More momentous local news

Is a successful graduate scheduled to speak at the Dwight Morrow High School commencement? A story in The Record today only addresses the private high school in Englewood.

The Record's editors continue to bombard voters in Hackensack, Teaneck, Fair Lawn and other towns with daily coverage of a Democratic primary election in which those residents have no say.

Editor Marty Gottlieb leads Page 1 today with another rehash of the positions held by the opponents, Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr. of Paterson and Steve Rothman, formerly of Fair Lawn.

The Record has endorsed Pascrell. 

Rothman, who moved to Englewood, is the political pussy who ran from a fight with rabidly conservative Rep. Scott Garret after redistricting threw Fair Lawn into the 5th District (A-1).

More politics

And if the A-1 story isn't enough, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy minion, Dan Sforza, lead the Local news section today with a story describing the candidates' "frantic pace" before Tuesday's primary.  

Substituting politics for local news is nothing new at The Record, where the editors ignore how those stories and columns turn off the vast majority of readers.

Gottlieb, Sykes and Sforza -- and their counterparts at other media outlets -- believe that if they portray every election as a horse race, whether true or not, readers will be riveted.

Treating locals like yokels

But that's exactly the opposite of what happens, and local news coverage suffers as a result.

Look at the other local news on L-1 today:

The page is dominated by a photo-text package on a "remarkable rescue" of a Hackensack man who fell asleep and drove his car into water that didn't even cover the roof of his clunker.

Too lazy to leave the office, Road Warrior John Cichowski manufactures another entire column from a single reader's e-mail and a few telephone interviews.

But Cichowski can't find a town in Bergen, Passaic or Morris counties that charges a "municipal response fee" -- the issue he is so incensed about.

Private school rules

In Englewood news, an L-1 story describes a graduate of the private Dwight-Englewood School who "had role in bid Laden search," according to the headline.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg also attended Dwight-Englewood.

This story drives home the message that no graduate of Dwight Morrow High School, the troubled public school in Englewood, ever hit the big time or at least that Sykes and Sforza didn't bother to find out if a successful graduate will be speaking at this year's commencement.

In other momentous Hackensack news, a section of Anderson Street collapsed, but no one was injured. Although there is room to say where this occurred on Anderson Street, the photo caption is missing that information (L-6).

Dining-out dunce

On the Better Living front today, Staff Writer Elisa Ung claims the biggest lesson she has learned from reviewing more than 200 local restaurants for The Record is to "go on a Friday or a Saturday."

That's it?

What about the elephant in the dining room -- the pathetically low wages paid to servers and a tipping system that pits customers against the wait staff, not restaurant owners, who cut corners on food quality and use untrained staff?

I have never seen a word about that in any of Ung's Sunday columns, The Corner Table, including this one (BL-1).

Fish tales

She passes along incorrect information from Anthony Bourdain that fish markets are "closed on Saturday and Sunday," and urges readers not to eat sushi early in the week.

But didn't she get bad sushi on her weekday and weekend visits to Bushido Bar and Restaurant in Cliffside Park, the place she panned in her review just two days ago?

"This is based on nothing scientific," she says of the advice against eating raw fish early in the week, "only the many times off the job when I have been very sorry that I tried to eat raw fish on a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday -- generally when other diners aren't around and that fish has been, ur, ripening."

Ripening? Like fruit on a counter? 

I guess Ung missed articles in The New York Times and elsewhere reporting that all raw fish served in the United States must be frozen first to kill parasites.

"Sushi Fresh from the Deep -- the Deep Freeze" is the headline on a piece in The Times, which published it in 2004.

And I guess she hasn't noticed seafood is kept in refrigerated cases at sushi bars. 

So, any "ripening" occurs only if the restaurant mishandles the fish, doesn't store it properly or serves low-quality stuff.

Flashback

I got a kick out of the words "moron," "boring" and "fat crooked ass" in the first paragraph of today's Better Living cover story (BL-1).

They were among the words used by the newsroom staff to describe Sykes, Sforza and many other editors when I was at The Record.