Who voted for this turkey?

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At least it's on the front page. An assessment of Governor Christie's campaign promises and what he's accomplished -- or hasn't accomplished -- is crowded down into a corner of Page 1 today in The Record of Woodland Park. The page is dominated by a cold murder case and the would-be Times Square bomber.

Don't bother reading the Christie story. You won't be getting a property tax break this year -- not even a rebate check. You'll probably be paying more, to make up for cuts in state school and municipal aid, and you'll definitely be paying more if you take mass transit. Hoping for a state pension? Christie won't be contributing any state money to it, either.


Christie loves drivers so much (more than even Road Warrior John Cichowski), he won't be raising the low gasoline tax to ease the burden on others, and he's giving the Borgs and other rich folks a pass, too.

"Christie fixes will take time"

The headline says it all. But you probably knew that. Did you vote for this turkey anyway?

As for the rest of the paper, it's back to the news business as usual. That means no Teaneck or Englewood stories in Local, and only a short follow-up on the charges against Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa. The county prosecutor is recusing himself, citing a conflict that involves a witness.

When the Zisa story broke last week, it covered almost the entire front page. When The Record and its parent, North Jersey Media Group, moved out of Hackensack last year, not a line appeared in the paper. This is what the Borgs call "responsible journalism."

Is this any way to cover Hackensack?

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A month can go by without a story about Hackensack in The Record of Woodland Park and then two will pop up, as in Local today. But is the paper really covering the city it once called home?

The two "Hackensack stories" appear on L-1 -- the head of the police union draws a six-month suspension for posts on an online forum and the owner of Cubby's barbecue restaurant is portrayed in a new book as a peacemaker with the North Koreans.

The cop story is among more than two dozen Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado has written since June 2009, chronicling the legal pissing match between Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa and rank-and-file police officers. No other agency is covered nearly as well.

In fact, Alvarado has not covered a single City Council or Board of Education meeting in that time. On June 13, 2009, she reported the Main Street improvement director had been fired two months earlier, but she never gave a reason and never did a follow-up.


A number of construction projects are under way around the city -- and others have been suspended -- but nothing ever appears about them in the newspaper. Who is Alvarado's assignment editor?

On Monday, at the Wicker Warehouse on River Street, an owner hadn't heard that Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg is one of the few people left in the former landmark building at 150 River Street -- now an albatross around the necks of the sibling rivalry running North Jersey Media Group, Stephen and  big sister Jennifer Borg, who apparently have pushed their father aside.


"So The Bergen Record is now located in Passaic County," the merchant said matter of factly.

Jennifer Borg has made no secret her father wants to keep a presence in Hackensack -- even though most of the news gathering and all of the printing takes place in Passaic County and Morris County, respectively. And Mac wants to stay in River City even after the sale of that enormous pile of bricks and surrounding land.

On Page 1 today, don't you think the lazy, incompetent editors could have done more with the Republican mayor who told Governor Christie to "go slow" on his slash-and-burn budget cutting? Instead, we get a baseball team visiting the president all over Page 1. Give me a break.

Can it get any more boring than this?

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The Page 1 lead story in The Record of Woodland Park today is about weatherizing homes, red tape and delay. This is news? Do readers really need a Washington correspondent who turns in such tripe? (Photo: Wrap this fish with The Record.)

The "it doesn't affect us" mantra of the editors has demoted the European air paralysis story to inside pages. But I'm wondering about its impact on such international companies as the U.S. headquarters of Mercedes-Benz in Bergen County, and on imports of food, fish and flowers that usually arrive daily at Newark airport.

If you live in Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood or anywhere else in Bergen, don't bother with Local today. You won't find any news about your town there.

How about some background?

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Don't you hate it when a front-page story is not only poorly reported and edited but provides you with only the barest of background? You have that today in The Record of Woodland Park with another in a series about the long-suffering residents of Pompton Lakes. (Photo: A front page from 2007 for comparison.)

Why this story is on Page 1 is a puzzle. Why it doesn't portray this sorry saga of chemical pollution as both a shameful corporate and home-rule failure is only known to the lazy, desperate and incompetent editors who think Bergen County readers are eager for another update on this century old story in a far-off town.

The story says a DuPont munitions plant closed in 1994, but doesn't explain why a cleanup won't be finished until 2015. That's more than 20 years. And it's unclear -- even after a careful reading -- who came up with the idea of building a wind farm next to contaminated homes, where residents would get to trade one form of pollution for another (toxic chemicals for noise and vibration)?

At least the editors had the sense to put Governor Christie's budget problems and possible solutions on the front page for a third day in a row.

If you live in Hackensack, you'll find Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado, who is supposed to cover the city, missing in action for yet another day. There are more than 10 court, lawsuit, police and fire news stories in Local today.

The editors in Business decided one lavishly promotional story about 3-D TVs wasn't enough, so they assigned a reporter to write another for today.

Readers fight to survive

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"Charter schools fight to survive."

"Libraries feel pinch."

These headlines in The Record of Woodland Park today easily could have read: " Readers fight to survive" and "Readers feel pinch."

The more the lazy, incompetent editors ignore the diversity of Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other towns, the more readers find the paper irrelevant to their lives.

