Is there a message in this front page?

Image by Terje S. Skjerdal via Flickr

Teachers protest in Teaneck over state aid cuts and pension changes. A man pleads not guilty in the death of his wife, a Bergenfield teacher (though that phrase never appears in the story). And the executive director of a preschool and child-care agency for Paterson children gets a $300,000 compensation package. That's the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today.

Inside, though, an editorial on Page A-20 finally focuses on home rule as the real reason our property taxes are so high, and urges Governor Christie to devote some of his attention to patronage jobs and the system's incredibly expensive duplication: For example, we have 70 police chiefs in Bergen County alone, and more than 70 school superintendents. 

Of course, this corrupt system is decades old, but The Record's all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful editors have done little so far to expose it or call for its dismantling. Maybe, they are defending "neighborhood schools" -- code for the predominately white education system outside of Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood, Paterson and Passaic city.

Staff Writer Jean Rimbach led an investigation of private but publicly funded preschools about five years ago and wrote a three-part series exposing inflated salaries and other wasteful spending -- as detailed in today's front-page story about Ron Williams and the B.J. Wilkerson Memorial Childhood Development Center. I guess her series, under the guidance of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, amounted to little more than a loud, journalistic fart -- and brought no reform.


The same can be said about another Sykes-inspired, Rimbach-led probe -- this one focused on a single man, Michael Mordaga, former chief of detectives in the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. 

This was another turd Sykes and Rimbach tried to polish -- as was evident from the single, weak story on the Local front last Dec. 16. Yet, this so-called investigation took nearly three years and squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries for Rimbach and other reporters, including Monsy Alvarado and Shawn Boburg. 

Could that money have prevented staff layoffs?

Now, Sykes apparently has the hapless Alvarado investigating Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa, a former assemblyman, forcing the reporter to ignore any other news about River City, where The Record was founded in 1895.

Of course, none of this lousy journalism could go on without a total lack of interest in the newsroom shown in the last few years by Publisher Stephen A. Borg and his big sister, Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg. These sophisticated siblings apparently are more interested in the Englewood wine bar in which they've invested.


In Better Living today, vegetarians or families who have taken a meatless pledge shouldn't bother reading the review of Soram, a Korean restaurant in Norwood with a limited menu. 

In fact, Restaurant Reviewer Bill Pitcher apparently ate only one dish without beef or pork. The meat-obsessed Pitcher also mistakenly calls that dish -- bibimbap -- "the vegetarian standby on most Korean menus" (the dish is almost always topped with ground meat, vegetables and an egg -- cooked or raw).  He doesn't even mention whether the restaurant serves complimentary, non-meat side dishes such as kimchi, bean sprouts and fish.

The appearance of several house ads in the food pages today tells you Pitcher, the food editor, seems to be running out of news. What's the explanation for a restaurant health inspection list that includes only 12 of the 90 or so towns in the former Hackensack daily's circulation area? (Photo: Reading the paper in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.)