A Battle With a New Jersey Newspaper Backfires

When fighting with a media mogul, institutions would be well-advised to avoid using that mogul's newspaper as a battleground, a hospital in New Jersey learned last week. On April 25, The Record, a newspaper owned by the North Jersey Media Group, was preparing to run a controversial article the next day detailing the powerful connections of some members of the board at the Hackensack University Medical Center. That afternoon, the hospital struck back. An administrator called an advertising sales representative, saying the hospital was removing its ads from the media group's Web sites, canceling its one-year online advertising contract with The Record and removing ads from several local papers. The article ran that Sunday anyway. Later in the week, hospital executives told The Record's distribution staff that the paper could no longer be sold at the hospital's gift shops or newspaper boxes. "It's pretty obvious they thought they were going to hurt us very, very badly," said Malcolm A. Borg, chairman of the North Jersey Media Group. On Friday, when an article about the hospital's reaction was published, Mr. Borg said he received apologetic phone calls from some members of the medical center's board.