It's been a bad week at The Record

More equipment has been staged at The Record's old headquarters in Hackensack, above and below, part of about 20 acres owned by North Jersey Media Group.

Asplundh, based in Hicksville, N.Y., calls itself a tree-expert company that provides "vegetation management" to utilities and governments throughout the United States.

The city of Hackensack and its residents have been relegated to the dumpster.

Eye on The Record is receiving anonymous comments -- presumably from employees -- that refer to changes in the newsroom, including the folding of the Signature section last week.

At the same time, a construction trailer and other equipment is being staged in the parking lot of The Record's old headquarters at 150 River St. in Hackensack, possibly in preparation for demolition of the landmark building.

See a YouTube video about one of the companies involved called:

'Asplundh -- Tree Butchers from Hell' 


Newsroom changes

Here is one comment about the newsroom:

"Victor, please look up what happened. You are still missing the story and it's been a week since it was reported.

"If you were in the loop you would know why the [Signature] section was folded, why [Editor Alan] Finder doesn't have a sweetheart deal, not that you reported details, and why it wasn't a good week at The Record."

(See the previous post, Editor Alan Finder is lost and found.) 

That comment was followed by this:

"Anon[ymous] is referring to an internal memo from a week ago, but it's not online anymore. Guess you'll never know, but it's fun to watch you speculate."

When Eye on The Record asked that "moron" to fill everybody in and tell us whether cutbacks were announced, this is what he/she said:

"Excuse me? Why not do your own homework instead of passing off speculation as facts? Readers of this blog may never know what goes on there, if not for other media that cover it better."  

Another bad paper

All of this comes on a day when Editor Marty Gottlieb delivers one of the most atrocious front pages of any Sunday edition since he took over the Woodland Park newsroom a little more than a year ago.

The lead story speculates on how the billions in Sandy aid might be spent.

Another A-1 story reports on events in 1961, revealing for the first time the discovery of "mountains" in Bergen County.

And the front page is dominated by that moronic sports columnist, Tara Sullivan, who looks forward a year to the Super Bowl in snowy New Jersey.

Where are front pages that report what has just happened in our back yard -- what newspapers did well for many decades -- in contrast to speculation and endless jawboning about events and elections one, two, three or four years in the future?

Dissing Democrats 

Gottlieb continues to turn his back on Democrats, relegating the kickoff of Sen. Barbara Buono's campaign against Governor Christie to a brief on A-1, with the full story appearing on A-3.

Buono is destined to deflate the GOP blimp, and cruise to victory in November now that Christie has mismanaged the state's economy and tried to destroy the middle and working classes.

Sadly, Christie has been able to flummox the media, including his adoring columnists, Charles Stile and Alfred P. Doblin, the Editorial Page editor of The Record.

Sandy and John

Superstorm Sandy destroyed many lives in New Jersey, but it also moved The Record's lazy commuting columnist to finally pay attention to our overburdened mass-transit system.

Today's Road Warrior column on problems at North Jersey train stations (L-1) follows two earlier such columns, as well as Friday's piece on the train-truck crash in Little Falls.

Staff Writer John Cichowski's grip on accuracy is so shaky, he even got wrong -- in the first paragraph -- the day that spectacular accident happened, as a concerned reader points out in another e-mail to management:

"The Road Warrior continues to rely on and publish mistaken and exaggerated comments about road issues without checking out facts for himself, as his Feb. 1 column about unsafe rail crossings clearly shows.

"He should drive to problem areas pointed out by people to verify their comments.

"It appears he still refuses to use Mapquest or other map-search applications to easily correct mistaken locations with road problems that are given to him.

"He cannot report the correct day of an accident even though The Record reported it multiple times, and ignores other facts reported by The Record about the crash at the Little Falls railroad crossing at Main Street."

  
See the full e-mail at:

Road Warrior doesn't know what day it is 


Hackensack election

In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local news section, a story on L-7 reports that a second slate of 5 is vying for spots on the May 14 ballot to elect a new City Council.

But the story is missing a crucial detail: Is this slate backed by Lynne Hurwitz, the Democratic Party leader behind the Zisa family's rule over a city many refer to derisively as "Zisaville"?

Last June, The Record reported Hurwitz critics call her "a fierce, no-holds-barred power broker and key strategist behind Hackensack's former police chief, Ken Zisa, and his family’s political machine."  

Kelly the sleuth

What momentous events excite that great journalist Mike Kelly?

Today, he catches up to last year's lowering of thermostats at town hall in sleepy Washington Township (O-1).

On Wednesday, he wrote about the federal re-trial of former prosecutor and defense lawyer Paul W. Bergrin, who "once tooled around North Jersey in a Bentley," according to the columnist who leaves no stone unturned (A-1).

Inside, he called Bergrin's trial "a comic soap opera that is also a graphic police drama," and "a tossed salad of long-winded testimony and chessboard strategy" (A-4 on Wednesday).

Life's a bitch

In Better Living, Sunday morning readers are greeted on B-3 by several paragraphs about dogs smelling each other's asses and genatalia from unfunny Columnist Bill Ervolno -- certainly enough to bring up their breakfasts (the readers, not the dogs).

God save us from these three columnists, because Gottlieb and Publisher Stephen A. Borg won't.