cross-Blue Shield was under investigation, but the editors sat on the story until The Philadelphia Inquirer broke it. Even worse, no one seemed to care.

The Record occasionally showed flashes of its old brilliance. At Borg's urging, a four-page series on the Passaic County Jail explored allegations of beatings, perjury, spying, and overcrowded conditions. And, to be fair, some of the rambling feature stories of yore may have held more appeal for journalists than for ordinary readers.

Perhaps nothing more clearly symbolizes Hall's Record than the Saturday paper, which was launched in 1989 after extensive focus-group research. It is a curiously breezy publication, with no metro section and no editorial page. A third of the front page is devoted to a colorful news index, with little boxes for the weather, traffic, and lottery numbers. No story can jump inside the paper. The Saturday Life section consists of such fluffy service features as "Out There Today," "At the Malls," "Smart Shopper," and "For Kids Only."

"We designed the Saturday paper to be a throwaway newspaper," Hall said, adding that most county residents are busy with shopping and chores. As for the lack of a Saturday editorial page, "We never had a complaint."

But the newsroom had plenty of complaints, many of which involved Hall's autocratic style. "Morale was in a freefall . . . he paid almost no attention to the reporters," said Robert O'Harrow, Jr., who left the paper in 1990.

Meanwhile, the expansion marched on. In the summer of 1990, Borg announced that he was negotiating to buy the Central Jersey Home News. He would offer more than $ 30 million for the paper. But by year's end the recession had begun to take its toll on The Record. Advertising revenue plummeted more than 20 percent. Classified ads dwindled as the job market dried up and Bergen County housing prices started declining. Profit sharing was canceled for the first time since 1940.

The sagging finances weighed heavily on Borg. He had always been a heavy drinker; now he began going on binges for hours at a time. He would start with wine, then switch to vodka and stingers. He was losing control.

In May 1991, Borg's secretary and his lawyer confronted him, saying he had to deal with his alcohol problem. Borg decided to enter an alcohol rehabilitation program in Maryland. He posted the announcement on the newsroom bulletin board. He returned a month later, vowing not to take another drink.

The financial situation grew worse. Employees were furloughed for five days without pay. Salaries were frozen. Profitsharing was canceled again. Company contributions to the savings plan were ended. The newshole was cut. But it wasn't enough. Borg was forced to drop his purchase of the Home News. His longtime bankers came to his office and announced they wouldn't lend him any more money.

That summer, Borg laid off 10 percent of the staff, the first layoffs at the paper since 1932 -- 138 employees at The Record, another fifty-seven at the News Tribune. As an added indignity, The Record published a story on the layoffs that read like a corporate press release. Hall told the reporter assigned to the story, Patrick McGeehan, that the story would not include comments from anyone who had been laid off. The newsroom was appalled. McGeehan took his byline off the story.

The reason for the layoffs was simple: Borg owed nearly $ 13 million in interest payments on the new Rockaway printing plant over the next two years. The paper's net profits -- which had dwindled to just over $ 4 million in 1991 -- were being eaten up by debt service. The banks, as a condition of the loan, had insisted that the paper maintain a certain profit level. Some employees were bitter about losing their jobs to pay for a huge printing plant that, without the Home News, was far bigger than The Record needed.

"It was a gamble, but, shit, when we made the decision in '88, who the hell expected the economy to go into a nosedive?" Borg says. "I'm not trying to be greedy, but I'm trying to push this franchise further and further out for eventual survival. If I have to bash other newspapers for my survival, then, goddammit, I'm going to do it. What the hell is my choice?"

Indeed, The Record's market was being battered; newspapers were shutting down in Patterson, Union City, and Elizabeth. But that didn't lessen the anger in Hackensack, where the first attempt to organize a union in half a century took hold. After a personal campaign by Borg, The Record's pressmen voted against the union.

The impact of the layoffs rippled through the newsroom. The paper's travel editor and film critic were let go. Such important beats as health and education were covered by parttimers. The business staff, which once numbered ten, was down to three. The managing editor, Bernard "Buddy" Buranelli, a thirty-year veteran, was fired. He told the staff his last year and a half had been "hellish."

