No local news today

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The front page of The Record of Woodland Park screams no meaningful local news today, with a lead story on a non-fatal standoff with police in lily white Ho-Ho-Kus. How did this story get on A-1? In some lazy editor's opinion, the photos were better than those with a far more compelling story, the arrest of a suspect in the Jan. 24 immigrant-on-immigrant slaying of a Garfield deli clerk.

The biggest photo with the standoff story is the perp on a gurney. Real dramatic, don't you think? Three other photos show police officers and police vehicles.

But who isn't moved by the big L-1 photo of the clerk's grieving father, owner of the deli, who told a reporter he visits his son's grave every day since the slaying nearly 10 months ago? The entire Local section contains eight inconsequential Bergen stories and photos, two less than from Passaic and Morris counties.

There is no news from highly diverse Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood, a trend that accelerated when The Record moved its newsroom many months ago out of Bergen County, to the former West Paterson. Yet, on A-2, the Borg family still lists the newspaper's address as 150 River St., Hackensack.

A letter to the editor on A-11 today suggests the nation launch a "Cash for Pounds" program to attack the obesity epidemic, a subject the newspaper has been trying to ignore for more than a decade. Maybe some of the obese -- or verging on obese -- editors will read this letter and launch an obesity project.

That surely would be of greater service to readers than the interminable investigation now in its third year that is being led by Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, head of the local news assignment desk. This probe has sucked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries and tied up several reporters, including Monsy Alvarado, the woman who is supposed to be covering Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895.

'Stupid' food coverage

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If you live in Hackensack or many other towns in Bergen County, you stopped long ago relying on The Record for municipal news. In the more than two years since I moved to River City, which was the onetime local newspaper's home for more than 110 years, I can't recall seeing a story about what the City Council did the night before.

You just have to drive by the paper's landmark building at 150 River St. and count the relatively few cars in the sprawling parking lot to realize The Record has virtually abandoned the city, moving printing and staff as far as 30 miles away. The consolation prize for local news hounds is the copy of a low-quality weekly called the Hackensack Chronicle that is delivered with the daily paper on Fridays. (The Chronicle is also owned by the powerful North Jersey Media Group.)

In The Record's Local news section today, I count four stories from Paterson, two from Wayne and one each from Kinnelon, Clifton, Morris County and Montclair (total of 10 stories). That's twice the number of  Bergen stories in the paper that missed landing in my Hackensack driveway.

In Better Living, food coverage is a 15-minute recipe from the Miami Herald, a list of cooking classes and a highly promotional, staff-written story about a new cookbook by a chef from Cleveland.
 
Does anyone pay $109 to learn how to cook Thai food? For that money, a family of three (two adults and a child) could have two great meals at Wondee's, the best Thai place in Hackensack. The recipe, unlike many the paper runs, looks like you might just be able to prepare the meal in about 15 minutes.

But of what value to readers is the story about the chef's book? This story, written by restaurant reviewer Elisa Ung, is just another in a series of gushing pieces about so-called celebrity chefs. Recall the ringing endorsement Ung gave Bobby Flay (photo top) when he opened a hamburger restaurant in Paramus -- without mentioning that the nail-biting Flay put profits before his customers' well-being by settling for beef raised with antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products.


It's no wonder Eric Levin, senior editor of New Jersey Monthly magazine, has called The Record's food coverage "stupid."

The photogenic front page

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The Record today is an example of how feature news with a good photo trumps news of vital importance to readers in North Jersey.

On Page 1, the main element is a story and photo about a West Milford woman who will donate her home, a business and land to the township to end a decades-long search for a site to expand or replace the community library. Isn't that nice? How sweet. OK. The township is really far away from Bergen County, and hasn't it fought for decades against Newark's attempts to build affordable housing on city-owned watershed land? Isn't that racism?

So where is the real news? On the front of the Local section, Staff Writer Ashley Kindergan reports weak ethical rules in many towns allow pay-to-play and nepotism to flourish. This story has a nice graphic, but not nice enough, I guess, for Page 1. The Record has long defended home rule, which, many observers believe, fosters corruption and keeps property taxes high. Did that have something to do with placement of the Kindergan story?

Want more New Jersey news? Unfortunately, the A-section has lots of stories, but they are from Texas, Maine, California, Cleveland, Arizona, Seattle, Baghdad, Jerusalem and so forth.

Better Living has the usual food coverage in a Monday paper -- a single vegetarian recipe -- but under Health on F-8, there is more: a Washington Post story about fish that are not only caught sustainably but are also rich "in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids," a key in reducing the risk of heart disease.Pole-caught albacore tuna is listed, but the rankings by the "influential" Monterey Bay Aquarium don't take this tuna's high mercury content into account. So the headline isn't really accurate: "Good for the oceans and good for you." The story probably could have used a subhead: "Oh, but not the albacore tuna."

This is one of the dangers of running a lot of stories supplied by outside sources, including the Washington Post, especially when, like The Record, your food and copy editors know little about what is healthy and what is not.

The food-phobic travel editor

Page 1 of The Record today is filled with hard news, which is not always the case. The newspaper loves putting sports and infrastructure stories all over the front. Readers may not know that a story, no matter how important, will not be assigned to the central element of the page unless it has a great photo (or graphic, as in the algebra-test story today). In Record parlance, that story is "the patch."

