Cover of The 15-Minute ChefStaff Writer Monsy Alvarado has finally reported and written some non-Police Department news from Hackensack. Today's L-3 story on 19 teachers and 34 para-professionals facing layoffs is the first education story about the city where The Record was founded since Dec. 14 -- if you don't count the routine school elections coverage in April.
Readers in Teaneck and Englewood go begging for yet another day.
Below Alvarado's story in Local is one from Wyckoff by Staff Writer Shawn Boburg, another member of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' investigative team. With Sykes' blessings, the core members -- Alvarado, Boburg and Staff Writer Jean Rimbach -- have wasted years and hundreds of thousands in staff salaries with little to show for it.
In recent years, Rimbach has had the fewest bylines of any other staffer, although she is likely one of the highest paid reporters in the Woodland Park newsroom. The key is her close relationship with Sykes -- which I observed personally.
When I was still a news copy editor at The Record, I edited a three-part series Rimbach and another reporter had worked on for six months, and it was filled with holes and other problems. When I asked Sykes about these flaws, her answers invariably were: "We're not going to go there" or "We didn't get that."
Maybe Boburg should find out why Wyckoff refuses to release restaurant inspections to The Record, which publishes the ratings on Fridays in Better Living. Food Editor Bill Pitcher seems not to have noticed that the Wyckoff inspections are always missing.
Pitcher, who is paid $70,000-plus a year, had a hard day Monday, as today's food coverage shows. The 15 Minute Chef now runs on Tuesdays without a big color photo -- pushed to the margin of F-2 by shopping news. Is that even his recipe or did he conveniently leave off the credit?
The paper should sponsor a contest to see which reader can actually prepare this meal in 15 minutes. The prize: An extension of his/her subscription.
(Photo: The book by the original 15-Minute Chef, Patricia Mack, onetime food editor of The Record.)
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Where have all the commenters gone? Did Jerry D elope with one of his hot columnists? Or better yet two of them? (way to go, Jerry). Has the Record snared my fellow hiders behind anonymity and sent them to the Ringwood bureau? PS: Enough already with the food editor's salary. It's Mac's money and Steve and Jenny can do what they want with it.
ReplyDeletePaying someone more to do less than his predecessor -- that doesn't make sense. It's clear he is unqualified for the job and that salary.
ReplyDeleteQualified or not is not the issue. IMHO Billy is a good editor, but that also is not the issue. If the corporate decision makers have reason to believe that another paper, say the Star Ledger or the Morristown paper, is about to hire Mr. Pitcher away, the Record may match or surpass the offer to retain his services. Happens all the time in corporate America.
ReplyDeleteNo way would that happen with Pitcher. No paper would try to hire him away. And in a recession, NJMG is not going to get into a bidding war over an editor -- they're expendable.
ReplyDeleteAu contraire, reporters and copy editors are expendable because they can always be replaced by hungry kids fresh out of J-school, but not midlevel managers. And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Pitcher's promotion made when the newspaper economy was hurting, but had not yet gone seriously into the tank? Even so, a recession is all the more reason for a company to want to make happy campers out of the people it isn't laying off.
ReplyDeletePatricia Mack was expendable and replaced by a hungry college dropout without food-editing experience, yet who was paid a princely sum for someone who was just 31.
ReplyDeleteYou make Mr. Pitcher out to be entirely out of his depth as food editor, Mr. Sasson, but isn't it true that he was at least savvy enough to beat you for the job? Isn't that why you're so keen to report how much the position pays? In fact, isn't that the whole reason this mean-spirited blog exists? Do you really expect your readers here to believe that you would still be ranting about shallow and even nonexistent coverage in The Record if the Borgs had installed you as food editor instead of Billy? Think about it.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Employees of The Record aren't allowed free speech, so if I still worked there, I wouldn't be writing this blog. If I were the food editor, I would have opposed folding of Food section. What was Bill Pitcher savvy about -- brown nosing? Certainly, it wasn't food.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he was (is) only savvy at brown nosing. But for a person who would have his readers believe he would be superbly qualified to edit a food section, you certainly seem to lack the requisite job-interview skills to lock down that $70K salary. He may be a college dropout, perhaps he doesn't know the first thing about food, but he knew how to give his employers the song and dance they wanted to hear, whereas you apparently gave them a sample of the headaches to come if they had hired you. Given the choice, what fool of an employer wouldn't pick a yes-man over a loose cannon?
