By: Joe Strupp More than half the subscribers of
The Record in Hackensack, N.J., and its sibling
Herald News in West Paterson did not get their May 3 newspapers until May 4. Due to a systems breakdown that struck the evening of May 2 at North Jersey Media Group Inc., owner of both dailies, printing presses did not roll with the May 3 issues until well into the following afternoon.
"It was just an unfortunate confluence of a mechanical problem and a software problem," said Vivian Waixel, vice president and executive editor for the company's daily-newspaper division. "It was plumb bad luck."
Jonathan H. Markey, the company's president and chief operating officer, said the snafu required workers to manually bypass the output system and reassemble the pagination, advertising, and graphics elements. The delays caused about 50,000
Record subscribers to receive the Saturday paper in the late afternoon, while the remaining 70,000 received it Sunday. Only about 4,000
Herald News subscribers had their Saturday papers delivered the same day, with the other 20,000 getting them Sunday. All subscribers were credited for one day to make up for the delays.
Markey said the system repairs, credits, and overtime for staff cost the company about $100,000.
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