As a former employee, I receive a preferential rate of $51.48 a year to subscribe to The Record of Woodland Park -- or 14 cents a day. But I can't recall too many days in the past two years when the paper was worth even that. Imagine paying 50 cents at the newsstands and more on Sunday.
To me, a resident of Hackensack and onetime Englewood resident, today's paper was another slap in the face. For the second day in a row, Ridgewood protesters are given most of Page 1, and there is no news of my hometown and my former hometown to be found anywhere.
The paper has been reporting opposition to the expansion of The Valley Hospital for three years, but has never questioned or investigated parents' claims that construction will endanger nearby schoolchildren. Now, an official who OK'd the expansion says he has received threats. So, thanks to the paper's lazy reporting, we are just now learning how desperate the opponents are.
Another A-1 story -- on a congressional meet-and-greet for a new, national Turkish group -- is much too long. It also serves to recall the huge error made by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, who called Main Street in South Paterson "Little Istanbul," despite the neighborhood having been settled decades before by Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian merchants, as she pointed out in a corrective article months later without acknowledging her original error.
Given the brutality of the Ottoman Empire, her inaccurate description of South Paterson must have sent chills down the spines of Syrians and others who had been oppressed during the years their countries were occupied by the Turks.
One story that deserved A-1 play appears on A-11 today: "Reputed Jamaican drug lord turns himself in." The sizable, hard-working, God-fearing Jamaican community in Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck -- which may be even larger than the Turkish community in North Jersey -- has been virtually ignored by the former Hackensack daily, and no reporter interviewed any of them when the police hunt for the suspect resulted in the death of 76 a month ago in the Kingston slum where he was based.
Giovanna Fabiano, the Englewood reporter, is clueless as well as lazy. She not only ignores the Jamaicans, but couldn't care less about the city's segregated elementary and middle schools, the open-air police firing range's impact on its quality of life, nightmarish downtown traffic and other issues.
But her irresponsibility pales in comparison with that of Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado and her boss, head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, who park their substantial behinds at their computers and virtually ignore any news of Hackensack outside of the legal troubles of Police Chief and former Assemblyman Ken Zisa and related Police Department stories.
Indeed, Sykes and other top editors -- including Frank Scandale, Frank Burgos, Tim Nostrand, Barbara Jaeger, Jim McGarvey (Jim McShouting?) and their minions -- have been scamming their checks out of the Borgs for years.
There is so little local news that "The Trusted Local Source," the paper's new motto, is the ultimate joke on readers. You only have to look at the size of the mediocre photo on the Local front today to see the desperation of the editors to fill space.
The A-19 editorial notes how Governor Christie sided with the rich on his budget cuts, but it is too little and too late -- and it's further diluted by all the favorable columns on Christie by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin.
Compare Better Living's skimpy food coverage today to a Wednesday in early 2006 (before Bill Pitcher) -- when the paper published a real Food section with a column by then-Food Editor Patricia Mack. Sports continues its lackluster coverage of the World Cup.
My credit card has been charged for next year's subscription. Today, lighter by 14 cents, I feel cheated.
(Photo: Banks Street, the financial center of the Ottoman Empire.)
Image via Wikipedia