ReplyDeleteYou're full of bluster -- for someone who is hiding behind your anonymity. You don't sound like a journalist; otherwise, you'd object to Bill Pitcher's appointment as food editor. So who are you? An apologist for the Borgs and The Record system -- letting the editors run amuck while the family pursues even greater personal wealth? Are you one of the editors? Are you a Borg? Whoever you are, you're a coward.
ReplyDeleteEnough with the brown nosing already. Billy knows food, and so does Victor, they just both know it a little differently. And they could pay Billy $100,000 a year or $20,000 a year, the paper would still be losing money in this economy. Same with the other editors. It's like with the automakers, staff salaries are a drop in the bucket compared to fixed expenses such as newsprint, office rent, gas for the delivery trucks, benefits, the taxes on 150 River Street.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to be brave when you've got nothing to lose. (How much was your cut from the sale of your family's restaurant, anyway? I heard it was enough so that you didn't really need to push that quixotic lawsuit; but you know how those rumers fly.) The rest of us have to work for a living. And why should anyone give a damn how the Borgs spend their money or run their newspaper feifdom? Let them run it into the ground; as you're so keen to point out, it'snot as if the readers are getting any quality from that rag. If its readers cared, they would do well to vote with their feet and get their news elsewhere (maybe the Cliffview Pilot, for example). In any case, who in this Internet era still cares what a local newspaper says about anything? If it's really important, it'll be covered by the Star Ledger or the N.Y.Times, otherwise, all that hand wringing really amounts to nothing, because the main reason anyone gets The Record anymore is to see how their kids' sports team did in last night's game. Nobody who matters is still looking to The Record for news. That's how it was even before you left, and nobody among that crew has the drive to do anything about it. So let it sink, and lets see if someone else doesn't come along and do it rigjt after The Record gets out of the way.
ReplyDeleteVictor, would you please stop taking swipes at the commenters, you've got a well-read, lively blog going here and it discourages people from making comments. People have their reasons for remaining anonymous and those reasons should be respected. You have an ax to grind with the selection of Pitcher as food editor and that may be coloring your opinion, you've ground the ax, its plenty sharp, move on. The paper may be throwing its money away on salaries but when did the paper NOT throw money away like it was printed at Rockaway -- the thousand dollar a day redesign consultant, Quality Service Everytime, Gainsharing, Continuous Improvement -- it threw away millions on the latter with nary a whisper of regret. Paper clips, a smaller news hole, uncovered towns, laid-off workers, that's where the managers can make a visible show that they're doing something to save money. Maybe the couple of recent Hackensack stories are in response to your blog. You know it's being read by the people there, they'd just rather give you grief than credit. So keep plugging away. But don't beat your head against a wall railing against the food editor, it only encourages readers, especially those at the Record, to think it's a case of sour grapes.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your input, all of which I have published save for a nasty comment from the Anonymous commenter who started this string. If you want to call people names, start your own blog. For the record, I began complaining of age discrimination at The Record in 1994, when I had everything to lose. As for the food coverage, it's important to me the paper get it right, as it did under Patricia Mack. This is an issue greater than who the food editor is now.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, Nellie! The unpublished nasty comment was not from the anonymous commenter who started this string, but from a different anonymous commenter, sez the anonymous commenter who started the string and generally doesn't engage in name calling.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said the readers have the option of "voting with their feet." Not gonna happen. The Record has a monopoly on Bergen County, that's why the paper can ignore Bergen while pandering to readers in the outlying reaches of its readership area, where it does have competition. And no other paper is going to encroach on that monopoly. If the Star Ledger, for example, started breaking Bergen stories, the Record's Bergen coverage would double in a heartbeat. The Record still gives many of its Bergen readers the primary things they buy or subscribe to the newspaper for: Ann Landers, the comics, the horoscope, the Wednesday supermarket ads (some might say the dearly departed food section was only window dressing for these ads, which the grocers still have to buy because the Record is the only game in town). You've made your point about the food editor, it should be easy enough to continue criticizing the quality of the food coverage without mentioning names. Of course, prior blog entries tend to disappear into a vast pot of previous entries, so you might want to reprise your personal gripes with the decision to hire Pitcher every few entries or so, but don't beat the horse to death, or if you do, at least provide a decent recipe for, what do the French call it, boucherie chevalier?
ReplyDeleteSo noted.
ReplyDeleteYou are probably more familiar with French food than Bill Pitcher, as today's restaurant review shows. He's also wrong that the view from the place he reviewed is the envy of every other Bergen County restaurant. He's ill-suited for the job. He should stick to editing recipes.
ReplyDelete