Image via WikipediaIt's 2010, and Englewood's elementary and middle schools are segregated. "Oh, that's not news," head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes says between shrieks of laughter rolling across the Woodland Park newsroom. Downtown traffic often is nightmarish, because the city has been glacially slow about installing turn lanes. "Oh, that's not news," Sykes says. An open-air police firing range rudely awakens hundreds of residents. "Oh, that's not news."
The only stories about the city's hard-working, God-fearing Jamaican community that appear in The Record are the occasional arrest or shooting. "Oh, that's not news," says Sykes, who has eaten her fair share of rum cakes from a Jamaican takeout shop on Palisade Avenue.
Two of the sub-editors working for Sykes once were assigned to cover Englewood as reporters. Dan Sforza broke no new ground and Christina Joseph apparently didn't know the city police use an open-air firing range, because she failed to notice that a round-up on such ranges that she was editing had completely omitted Englewood (map).
So, what is news in Englewood? Well, it's right there -- all over A-1 and L-1 today. Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano emerged from her journalistic hibernation long enough to report that a black bear spent a pleasant three days in the city before its capture on Tuesday. It's her first story about Englewood since April 22.
I lived in Englewood until 2007, and over the years saw a buck and doe, and wild turkey in the city, probably from the Palisades. They were enjoying the verdant East Hill estates. Was that front-page news? I didn't think so.
Englwood is one of the most diverse communities in Bergen County and a good reporter could probably write three stories a week about it. Now, readers get three stories a month, if that. Teaneck and Hackensack are no better off.
Today's A-1 story about lawsuits against suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa is yet another example of how the Police Department is just about the only news Hackensack readers get from Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado -- apparently under orders from Sykes.
Why this story is on the front page is a puzzle in view of how the paper has abandoned and ignored the city where it was founded, and Alvarado's conclusions are arguable.
Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, North Jersey Media Group chairman and onetime publisher of The Record, has lived on Englewood's East Hill for decades, but has he or his newspaper ever done anything to improve life for all of its residents? Mac sent his spoiled children, Jennifer and Stephen, to private schools, such as the two in Englewood attended by most of the city's white kids, to the detriment of the public schools. Mac has also opposed the expansion of a Jewish congregation that bought a house on his block.
In the past, the paper's Englewood reporters have largely focused on integration efforts at Dwight Morrow High School, while ignoring the elementary and middle schools. In fact, a Sept. 20, 2008, editorial praising the high school for integration and academics completely ignored continuing segregation in the lower grades.
"Oh, that's not news."
Now, you knew a bear in Englewood would be front page news, and it will be front page news when someone in Englewood proposes an ordnance mandating bearproof dumpsters behind every apartment building. You want Hackensack and Teaneck news, leave a trail of honey from Pompton Plains to River Street or Cedar Lane. Plus I imagine editorial page editor Alfred P. Doblin is already penning a column about how the Englewood bear was trying to break into the prestigious Dwight Englewood School so he could be "smarter than the average bear."
ReplyDelete