Monsy Alvarado's new burden

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For about two years, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado was sidelined to work on the so-called investigation of Michael Mordaga, the well-regarded Hackensack detective who went on to become chief of detectives for the Bergen County prosecutor.

A single story, with the bylines of Alvarado and other staffers, appeared Dec. 16. It not only wasn't good enough for Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park, but the reporters had to resort to guilt by association to get it published at all. Mordaga's name didn't even appear in the lead paragraph and his alleged conflict had ended in February 2007.

Now, it seems, Alvarado has a new burden from the head of the local news assignment desk, Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, who somehow kept her job even after pursuing the vendetta against Mordaga for nearly three years, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries. Sykes' pal, Jean Rimbach, the lead reporter on the Mordaga project, had not had a byline for two years.

Alvarado's new assignment from Sykes, it seems, is covering the lawsuits filed against Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa and the disciplinary hearings of officers who have dared to challenge their boss. In the process, she has ignored  just about all the other news about Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years. On at least two occasions in the past 18 months, her byline has not appeared for more than a month at a time.

Today, Alvarado reports, an attorney for one of the officers has asked the county prosecutor to investigate Zisa. Alvarado apparently has never asked the mayor or City Council why they haven't suspended Zisa or taken any other action in the many months since the suits were filed, including allegations he used officers to take care of private matters. Maybe bulldog Sykes picked the wrong target for her so-called investigation. Or was Mordaga just another laughing matter? Does Publisher Stephen A. Borg have anything to say about this?


The Zisa story leads Local today, but you'll also find a superficial story on downtown improvement districts by Staff Writer Karen Sudol, who ignores Hackensack altogether, not even reporting the reason the head of that district was fired last June. She also ignores the closing of several restaurants in Englewood's district, including Panera Bread and Cosi.

The front page today is dominated by Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax's long piece under the headline, "Haiti's long road." He spent maybe a week in Haiti in late January and early February, but Local hasn't  had a Teaneck story since Jan. 23. So, it's "Teaneck's long road."

You'll find more reporting exploits in Opinion, where Columnist Jersey Mike Kelly boasts of all the risks he took when he covered 9/11. His many columns since then have been mostly covering his ass.