The Record is a newspaper in New Jersey, United States. Serving Bergen, Essex, Hudson and Passaic counties in northern New Jersey, it has the second largest circulation of New Jersey's daily newspapers, behind The Star-Ledger. The Record was under the ownership of the Borg family from 1930 to 2016, and the family went on to form North Jersey Media Group, which eventually bought its competitor, the Herald News. Both papers are now owned by Gannett Company, which purchased the Borgs' media assets in July 2016. For years, The Record had its primary offices in Hackensack with a bureau in Wayne. Following the purchase of the competing Herald News of Passaic, both papers began centralizing operations in what is now Woodland Park, where The Record is currently based.
History
In 1930 John Borg, a Wall Street financier, bought The Record. From 1952 to 1963 the circulation of The Record doubled and its coverage changed from local to regional. It was one of the papers whose editorial position was in favor of the Metropolitan Regional Council In 1974, writers in the area voted The Record first in the categories of writing, editing and local coverage. It provided different local news coverage for various areas in its distribution range. In 1983, the paper had a daily circulation of just over 149,000 with its readership described as "upscale". On September 12, 1988, its afternoon publication and delivery changed to early morning. When combined with more centralized distribution requiring carriers to have automobiles, many "youth carriers" were put out of work.
Format and style
The paper's approach to coverage has been described as "read like a magazine". Rather than a focus on breaking news on its front page, it features "The Patch," a thematic topic or investigative report.
''Raising the Flag at Ground Zero''
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, a photographer for The Record, Thomas E. Franklin, took a photograph of three firefighters raising an American flag over the rubble of what had been the World Trade Center. This became an iconic photo known as Raising the Flag at Ground Zero. A follow-up story by Jeannine Clegg, a reporter for The Record, about the flag raising efforts by the firemen that led to the photo appeared in the newspaper on September 14, 2011. The Record owns the rights to the photograph, but has licensed it in exchange for donations to September 11 causes, as long as the photo is used in a "dignified and proper manner" for non-commercial purposes.
