How The Record baits readers

Image by SEIU International via Flickr

If you are going to be a reporter at The Record of Woodland Park, you have to learn how to bait readers. And the best way to do that with home rule is to tell readers their taxes are going to go up -- preferably in the lead paragraph of your story -- even if that isn't true.

None other than Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson does that today in his Page 1 story on the historic passage of health-care reform. He's dying to goad readers into finishing his story (and maybe feeling  bad about the reforms). I can recall the health-care reform demonstration Jackson covered, carefully omitting any mention of hysterical protesters who compared the Obama plan to the Holocaust. He's some reporter.

Today, his first paragraph says the House overhaul "expands coverage by raising taxes [and] imposing new fees." Isn't it irresponsible to write that without saying right away which taxpayers are going to get hit? You have to wait for the last paragraph of his story to find out the Borgs and other wealthy families will be the ones paying higher taxes and insurance companies will be paying the higher fees. I say, Hooray.

I'm glad Democrats finally got their act together or the incompetent, jock-itching editors would have undoubtedly put Tiger Woods on the front page again. 

The second story on the front is by Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado, whose dereliction of duty in covering Hackensack municipal and school affairs is well-known. Her last story in that vein ran Dec. 14.

Today's A-1 story involves Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa, who partly owned a company that sold three properties in Paterson to a woman now accused in a mortgage scam. Alvarado has written numerous stories about cops' lawsuits against the chief, but seems unable to bring herself to ask the city's mayor and council why they don't suspend Zisa.

Instead, she apparently has been told by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes to pursue the Zisa story wherever it will take her -- even if that means blacking out Hackensack readers for months at a time. As you may know, Alvarado was sidetracked on the Michael Mordaga vendetta for about two years before the results of that woefully weak "investigation" were published Dec. 16.


I guess I should be paying more attention to Jimmy Margulies, whose Sunday cartoon was so ambiguous on how Governor Christie is treating the rich. Today, his cartoon, on A-11, purports that in the face of looming state aid cuts, town officials are actively considering "consolidation, regionalization, merger [and] shared services."


From the cartoonist's pen to God's ears. Does Margulies live in North Jersey? Have you heard of any home-rule towns, with the possible exception of Teaneck and Bogota, discussing major ways to economize? Maybe he is privy to closed-door meetings. I feel this kind of distortion just pisses off local taxpayers.


Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano has an L-1 story today on an Englewood-based agency helping homeowners facing foreclosure. Her last story about the city ran March 4. 

I don't think she spends that much time in Englewood or you'd expect her to get to the bottom of why stores and restaurants on and off Palisade Avenue have been closing in recent years. Is it just the economy or are landlords too greedy? The latest is Zeytinia, the upscale food market across from City Hall. And I don't think she reported the ShopRite in Englewood was forced to throw away thousands of dollars worth of food during the storm-related power outage last week.