On Page A-8, a story about a protest by commercial fishermen is silent on whether the new rules will affect New Jersey fishing ports.

A letter to the editor on A-11 claims "police salaries are out of control." The Record has published a number of stories in recent years, blaming high police and teacher salaries for the financial troubles of many towns. But it has been silent for the past decade on the incredible inefficiencies of home rule. Does Bergen County need 70 police chiefs, and police and fire departments; almost as many superintendents of schools and Departments of Public Works, and 100 to 200 neighborhood schools? Aren't they the reason property taxes are so high?

The Local section has no municipal news from diverse Teaneck, Hackensack and Englewood.

Better Living  has no food coverage, which is the case on most Saturdays, unless you count the stories on Halloween candy.

The Sunday Travel section -- delivered with the Saturday paper -- is a collector's item. It actually carries a story about restaurants (in New Orleans). Many travel sections are filled with stories about food, a big reason many people travel, but not The Record's section.

Have readers noticed the paper has had no major articles about travel in South Korea in many, many years? It's believed The Record's travel editor -- an animal lover -- is horrified by the notion  that some South Koreans allegedly eat dogs and won't run any stories about South Korea. This same editor traveled to Africa to help animals -- not people.

The story about New Orleans restaurants confines itself to the French Quarter, ignoring all the great neighborhood places, including Li'l Dizzy's Cafe (shrimp and grits) and Parkway Bakery (overstuffed po' boy sandwiches). It also provides no strategy for avoiding all the artery-clogging butter and cream in creole food, such as eating at one of the great Vietnamese places in or near the city.

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Reviewer is obsessed with dessert

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The front page of  The Record today actually contains news -- a story that required some digging on 34 state employees who are collecting gobs of overtime and a rare local story on Page 1 about four Bergen County towns in the same high school district.

The Local section has a story from Englewood on teacher contract talks, the fifth or sixth story from that city this month, depending on whether you include mention of sidewalk repairs on Oct. 15. The paper is continuing its seeming boycott of news from Hackensack, the county seat that was the paper's home for more than 110 years. The last mention: street repairs at mid-month.

In Better Living's centerfold, an Italian restaurant in Fair Lawn gets two and a half stars from reviewer Elisa Ung. That's only a half star more than she awarded a faux-Caribbean chain restaurant in Wayne several weeks ago.

In the review of Davia, Ung reports on a potato-crusted salmon entree and a strip steak, failing to mention whether the former was wild or artificially-colored farmed fish or whether the latter was grass-fed or at least raised without anitbiotics and growth hormones.

Ung spends too much time writing about desserts. Recently, she related she had a "nightmare" about dessert. I guess she doesn't realize that many people are watching their weight or cholesterol and forgo dessert, especially at a restaurant with big portions, like the one she is reviewing today. In fact, she says fewer than half of its customers order dessert, but that doesn't stop her from sampling four of them.

I found the following hilarious. She reports the restaurant is named after the owner's daughter. "Their son, John, wanted no part of the name." That's a good thing, isn't it, but with a name like John, why does that have to be mentioned? Would anyone name an Italian restaurant just John? Wouldn't  people think it's an elaborate bathroom? Maybe John's Trattoria.

On Page 20  of Better Living, the restaurant health inspections appear, but many towns' restaurants are excluded today and, in fact, never appear in the paper. Thirteen towns are listed today out of the more than 90 in The Record's circulation area.

(This post was revised on Saturday, 10/31/09.)

Short on Bergen County news

The Record today is the usual disappointment, short on local news and food coverage, but with a large patch of the front page devoted to the first game of the World Series.

A Page 1 tease, "Doc says defendant was too fat to kill," is the paper's way of addressing the obesity epidemic, which it has avoided reporting for years outside of an annual story saying it is getting worse all the time.

On A-4, a story carries a headline, "Number of trucks expected to soar on roads in Morris County," but the story doesn't mention The Record's Mercedes-Benz delivery trucks have been wearing ruts in Route 80 for a few years now, picking up the freshly printed edition at its Rockaway Township plant and returning to Hackensack, the newspaper's former home.

On A-10, a number of letters to the editor condemn the decision to endorse John Corzine for another term as governor, and readers point out the editorial seemed back-handed, because it omitted his accomplishments in office. On at least a couple of occasions recently, Record stories have reported that the governor raised taxes, but left out an important distinction: the higher levies are only on the rich.

The Local section has another story about Eastside High in Paterson, but I have read nothing about Hackensack High School in the more than two years I have lived in River City. The section has seven stories about Passaic County towns, only five about Bergen towns, plus a murder trial, political column, an expanded obituary and a story about Xanadu.

The local staff has struggled for years to fill the paper with Bergen news, especially when there were two separate editions: one for Bergen County, the other for Passaic and Morris counties. Now, there seems to be only one edition and the lack of local Bergen news is pathetic and a slap in the face to readers.

In Better Living, there is no food news, with the exception of an Atlantic City feature about a celebrity chef   judging a cooking competition and a promotion for Friday's restaurant review.