Superficiality is the new norm

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It's hard to understand how today's story on the second day of the snowstorm -- based on reporting of 15 or more staffers -- can be missing so much detail. It's hard to fathom, that is, until you take into account Deirdre Sykes' lazy, incompetent local news assignment desk, which has hobbled The Record of Woodland Park for too many years.

A Hackensack man died after he went into cardiac arrest shoveling snow, but the Page 1 story is missing both his name and his age. There is not a single interview of a bus rider among the thousands affected by the suspension of NJ Transit service or of a flier grounded by canceled flights. Hackensack snowfall totals are again missing from the front-page map.

Jon Corzine (photo) gets some belated credit for what he did as governor in the other A-1 story on the slowing in the growth of property tax bills. The average bill in Tenafly in 2009 -- $17,411 -- is reported as the highest in North Jersey, but you can be sure Publisher Stephen A. Borg is paying a lot more than that on his $3.65 million mansion.

For a decade or more, the haughty Sykes and her assignment minions have not understood the need to cover towns, even when the reporters assigned to them are doing enterprise stories, spend six months on a fellowship or cover such disasters as the Haiti earthquake.

So today, on the front of Local, Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano has a long, interesting story on African-Americans for Black History Month, but she has yet to analyze the election of a new mayor and report whether voters chose change or the status quo.

On L-2, you'll find not one but two education stories about Montvale. You rarely see an education story about Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck, three core towns in Bergen County.

On the front of Better Living, you'll find more superficial reporting by Food Editor Bill Pitcher, whose "Food Smart" piece on eggs omits anything about cage-free, vegetarian feed or other issues consumers should weigh. He recommends the chicken eggs at Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff, but doesn't tell readers they can find duck eggs there as well.