It's become The New York Times' suburban edition

Our tax dollars at work. The white vehicle -- marked "FORT LEE AMBULANCE" -- pictured on Wednesday afternoon, moments after it left the parking lot of Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood, the Italian-food purveyor, where the driver shopped. Fort Lee has a volunteer ambulance corps.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Why is it front-page news in The Record that Egyptian riot police are killing members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which many call "one of the largest Islamic terrorist movements" in the Arab world?

Sounds like a good thing to me, and, surely, there are more important events taking place in North Jersey.

Editor Marty Gottlieb doesn't think so. 

The former New York Times bigwig appears to be acting in lockstep with the world media, including the BBC, whose detailed, hand-wringing radio news report from Egypt I heard this morning.

As for The Record's sensational coverage, readers have to turn to the continuation page to learn the Muslim Brotherhood attacked "21 police stations and seven Coptic Christian churches" across Egypt (A-8).

Isn't that great? And the Associated Press article in The Record doesn't say a word about the Muslim Brotherhood's reputation as a terrorist organization.

Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

"The Society of the Muslim Brothers  (Arabic: جماعة الإخوان المسلمين, الإخوان المسلمون, the Muslim Brotherhood, transliterated: al-ʾIkḫwān al-Muslimūn) is the Arab world's oldest, most influential and one of the largest Islamic terrorist movements, and is the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states."

Master v. slave

Tea Party crackpot Steve Lonegan is so out of touch with the reality of everyday life in New Jersey he is comparing his contest against Democrat Cory Booker for a U.S. Senate seat to George Washington's army against the forces of King George III (A-1). 

It's appropriate Lonegan identifies with the American revolutionaries: They were slave holders.

No more lines

The lead Page 1 story today reports 1.5 million drivers will be given the chance over the next year to renew their licenses through the mail, rather than to wait on line at a MVC office (A-1).

Hopefully, that also will put an end to all of those Road Warrior columns that tried to elevate waiting on line every 4 years to a crime against humanity.

Focus is wrong

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes continues to give better play to minor accidents (L-3) than to local obituaries, such the one on L-5 today that brings Marie Damiani to life as the demanding owner of Steve's Sizzling Steaks in Carlstadt.

Another truck killed another elderly woman (L-1), reminding readers of the garbage truck that killed a 74-year-old woman from the Philippines who was visiting Bergenfield last week (Saturday's L-1).

Fatal accidents such as these cry out for a criminal negligence law to punish drivers.

Hackensack news

On Sunday, a story on L-3 reported that a court hearing will be held on a lawsuit filed by the backer of a 19-story, long-term, acute-care hospital on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack.

Instead of "LTACH," the acronym that has been widely used for years by opponents, the confusing headline refers to the proposal as "Hackenack hospital."

Meanwhile, Hackensack Scoop reports on City Council patronage -- past and present -- including mention of Richard Malagiere, who was the zoning board attorney when LTACH was rejected in January 2012.

Click on the following link:

Out with patronage or maybe not 

Full-page A-1 ad shocks readers

Image via Wikipedia

Church on The Green, Hackensack, where the dead turned over in their graves when The Record's Sunday edition was wrapped in a four-page advertisement for a bank that carried the usual A-1 masthead, date, price and weather forecast. Publisher John Borg (1922-48) and Editor Donald G. Borg (1932-75) also turned over in their graves. Publisher Stephen A. Borg, an investor with his sister in an Englewood wine bar, broke out the champagne.

Readers were shocked and dismayed by the full-page bank ad that was wrapped around the front page and the entire A-section of The Record on Sunday.

I called the number for display ads listed on A-2 in today's paper and the woman who answered the phone said she wasn't at liberty to disclose how much Wells Fargo Bank paid for the unprecedented sellout of the paper's journalistic mission. She also wouldn't give me "a ballpark figure."

When I asked to speak to a supervisor, she put me on hold, then said she would switch me to the account executive who handled the advertisement, Kimberly Cummings. Then, she put me on hold again. 

When she came back, she said the Circulation Department handled the ad, but couldn't explain why. She then switched me to circulation, where I got the recording readers hear when they want to report a problem with delivery.

So, I wasn't able to find out whether the ad brought in enough revenue to start a new wing on Publisher and Marketing Wizard Stephen A. Borg's 8,500-square-foot home in Tenafly, the one on Churchill Road he bought in 2007 with a $3.65 million company mortgage. 

Several months later, Editor Francis Scandale announced layoffs in the Hackensack newsroom.

New role for Mac

Now that Borg has shattered a huge barrier between advertising and journalism, I full expect him to try to sell an ad on the back of his father, Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, the chairman of North Jersey Media Group who was pushed aside by him and big sister Jennifer.

Mac can wear one of those sandwich boards over his cashmere overcoat and walk up and down Main Streets -- in Fort Lee, Hackensack, South Paterson and elsewhere -- and advertise Mercedes-Benz cars and delivery trucks, Tofutti, Verizon's iPhone, Fresh Direct grocery delivery and other businesses that have appeared in highly promotional business news stories or ads.

