Monday, June 10, 2013

Finally, a news story on Englewood's racial divide

One of the many empty storefronts on Palisade Avenue in Englewood, a city of 30,000 that has always been divided by income and race. City Hall is reflected in the window of this shuttered restaurant.



Today's Page 1 story on "a divided Englewood" is likely the first time in decades The Record has acknowledged the city's long-standing racial and class divisions. 

Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, who lives on the city's wealthy East Hill, typifies white residents.

Borg sent his children to private schools, and the newspaper he owns, although located only 6 miles from Englewood until 2009,  has never been a force for change in the divided city or its segregated schools.

Today's story on neglect of the city ice rink is another sad chapter in a city dominated by wealthy white residents, including an influx of Orthodox Jewish families.

Simply put, they resent having to pay property taxes for public schools they don't use, and certainly don't want to pay higher taxes to repair the ice rink or turn the 100-year-old Lincoln School into a community center, because both are in a minority neighborhood.

Cat's meow

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes gives more ink to the search for kittens stuck in an Elmwood Park drainage pipe than she ever has to drivers killed in single-car accidents (Local front).

On L-5, a story about a lawsuit against current and former Hackensack police officers reports it was filed last week in "New Jersey" Superior Court.

Ex-staffer returns

Esther Davidowitz, who was a reporter at The Record in the 1970s, has been named food editor, replacing Susan Leigh Sherrill.

Two briefs credited to her appear today on BL-3 (one with a typo), and she was listed as food editor in a BL-2 box on Sunday.

Readers have been starving for better coverage of food and nutrition, including recipes that don't rely so heavily on artery clogging butter and cream or antibiotic-filled meat and poultry.

Davidowitz was editor in chief of Westchester Magazine, and former editor at two other magazines. First for Woman and Women's Day.

In the 1970s, Davidowitz covered local news out of The Record's sexually liberated Hackensack newsroom.

More road errors

Try as he might, Road Warrior John Cichowski can't seem to get it right, no matter what he fills his column with.

On Friday, in discussing the pivotal role of U.S. Sen. Frank R. Launtenberg, D-N.J., in improving transportation, Cichowski played fast and loose with the facts, as an e-mail to Editor Marty Gottlieb explains:



"When reminiscing and paying tribute to [the late] Frank R. Lautenberg, who was known as  'Mr. Transportation,' it would be nice if The Road Warrior did not dishonor his memory with false facts in his column of June 7.
 
"The Road Warrior incorrectly reported the original cost (which he grossly overstated in previous columns) of the Secaucus Junction rail station.
"He also FAILED to mention its full official name as the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station at Secaucus Junction.

"He also missed the creation of NJ Transit by close to a decade, and the number of NJ Transit lines that go to Secaucus Junction."

Read the full e-mail at the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

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