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If the past is any guide, The Record of Woodland Park may have one or two more stories about the parking-garage collapse in Hackensack, then ignore the city where it was founded for another couple of months. Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado will go back to napping on the doorstep of suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa, but won't be able to get a quote from him on his mounting legal troubles.


Most of the local reporters are spoon-fed their assignments by the minions working for head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, but Alvarado, Jean Rimbach and Shawn Boburg apparently work directly for the jocular Sykes, who breast feeds them, from the looks of the Zisa stories they produce now and again.


It's simply irresponsible for Sykes' Local section to ignore basic news about Hackensack day after day -- from the proposed budget and tax hike to the new mayor -- in favor of all the drivel this reporting trio has come up with on Zisa. 

For example, this past Thursday's Page 1 "blockbuster" reported the chief had a security contract with a hospital that ended in December 2005. The only quote these three reporting wizards could get from Zisa was a rehash from 2007.


Where is Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale -- castrated by Sykes and Publisher Stephen A. Borg after the latter took over in mid-2006? Where are the Borgs? I guess they don't see the paper out in The Hamptons.


Today's paper continues A-1 coverage of the Prospect Avenue parking-garage collapse, revealing no one was injured. But the editors are already bored with the story, unable to come up with really dramatic photos of the collapse they could run on the front and inside, so they resort to filler on the Yankees and a plane crash in Maine.


The other A-1 story -- reporting that the impact of 2% property tax cap may not be felt for years -- is troubling. But on the Opinion front, Assemblyman Gary S. Schaer, D-Passaic, outs Governor Christie's favorable treatment of the rich as no Record editorial, column or news story has.

In fact, an editorial on the next page praises Christie for "an impressive start" in his first six months in office, making no mention of the huge tax break he gave to his millionaire supporters, many of whom bankrolled his campaign.


On the front of Local, Road Warrior John Cichowski writes about "imponderables," but doesn't mention the chief one is why he is  allowed to continue his boring, repetitive column.

(Photo: The Pulaski Skyway, linking Jersey City and Newark. Editor Frank Scandale once barred mention of of "Pulaski Skyway" on Page 1, because, he claimed, readers had never heard of it.)