No reason to celebrate in Hackensack

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I scanned the front-page stories on property taxes and school staffs today, but couldn't even find any mention of the city where The Record of Woodland Park was founded. Maybe I just missed it. Even the sensational baby-killing story is from Fairview.

Didn't Governor Christie run on a pledge to cut property levies? He must have meant next year or the year after that, so the Borgs and other wealthy families can get a respite from paying a surcharge on incomes over $400,000 -- thanks to Christie's refusal to reinstate the Corzine-era tax.

I also came up with no Hackensack coverage in Local.

Check out Staff Writer Elizabeth Llorente's story on L-1 about FBI visits to Americans who travel to Cuba in defiance of U.S. law. It's bad enough she herself is a non-objective Cuban exile, but is there anything more preposterous than a Cuban-born restaurant owner in Hackensack comparing travel to Cuba with not paying property taxes? (Photo: On the bus in Cuba.)

$230,000 a year? For what?

Image by New Perspective / Nueva Perspectiva via Flickr

Flip to Page L-2 in The Record of Woodland Park today and prepare to be outraged, even if you don't live in Teaneck. The district's schools are hiring a new chief for $230,000 a year. Is that a typo? 

With state aid cuts and Governor Christie's call for a teacher wage freeze all over the front page, including today, how does any town facing higher school taxes and staff reductions agree to such an inflated salary for a superintendent? And how does Staff Writer Joseph Ax just drop that bomb on readers and residents without providing any context?

Don't look for education news or any other story about Hackensack today, because you won't find any. Are Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado and her clueless head assignment editor, Deirdre Sykes, napping at their desks?

Page L-6 tells us the Paramus police chief -- one of 70 in Bergen County -- is retiring at an annual salary of nearly $184,000. Don't you love home rule? When is your next property tax bill due? Has Christie cut it yet or just screwed everybody but the rich?

There's compelling news on the front of Local. True. The Record hasn't had a municipal story about Hackensack since Dec. 22, excluding the legal troubles of the police chief and police officers' disciplinary hearings.

But at least today, the lazy, incompetent editors update us on the "third phase" of renovations to sleepy Demarest's old train station.

In the interest of full disclosure, shouldn't the former Hackensack daily identify Staff Writer Elizabeth Llorente as a Cuban exile -- especially when she reports on Cuba, as she does today on Page A-4?

Has The Record carried any positive stories about the island in the past decade? Did the newspaper even mention all the Cuban doctors who were working in Haiti and tended to the sick and injured after the earthquake? (Photo: Cuban flag.)

Neatly tied news packages

Image via Wikipedia

Editors and reporters at The Record of Woodland Park love those neatly packaged news stories, where they can land on Page 1 or the front of another section by merely covering a so-called news conference or a meeting or by rewriting a report or getting reaction to a report.

If the reporters are lazy, then the editors are even lazier. Today's front page is dominated by two such packages: Governor Christie's news conference and a board meeting of the state sports authority. Enterprise? Not needed. Legwork? Unnecessary. All the reporter has to do is show up and take some notes.

For example, Christie is full of thunder about the huge salaries and lobbying costs at the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission. But the agency has been around forever, so why didn't a Record reporter uncover this years ago?

The lead story on the front of Local today came out of a planning board meeting. Two other stories on L-1 are from a court ruling or based on reaction to a state report.

Only two stories in Local show some enterprise by reporters:  

Staff Writer Elizabeth Llorente on the obstacles immigrants face when they try to go the legal route and get a green card, a subject she has neglected in favor of hot-button stories on illegal immigrants.

Staff Writer Jay Levin, who writes most of the extended obituaries on North Jersey residents, did a lot of legwork for his piece on L-6 today about the life of a former Bergen County parish priest.

Looking for Hackensack news in the former Hackensack daily? All you'll see is a story based on rulings by two federal judges in lawsuits filed against Police Chief Ken Zisa. Englewood and Teaneck stories are notable by their absence.

Ignoring local news

Image via Wikipedia

The Record of Woodland Park continues today to give front-page play to the Monmouth County father whose 9-year-old son has been returned to him from Brazil, while ignoring the Hasbrouck Heights dad whose holidays were ruined, because his 9-year-old daughter remains in Spain.

The Monmouth County story is being covered by The Star-Ledger, and that may be why The Record continues running it as part of a cooperative news-gathering agreement with the Newark paper. This means less work for Record reporters and their lazy, incompetent editors, and less local news for Record readers, who have been deluged with Star-Ledger stories of questionable relevance to their lives -- many of them mere low-quality filler.

Staff Writer Elizabeth Llorente has an interesting story on Page 1 about immigrant students and what schools in Paterson and Hackensack are doing to help them.

But if you are looking for more news about Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895, the only coverage you'll find is another piece on the turmoil in the Hackensack Police Department over disciplinary charges against officers who have sued the chief. I believe this is the first byline for Monsy Alvarado since Dec. 16.

Alvarado, who is assigned to cover Hackensack, has written many stories about the police department since June, but has ignored most other news in River City. She is competing with Giovanna Fabiano and Joe Ax, the reporters assigned to two other core Bergen towns, Englewood and Teaneck, to see who can do the least work and get away with it. The last Teaneck story appeared on Dec. 17, the last Englewood piece on Dec. 20 (not counting police or fire news written by other staffers). Unfortunately, their assignment editors, including Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, expect no more of Alvarado, Fabiano, Ax and many other municipal reporters.

Frugal Staff Writer Kevin DeMarrais has a rundown on the Business front of New Year's packages in North Jersey starting at about $50 per person, but you can't rely on him to find a real bargain, such as the multi-course dinners for four, six or eight people at Lotus Cafe, a popular BYO Chinese restaurant in Hackensack, that cost about $20 per person or less, including tax and tip. Six of us (plus an infant) were served eight delicious courses there last night, including prawns, filet of sole, duck, a chicken casserole and dessert.