Newspaper is rotting away

Image by alex.ragone via Flickr

Thank God for infrastructure. What would the lazy, incompetent editors of The Record of Woodland Park do for a front-page story today if it weren't for the steady stream of transportation meetings, studies, reports and contracts Staff Writer Karen Rouse uses as fodder for her coverage?

Bridges rotting away

That headline is meant to scare readers, though a lot of bridge work she discusses won't get under way until next year. What's really scary is how the former Hackensack daily is rotting away right before our eyes.

And the copy editing on her story today is atrocious. What is the "easterly" Hackensack River bridge? The graphic on A-6 says a "repainting project is under construction." How about just "under way"?

Rouse was an education reporter when she was hand-picked by Editor Frank Scandale to come to The Record from The Denver Post, his old newspaper. Unfortunately, two reporters already were covering education for The Record (never mind that their productivity is among the lowest on the staff). 

So Rouse was given the job of transportation reporter and assignment desk trainee (the hybrid job was never posted in the newsroom); she proved ill-suited for the latter. Now, she writes almost exclusively about infrastructure -- under the guidance of her knuckle-headed assignment editor.

When I was still a news copy editor in Hackensack, she resisted my suggestion she write about deplorable local bus service, saying her assignment editor wouldn't allow her the time to look into anything unless it definitely was going to produce a story. In other words, she said, she couldn't  board a decrepit No. 780 bus at the bus terminal across the street and ride it to Passaic for lunch to see how most of the riders were minorities -- contrasting their ride to the new buses used by mostly white commuters to Manhattan.

One of those white bus riders also lands on Page 1 today, though he and other bus patrons have been virtually ignored by the assignment desk and the transportation writers, including Road Warrior John Cichowski.

Most of Local today is devoted to events that were covered Sunday -- Armenians marking the 95th anniversary of a genocide; a vigil for crime victims in Paterson; a Bergen County recycling day for pack-rats too cheap to buy a home shredder for sensitive documents.

Where is the vigil for readers who have watched coverage of their towns, including Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck, wither and die? When will the editors, including Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, have to answer to the public for the decimation of local news?

I know the Borgs -- or their legal representatives -- read "Eye on The Record" carefully, because they've renewed threats to file a lawsuit against me. But I'd like Malclom, Stephen and Jennifer Borg to pay more attention to how badly the editors are handling their crucial responsibility of informing the public about what is going on in their communities. After all, that is how The Record became a great newspaper -- before Scandale, Sykes, Frank Burgos, Tim Nostrand, Jim McGarvey and their minions tore it down.

Better Living Staff Writer Sachi Fujimori, who I have praised frequently, stumbles badly today with the lead paragraph on the scheduled closing of the Peking Duck House restaurant in Closter. She writes the signature dish "helped grease the wheels of friendship between the U.S. and China" -- a jarring description given how virtually all the fat in Peking duck is removed before it is served.

Where was Food Editor Bill Pitcher or the copy editors on Feature Editor Barbara Jaeger's desk when it came to catching this awkward and inaccurate play on words?