Sports trumps the environment

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I would have loved to be in the news meeting yesterday when the weekend editors at The Record of Woodland Park decided how to play two major stories -- one about sports, the other about the environment.


I don't imagine two of the major jocks who run the former Hackensack daily -- Publisher Stephen A. Borg and Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Sacandale -- were working on a major holiday weekend. (I always wondered when Borg still had his office in the old Hackensack newsroom whether he attended the afternoon news meeting and whether he and Scandale slapped each other on the ass after deciding to run sports on the front?)

Borg may have been relaxing at his $3.65 million estate in Tenafly and Scandale at his Glen Rock home on Sunday, but it's well-known they have given front page play to inconsequential sports stories for years, so, of course, the beer and gas guzzlers who attended the last game at Giants Stadium went on Page 1 and the growing number of people who bring reusable bags when they go food shopping was relegated to the front of the Local section.

What do you expect from a paper with so-called environmental reporters like Scott Fallon who can write a story about recycling electronics and omit Hackensack's pioneering program among municipalities? And the reporter on the reusable bag story, Andrea Alexander, should have listed more North Jersey stores besides Whole Foods that give shoppers a refund for reusable bags and those -- like Trader Joe's and Fairway Market -- that don't give anything back. Does she know that H Mart, the Korean supermarket chain, refunds 20 cents for each reusable bag?

Dd anybody get through Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin's column about MTV's "Jersey Shore" on Page A-11? Does anybody edit this struggling writer? Can you make sense of the following sentence?

"I had the only car, and a bunch us would drive to points younger after our show."

 I stopped reading there. And can you believe he is so prissy, he avoids using the "vulgar Italian word for prostitutes"?

Did you see Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's article in Better Living? Does Ung and food editor Bill Pitcher really believe readers are going to rush to their stoves to prepare four long, elaborate recipes for "standout" restaurant dishes she ate on the paper's dime? In fact, what many readers want is more information about how restaurant food is raised or grown and less about her obsession for desserts and her fawning over chefs.

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