Are the Borgs trying to deceive us?

Image by Here in Van Nuys via Flickr

 












 Sloppy reporting and copy editing, and clueless graphic artists and assignment editors continue to damage the credibility of The Record of Woodland Park, as does the apparent attempt by the Borg family to hide the abandonment of Hackensack from readers.

The lazy, incompetent local news editors continue to let down readers, but a major story on how downtowns are faring is all over the front of Local and inside today, with huge photos and a map showing the towns being discussed, colored as "losers" and "gainers."

Did the Borgs notice how Maywood appears in the second paragraph, but isn't on the map? Yet the graphic artist and the copy editor who was supposed to proof the map really screwed-up: Ridgewood is labeled as Ridgefield.


Although the story discusses downtowns, a Hackensack official is quoted as saying an estimated 50 stores opened in the past year. That must be the entire city. Why didn't reporter Dina Yellin get the number for the beleaguered Main Street shopping district, hard hit when The Record moved hundreds of press, editorial and other employees out of the city?


Still, on Page A-2 every day, the Borgs insist on listing The Record's address as 150 River St. in Hackensack, and stating that the paper is published there by the family's North Jersey Media Group. Does ownership of the old headquarters or NJMG Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg keeping his office there entitle the family to continue deceiving the public? What's accomplished by not telling readers and advertisers the truth -- something they already know by how little Hackensack news appears in the paper?

And why does Yellin fail to mention Englewood's downtown? Maybe she doesn't know where it is. She is the same reporter who wrote a story on North Jersey police firing ranges and failed to include the open-air range that drives Englewood residents crazy. Was Christina R. Joseph, the assistant assignment editor who missed that in the firing-range story, also the one who read the latest story on downtowns and again overlooked the Englewood omission? Curiously, Joseph covered Englewood when she was a reporter at The Record.

Image by Here in Van Nuys via Flickr

Englewood (photos) really gets the cold shoulder in the paper today. A Star-Ledger story on arts centers, appearing on Page A-5, completely omits any mention of the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood (the Borg siblings' favorite wine bar is next door). Assuming the blind Record news copy editor didn't know there is an arts center in Englewood, what excuse does the copy editor's supervisor have?

In Better Living, The Corner Table Columnist Elisa Ung discusses kosher restaurants in Teaneck without telling readers if pricier kosher meat is better for you. She doesn't say whether it is raised with or without antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products. This reporter loves to throw around the word "quality" without ever backing it up. Thankfully, she will be on leave until summer.

Memo to Columnist Mike Kelly: Stop posing questions. Readers want you to go out on a limb and make emphatic statements based on your opinion as a veteran journalist. If you think a school official or a politician or someone else deserves condemnation, condemn them. Your job is not to sift through the facts like a mediator or an arbitrator. You are squandering your bully pulpit. (And again, Mike, please get the editors to change the picture that runs with your column, today on the Opinion front. Right now, you look like a leering child molester.)

Kelly and Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski -- too pompous to ride on and criticize decrepit local buses -- should be put on 90-days' probation. If they can't write stronger, more relevant columns, they should be busted down to reporters. Readers deserve no less.