For reporters, the new austerity ended the sense of upward mobility that provides the grease for any news machine. Once, a good reporter would spend no more than a year covering Bergen towns, then move to a prestigious regional beat, and, within a few years, perhaps to The New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. Now, talented reporters were having to spend years covering Ridgewood or Mahwah, and the industry-wide recession was making it virtually impossible to jump to a bigger paper. A young staff was growing older, with kids and mortgages and responsibilities, and many of them felt trapped.

"I can't imagine morale being any worse anywhere," a reporter said. "Everyone's unhappy."

"Everywhere I go," Mark Howat said, "people want to know what's happened to The Record. There's no news in it anymore. Mac Borg has been drunk for the last eight years and doesn't know what's happened to his newspaper."

But Borg understood all too well. He told Byron Campbell that, despite their written agreement, he would have to take a more active role in The Record's management. Campbell didn't like it. On the last day of 1991, Borg announced that Campbell had resigned as publisher and that he would again be running the paper.

In January, Borg held an extraordinary, two-and-a-half hour meeting with his staff. He assailed the Liz Smith column as "drivel" that took up valuable news space. He complained that the editorial page had drifted too far to the right. He ridiculed Your Town Record for its birth announcements. "He humiliated David in front of the whole staff," one reporter says.

Three months later, Hall was gone. Hall says that his dismissal was a "mutual decision" and that he had already been lining up his new job (as editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer), but doesn't deny that he and Borg had conflicting visions for the paper. Indeed, Borg detested much of what Hall did to The Record, but felt he couldn't intervene because of his hands-off promise to Campbell.

Hall had "no imagination," Borg said soon after the editor's departure, and did "no local coverage at all. It would have to be a blockbuster for us to cover any news in any town of any nature. All we're doing is reacting to news. We're not planning stories and we're not doing major investigative work. It makes us look like wimps. It really pissed me off."

"We've gotten into the syndrome of soft news," Borg adds. "We're not out there really digging. I don't feel the spark in the newsroom. I want to get back into some pretty hefty shit. We're going to start taking some chances."

Borg brought in Glenn Ritt, who was running the Woodbridge News Tribune, as The Record's new editor. Ritt has won high marks from the staff for a warmer, more open approach, which includes a regular posting of the week's best stories.

In a memo to his staff, Ritt wrote: "A great regional newspaper helps establish the public agenda through investigative and explanatory journalism. . . . For reporters to challenge the status quo, follow their instincts, stand tall against the establishment, they need confidence that their editors are behind them."

Ritt has also held a series of meetings with local mayors, school officials, and black and Hispanic leaders, an approach that some reporters view as pandering but that has helped open a dialogue with the community. He replaced the "parochial" Your Town Record with a tabloid called Community, and added sections on health, education, the workplace, and a Sunday spread called "North Jersey '90s." He doubled the size of the Trenton bureau, created five new county government beats, and made reporter Lisa Baird the paper's first black columnist.

"We cannot just cover events," Ritt told readers in a column. "We have to help our readers connect with town hall, the county, and especially Trenton and Washington, where distant policy-makers are affecting your pocketbooks, jobs, children, and security -- with little, if any, involvement from you."

A populist approach has emerged in some news stories. In May, The Record assembled a group of average residents for a lengthy exploration of the state's budget deficit (8 ORDINARY FOLKS SLASH $ 567.5M). Full pages are devoted to reader polls. Ritt also gave page-one display to a black woman's letter about her struggle to discuss the Los Angeles riots with her young children.

A newcomer to Bergen County would probably see The Record as a well-designed product, a cut above most papers its size. But it no longer has the regional impact or the magazine-style polish of the past. By mid-1992, average daily circulation had slipped from 173,000 to 158,000 in just twelve months, although part of the decline is probably due to a price increase.

Borg has eliminated more jobs by offering buyouts to older employees, and he is pooling some reporting duties with the News Tribune. The catch phrase in Hackensack is that -- after a long period of personal and financial turmoil that set the paper adrift -- Mac is Back. Whether he can bring The Record back, despite the heavy debt he took on in the '80s, is a question with considerable resonance for much of the newspaper business.

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