Busy front page is mostly filler

Image by jessamyn via Flickr

 The Saturday edition of The Record of Woodland Park is especially weak today, with only one breaking news story on Page 1 -- the paralysis of air travel. Those promos to inside stories fill the bottom of the front page; they come and go with no rhyme or reason.

"It's Google for cops" could have read: "It's filler for news editors." This is not front-page news, but just another one of those stories written by the police reporter, Marlene Naanes, designed to please the sheriff, cops and police chiefs, in the apparent hope they will be more forthcoming about crime, accidents and other mayhem.

No Hackensack news appears in the paper today, not even the school budget. (Photo: Hackensack hotel room.)


It's bad enough that head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes apparently has ordered Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado to ignore any news except the legal problems of Police Chief Ken Zisa. But is Alvarado -- at the behest of Sykes or any other editor -- deliberately distorting the news?

In a story inside Local on April 12, Alvarado reported the "official" opening of a police substation on Hudson Street with no mention of Zisa. Did she do the story by phone? Did Zisa refuse to speak with her?

A couple of days later, the Hackensack Chronicle, one of North Jersey Media Group's weeklies, quoted Zisa in a story about the outpost. Then, in the edition dated April 15, The County Seat had a Page 1 photo showing Zisa at the ribbon-cutting and it also quoted him in the story. 

The latter weekly is published by Gail Zisa and edited by Lauren Zisa. The back page of this weekly carries a full-page ad for the firm of Joseph C. Zisa Jr., the city attorney. (Hey, some people refer to the former home of The Record as Zisaville.)

So, has Sykes ordered Alvarado to investigate Zisa, who is being sued in state and federal courts by police officers? Let's hope this probe doesn't suck up the nearly three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries that went into the Sykes-inspired vendetta against former Hackensack Chief of Detectives Michael Mordaga.

Can anyone say for certain whether the money squandered on the Mordaga probe -- and the $3.65 million mortgage NJMG gave Publisher Stephen A. Borg -- could have prevented the elimination of jobs held by dozens of experienced advertising and editorial workers, and the unilateral salary cuts for those who stayed?