Which Borg is calling the shots?

Tenafly officials are fighting NJ Transit's plan to extend light-rail service to the old railroad station, above. They believe Publisher Stephen A. Borg and other residents have a constitutional right to drive to work in a gas-guzzling limo or SUV.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Readers in Hackensack, Englewood and many other towns did a double take on Tuesday, when they saw three long stories about Tenafly on Page L-3 of the Local news section.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg just happens to live in the wealthy borough.

Each story reminded readers of how little news they have seen about their communities since Borg replaced his father as publisher in mid-2006, when local journalism took a back seat to personal gain and keeping the paper afloat during the recession.

Today's Local section doesn't bring any relief, as head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her incompetent deputy, Dan Sforza, can't seem to inspire their reporters to cover their towns. 

King of the Hill

With the so-called Englewood reporter gamboling with Governor Christie in Trenton, there is no news about that city's struggling downtown or its mostly minority schools, even though Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg has lived on the East Hill for decades.

The younger Borg attended the presumably all-white, private Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood.

All Hackensack readers get is a "scene setter" on today's  court hearing to determine whether their convicted police chief must give up his job (L-3). 

Porn allegations

Mac Borg had so little to do after his spoiled brat of a son pushed him aside, he allegedly spent a lot of his time looking at pornography on a computer and sharing it with other managers.

Readers were never told who fired Francis "Frank" Scandale as editor last October, but the elder Borg seemed to have asserted himself with the selection of Marty Gottlieb of The New York Times to take over the newsroom in late January.

Gottlieb, who started his reporting and editing career at The Record, is 64, and would have been an unlikely choice for Stephen Borg, whose disdain for older workers is well known.

Front-page Marty

Unfortunately, Gottlieb seems to have spent all his time improving the front page, and has done little to stem the precipitous decline in local news coverage.

The younger Borg could have cleaned house on the assignment desk and hired more reporters to cover municipal affairs, but he chose instead to grab $3.65 million in North Jersey Media Group money for a mortgage on his McMansion in Tenafly.

Downsizing

Not long after he moved in, Stephen Borg continued to "downsize" The Record -- sending copy editors, photographers and others to join press operators on the unemployment line -- and ended the paper's long run in Hackensack, where it was founded in 1895. 

In addition to its impact on Main Street businesses, the exodus of NJMG and its flagship daily to Woodland Park and Rockaway translated into less news coverage of River City.

Recently, Sykes and Sforza ordered reporters to ramp up their coverage of house burglaries in Tenafly, including those in Borg's neighborhood.

Today's paper 

A Page 1 story reports homophobe Dharun Ravi has apologized -- finally. Now, readers can look for another column from staff homophobe Mike Kelly on more "unanswered questions" surrounding the case.

You can be sure poor Tyler Clementi of Ridgewood is turning over in his grave.

Does anybody really take seriously Christie's latest high-court nominee, Bruce Harris, an openly gay black lawyer who has no courtroom experience and who would have to stay out of any cases involving gay marriage (A-1)?

He's a really bad choice to replace John E. Wallace Jr., who was the high court's only African-American justice when Christie canned him in 2010.

Railroaded

On A-9, transportation reporter Karen Rouse makes light of air-conditioning problems at Penn Station in Manhattan.

There's no explanation why she has never reported how uncomfortably hot it has been in the NJ Transit waiting area since the onset of warm weather.

Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to mine readers' e-mails for column ideas -- instead of leaving the office and reporting on commuting problems (L-1).

Tuesday's paper

Gottlieb thinks potential traffic problems at American Dreams Meadowlands is front-page news, but the New Yorker doesn't seem have noticed all the traffic nightmares we already have.

That must explain how little coverage we have seen in The Record about Christie's and the Port Authority's abysmal lack of commitment to mass transit.

Bergen County's most-diverse communities, including Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck, have been poorly covered, but prosperous towns have gotten more coverage.

That might be why Gottlieb made such a big fuss on Tuesday's Page 1 over the planned opening of Wegmans in Montvale, near the New York State border. 

It would be a non-event for most food shoppers in the rest of Bergen.

They already have a wide selection of high-quality food at Whole Foods Market, Costco Wholesale, Fairway Market, ShopRite and H Mart, most of which beat Wegmans' prices.

Along with the three Tenafly stories on L-3, a story discusses police overtime in tiny Harrington Park, where Sykes lives. 

(201) family

(201) family is an offspring of (201) magazine, the publisher's pet project, and the June 2012 issue was delivered with today's paper.

Among contributors, former sports reporter Marc Schwarz is listed as "assistant director of Features and Travel Editor for The Record."

If Schwarz is travel editor, what is Jill Schensul? 

The Father's Day issue focuses on Super Dads, and the cover photo shows a wealthy father and his four sons -- in the image of Stephen Borg himself.

The Wegmans in Woodbridge.