Even the stories they do run often are incomplete or superficial -- evidence that head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes and her sub-editors don't know anything about the 70 towns in Bergen County or simply don't care.

For example, the Page 1 story on charter schools doesn't say much about the Englewood initiative or why there aren't more charter schools there, given that city's segregated public elementary and middle schools. The Wayne library is featured in the story about funding on the front of Local, but there little detail about Hackensack or other Bergen libraries. And the L-1 story on Lyndhurst's downtown only serves to highlight the absence of stories about Hackensack's downtown, among others. (Photo: Church on the Green, Hackensack.)

When he took over in 2006, Publisher Stephen A. Borg ordered the desperate editors to institute daily education and food coverage -- even though everyone knew that was just hype and nothing of the sort happened -- but he forgot all about the paper's mission: local news. And so have the reporters and editors.

Hidden agendas?

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You'll find a long editorial in The Record of Woodland Park today praising a stubborn advocate of open public records. "Secrecy is no friend to good government," the editorial on Page A-15 trumpets.

Couldn't the same be said for good journalism? When are the Borgs and their North Jersey Media Group going to come clean with readers and advertisers about their abandonment of Hackensack -- phyiscally and editorially - and how much money Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg's son, Stephen, has sucked out of the parent company of The Record and Herald News?

Suddenly deprived of $3.65 million used to purchase the younger Borg's Tenafly estate, was the company forced to cut its news staff  and its retirees' medical benefits?

Below the editorial is a column by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, who style seems rooted in high school. Does he have a hidden agenda, too?

On Page 1 today, you'll find another in a series of stories on donors who benefit from the politicians they support. Wouldn't public financing end the apparent conflicts and open public office to people who aren't wealthy? Why doesn't The Record editorialize about that or would it deprive the paper of a hot-button issue to write about endlessly?

The main story on A-1 today is about the harm of wood smoke, but I'm wondering if it overstates the case just to stir up suburban readers. It also ignores a more immediate threat: that grilling food at high heat -- over wood, coal or gas -- has been linked to cancer.

Local is the usually pathetic collection of stories. I guess Hackensack (map), Teaneck and Englewood, among other important Bergen County towns, closed up for the weekend and have no development, education or other news worthy of appearing in the former Hackensack daily.

Are the Borgs trying to deceive us?

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 Sloppy reporting and copy editing, and clueless graphic artists and assignment editors continue to damage the credibility of The Record of Woodland Park, as does the apparent attempt by the Borg family to hide the abandonment of Hackensack from readers.

The lazy, incompetent local news editors continue to let down readers, but a major story on how downtowns are faring is all over the front of Local and inside today, with huge photos and a map showing the towns being discussed, colored as "losers" and "gainers."

Did the Borgs notice how Maywood appears in the second paragraph, but isn't on the map? Yet the graphic artist and the copy editor who was supposed to proof the map really screwed-up: Ridgewood is labeled as Ridgefield.


Although the story discusses downtowns, a Hackensack official is quoted as saying an estimated 50 stores opened in the past year. That must be the entire city. Why didn't reporter Dina Yellin get the number for the beleaguered Main Street shopping district, hard hit when The Record moved hundreds of press, editorial and other employees out of the city?


Still, on Page A-2 every day, the Borgs insist on listing The Record's address as 150 River St. in Hackensack, and stating that the paper is published there by the family's North Jersey Media Group. Does ownership of the old headquarters or NJMG Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg keeping his office there entitle the family to continue deceiving the public? What's accomplished by not telling readers and advertisers the truth -- something they already know by how little Hackensack news appears in the paper?

And why does Yellin fail to mention Englewood's downtown? Maybe she doesn't know where it is. She is the same reporter who wrote a story on North Jersey police firing ranges and failed to include the open-air range that drives Englewood residents crazy. Was Christina R. Joseph, the assistant assignment editor who missed that in the firing-range story, also the one who read the latest story on downtowns and again overlooked the Englewood omission? Curiously, Joseph covered Englewood when she was a reporter at The Record.

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Englewood (photos) really gets the cold shoulder in the paper today. A Star-Ledger story on arts centers, appearing on Page A-5, completely omits any mention of the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood (the Borg siblings' favorite wine bar is next door). Assuming the blind Record news copy editor didn't know there is an arts center in Englewood, what excuse does the copy editor's supervisor have?

In Better Living, The Corner Table Columnist Elisa Ung discusses kosher restaurants in Teaneck without telling readers if pricier kosher meat is better for you. She doesn't say whether it is raised with or without antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products. This reporter loves to throw around the word "quality" without ever backing it up. Thankfully, she will be on leave until summer.

Memo to Columnist Mike Kelly: Stop posing questions. Readers want you to go out on a limb and make emphatic statements based on your opinion as a veteran journalist. If you think a school official or a politician or someone else deserves condemnation, condemn them. Your job is not to sift through the facts like a mediator or an arbitrator. You are squandering your bully pulpit. (And again, Mike, please get the editors to change the picture that runs with your column, today on the Opinion front. Right now, you look like a leering child molester.)

Kelly and Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski -- too pompous to ride on and criticize decrepit local buses -- should be put on 90-days' probation. If they can't write stronger, more relevant columns, they should be busted down to reporters. Readers deserve no less.