Thursday, March 8, 2012

Deirdre disses Hackensack again

English: This is a photo I took myself of the ...
The Record devotes more space to the Englewood municipal budget today than to the larger proposed budget from more populous Hackensack, the county seat.






















Hackensack readers -- who searched The Record in vain on Wednesday for news of a City Council meeting the night before -- found a short piece in today's Local section.

How short? On L-2, a shaded box with the heading "Hackensack municipal budget" is about half the length of a Mahwah crime story on the same page, and far shorter than the Englewood budget story on the opposite page, L-3.

Hackensack is the county seat, as well as being bigger and more populous than Englewood, where Chairman Malcolm A. Borg lives imperiously on the East Hill.

Abandoning home

Hackensack is also where The Record prospered for more than 110 years before the Borgs pulled up their roots and fled to Woodland Park and Rockaway.

Since the downsizing, Hackensack news has gotten the back of the hand from head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her lazy, incompetent assignment-desk flunkies.

It's safe to say that Staff Writer Stephanie Akin, who is assigned to cover Hackensack, devotes far more energy to her main squeeze, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg, than to her beat.

And at least one of the assistant assignment editors spends far more time staring at her breasts than he does in coming up with Hackensack story ideas.

Page 1 'process' stories

Many readers from Hackensack probably jumped to the Local section today after their eyes glazed over while trying to read two "process" stories on Editor Marty Gottlieb's front page.

The first is on teachers union lobbying in response to Governor Christie's so-called education reform, and the second is on GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

The most interesting stories on the front page are below the fold: more testimony in the Dharun Ravi trial and Muslim reaction to an atheist billboard in Paterson.

Limp editorial


On A-20, a long editorial on the $10.9 million spent on lobbying by the New Jersey Education Association doesn't call for 100% public financing of election campaigns, which would end lobbying forever.

Back in Local, the Garfield City Council has asked the county prosecutor for an "update" on the fatal Dec. 10 police shooting of Malik Williams, 19 (L-1).

"Little has been released on what transpired Dec. 10," the story reports, reminding readers of how little The Record has done in the past three months to fill in all the blanks.

More animal news

Two days ago, a large part of the Local front was devoted to a circus elephant. Today, the patch story and photos are about dogs rescued from Ohio and Kentucky.

On L-7, the first Business page, a big, black headline declares:
North Jersey can't
wait for new tablet
And in a photo just below the headline are the words "The new iPad." 

Actually, North Jersey can't wait for the Business editors to decide whether they should cover the business world like real journalists or continue to sell their souls to promote Apple and other companies.

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