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Topic: Miscellaneous items
Date/Time: 5/22/2008 2:04:18 PM
Title: The Record of Hackensack, NJ too liberal?
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From the May 22, 2008, "Paydirt," the in-house publication of North Jersey Media Group

Some Record readers perceive a liberal bias

Is there a liberal slant to The Record's news coverage? A number of readers who participated in recent telephone interviews with our market research team said they think there is.

The focus of interviews conducted over 10 days in March centered on what "jobs" readers want fulfilled by The Record. "Tell me the truth" stood out as a key job, but several readers added that they want the truth objectively – not from a reporter's personal angle. That led to expanded conversations.

"A good portion of these people feel The Record is politically liberal," said Joe Ferrara, market research manager. "Some of that may mirror a broader perception about media generally having a political agenda. But some people made the distinction between The Record's editorial pages and news content, saying ‘Your opinion pages are sneaking over into your news articles'."

The perception concerns Publisher Stephen Borg, who is adding it to a
growing list of content improvement projects.

"The research was quite clear that readers and non-readers perceive bias in The Record,” Stephen said. "It will be tempting for some to discount this conclusion, but the research is sound. Just because we don’t like the answer does not mean it is wrong."

He has asked Editor Frank Scandale to get involved directly in learning more about perceived bias and developing ways to address it.

"We are taking this seriously," Stephen said. "We must deal with customer frustrations over our product offering."

Frank is beginning the effort with conversations with key editors, who are looking for examples of stories where this idea might come up. He'll write a Sunday column addressing the topic in the near future, which may help to open a dialogue with readers. There will be more to come as Frank continues to research this issue.

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