Paper as ad agency

At the gym this morning, one reader commented: "It's not a newspaper. It's an advertising agency."

A woman who subscribes to the paper said about the ad, "I was shocked." Both said they had never seen anything like it in The Record or any other newspaper.

We don't know Scandale's reaction to the ad, but the editor with the flawed news judgment long ago rolled over and played dead for the business side. 

Witness how he didn't peep when money for ergonomic furniture for the news copy desk in Hackensack was cut from the budget. What did he care? Most of the copy editors were among the older newsroom employees he held in disdain.

Today's front page

Reporters continue to slant stories to make Governor Christie look good. Today, two front-page stories report on  1) a battle over toll money from the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway, and 2) Christie's $8 million in savings from cracking down on public boards, authorities and commissions.

In the main element on Page 1, the Legislature wants to "roll back part of a toll hike" scheduled for 2012, and pass the savings on to drivers. But Christie wants to use all $1.25 billion to prop up the nearly bankrupt Transportation Trust Fund. (The main headline uses the word "rescind" or cancel, contradicting the lead paragraph.)

Staff Writer Karen Rouse, who has now assumed the mantle of worst transportation reporter from Tom Davis, who left the paper, pads the story with an eye-glazing discussion of bond covenants, but completely omits mention that for more than a year, Christie has refused to raise the low gasoline tax -- the traditional funding source for road, bridge and mass-transit improvements.

Of course, any such hike in the gasoline tax would fall disproportionately on Christie's rich buddies and supporters in their gas-guzzling limos and SUVs.

And what's the big deal over an $8 million savings? Why doesn't the paper publish a story on how many tens of millions would be raised by a millionaire's tax Christie refuses to impose, and how many of those millionaires support the governor financially?

Reviving black news

There have been a lot of stories about African-Americans during Black History Month, but few during the other 11 months of the year. The large black community in Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood, for example, is virtually ignored during the year, unless members are charged with crimes.

The story about strong growth in black businesses on A-1 today contrasts starkly with all the stories in the Business section on wealthy white business owners discussing how they plan to get richer.

Screw the Arabs

This is local news? A filler story on the Meadowlands Racetrack appears on the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section today, as does a big photo and story about two Orthodox Jews who got married at Citi Field, but a rally by more than 150 Arab-Americans in Paterson is shoved back to L-6. 

Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado even quotes the same Egyptian-born Franklin Lakes man who was quoted by other Record reporters in an A-1 story on Saturday about the changes in Egypt.

Did you read the story about the Mets fans who got married at the ballpark? Don't you love how Orthodox Jewish men still treat women like pariahs? 

According to the overlong story by Zach Patberg, one of the so-called challenges they faced was "rigging up separate dance floors" for men and women, which I take to mean men and women were not allowed to dance with each other, similar to their strict separation in synagogue.

Why is Sykes celebrating this kind of mistreatment of women?

Breaking news, broken staff

Image by filtran via Flickr

Cairo, Egypt, is one of the world's most fascinating cities.

"Wake Jean up! Wake Jean up!" head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes shouted to one of the news clerks in the Woodland Park newsroom on Monday, referring to Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, one of the least productive members of her staff.

"Where's Kibret [Markos]?  I can't reach him, so he must be on a smoking break again outside the courthouse," she said before laughing loudly. "We've got to throw reporters at that story on the plane that landed on Route 80. 

"Boy," Sykes said, "I'm going to hold onto to that story right up to deadline so the news copy desk doesn't screw it up."

Were six reporters needed to cover this gee-whiz story for The Record? It's all over the front page today, but it's so poorly reported and edited, there is no mention of the town where the plane landed -- not in the text or on the A-1 map. Radio news reported the single-engine plane landed in Hackensack.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. The editing of the text on the continuation page (A-6) is atrocious. The errors include the lower case "justice department" twice; "Prosecutor's Office, whom"; and "looked in to."

And does this overlong story really belong on Page 1? Please, Editor Francis Scandale, this isn't the North Jersey version of the commercial jet that belly-flopped on the Hudson a couple of years ago. 

Egypt and New Jersey

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule is being called corrupt, and he's blamed for human rights violations and widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

You can find similarities in the rule of Governor Christie. His budget cutting and tax policies strongly favor the rich over the middle and working classes in New Jersey, and now he's appointed four pay-to-play contributors to seats on the state Board of Education. All send their kids to private -- not public -- schools (A-1).  

The lead A-1 story today -- on bronze-panel seams separating the first and last names of some 9/11 victims -- seems to be much ado about nothing. But it's typical of Scandale's desperation in trying to sell papers.

In a pickle

The humorous take on Bergen County's use of a salt-water brine to melt ice (L-1) isn't enough to  hide how the paper missed this story initially. It was widely reported last week by New York television news stations.