Newspaper or toilet paper?

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All the pilot of one of those unsafe, noisy, single-engine planes has to do to land on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today is throw toilet paper out the window. Doesn't that tell you Editor Francis Scandale has made the paper good for little more than cleaning up after a  bowel movement?

How does a little littering compare to the huge impact these planes have on residents' quality of life? Their engines and sound-deadening haven't been updated for decades, making them the Harley-Davidsons of the sky.

Why does the paper let them get away with violating every municipal noise ordinance on the books? Why isn't there a sidebar today on how noisy and disruptive these single-engine planes can be? The likely answer is that head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes doesn't think much of quality-of-life coverage. But she really knows toilet paper.

The only thing residents can take comfort in is how many of these noisy, little planes crash through pilot error or mechanical failure. A far better A-1 story is the debate between candidates for Bergen County executive (L-1) -- a more important issue to residents than a pilot who litters.

Five corrections on A-2 today. Is that some sort of record?

Look at today's dreadful Local news section from Sykes and her minions. The only Hackensack news is another blow-by-blow account of a cop's disciplinary hearing over her poor civilian driving record. Teaneck news consists of that endangered red oak making the state's Big Tree List, which doesn't confer any protection. Those stories go on my Big Deal List.


With Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano chasing that toilet paper, there is no Englewood news today. Her last Englewood stories ran Oct. 9 and Aug. 13.

Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's three-star review of Taverna Mykonos in Elmwood Park follows hard on the heels of a gushing, uncritical account in (201) magazine about meals at the same restaurant by Susan Sherill, the food editor and Ung's boss. At least Ung does some complaining about the "bored and unauthoritative" wait staff.

But where is her authority?

With cost-cutting narrowing the number of entrees she can sample, why does she order swordfish, which has elevated levels of mercury, according to the Environmental Defense Fund? Women and kids should not eat it at all, and men should limit their intake, EDF says. 

"The food sings with passion and special care," she writes, then goes on to describe "the best gyro meat I've ever had," rather than telling readers if the lamb and beef were raised naturally. I wonder if Ung is ever going to get it: There is a lot of fish and meat served in restaurants that isn't very good for you.

She says she could barely taste the grilled octopus under its many garnishes -- but that's because octopus, like squid, has little flavor of its own.


Also in Better Living today, there is room for only an abbreviated list of restaurant health inspections -- nine towns out of the 90 or so in the paper's circulation area.

Where exactly is the local news?

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What would The Record of Woodland Park do without Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi? His work is all over the paper today -- big photos of two accidents and one tractor-trailer fire, taking up the space of local stories the rest of the staff never filed.


This Johnny on the Spot, one of the most talented photographers at the paper, must live in his car or at least spend all his time driving around, awaiting word over the police scanner about more traffic mayhem to bolster the tabloid quality of the former Hackensack daily.


Look at the size of his Page 1 photo today of a truck driver walking away from an inferno on Route 80 -- there's room for only three stories on the rest of the page. The photo is big on drama, but two reporters could manage to squeeze out only the barest details. I guess no other story was worthy of the front page today.


His two other photos appear in Local, which is packed with so much police, court, trial and higher education news there is no room for municipal stories from Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and a lot of other towns whose reporters apparently started the weekend early.


This is another "toilet seat" edition created by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who has been telling readers for many, many months that tabloid-like police, court and fire news is good enough in the absence of any detailed reporting on what town officials are doing or not doing. Just eat this slop, Sykes says.

It's hard to believe Editor Francis Scandale did something right today -- pairing two stories about education aid on A-1 today. The story about Facebook's $100 million for Newark schools appears on top of  the story about the continuing embarrassment over the loss of $400 million in federal aid.


Governor Christie still has egg or worse on his face from the latter, so why is the headline on the former story praising the governor for trying "to fix bad schools"? He cut school aid drastically. The Record will do anything to stay in the good graces of this bully, who has visited so much misery on middle- and working-class state residents.


Just look at the moronic phrase seized on by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, who apparently knows jack about Newark. In his column on A-23 today, he praises the "Ironbound Alliance" of Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker (photo) to improve the city's segregated schools. 

But the Ironbound is an ethnic enclave of Portuguese, Spanish and Brazilian residents where the city's blacks have made few strides. In the 1980s, some Ironbound restaurants refused service to African-Americans. 

I guess Doblin is just trying to be cute again, acutely aware that without gimmicks, his columns would bore readers to tears. Is he a journalist or the governor's apologist?

In her three-star review of Sorrento in East Rutherford, Staff Writer Elisa Ung boasts of the restaurant's authenticity by saying there is no "parmigiana in sight" on the menu. But "parmigiana" means "from Parma" or "Parma-style," and isn't a reference to parmesan cheese.


Would she give three stars to the quality of the ingredients? We don't know, because this restaurant reviewer cares little about whether the "huge" salmon fillet she sampled is artificially colored farmed fish or wild-caught; whether the prosciutto is cured with harmful preservatives; or whether the pork dish she tried is pumped full of antibiotics. 

God forbid she'd put a restaurant owner on the spot, and ask such questions so readers concerned about where their food comes from can know before they go. Or does she imagine everyone is like her -- eating whatever is put in front of her? After all, it's the paper's money she's spending, not her own.

Also, it's disturbing to see how much space is now devoted to mouth-watering close-ups of food and how little space is left for text under a redesign of Friday's Better Living centerfold, where her reviews appear. 



There are so few restaurant health ratings today, the layout editor had to use a house ad to fill out the column. This is great food reporting: mystery fish and meat, and mystery restaurants.

North Jersey haves and have-nots

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Dogs saved from house of horrors

The main headline on Page 1 of  The Record of Woodland Park today made me wonder, Who will save readers from Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale's newspaper of horrors?

Sure, it's awful how an apparently deranged homeowner abused 26 dogs that lived amid garbage and feces. But is this front-page news? 

Just below this report on one of North Jersey's have-nots is another dog of a story that doesn't deserve to be on A-1: 

The sale of furnishings at the $14 million home of two haves, an ostentatious music mogul and a chubby ex-model. Staff Writer Evonne Coutros, usually excellent, wrote a lead paragraph that lands with a thud. A $2,000 pillow from a bed Versace slept on? Gee-whiz. Wow-wee. Can you believe that?

The third A-1 story -- on air safety in North Jersey and over the Hudson River -- buries a remarkable detail. It seems truckers use jamming equipment to prevent their employers from tracking their movements with GPS, and that has delayed testing of the nation's first satellite-navigation system at Newark Liberty airport (photo). Given the lack of detail, Staff Writer Tom Davis didn't think much of the problem. 

On the Op-Ed page (A-17), Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin oversteps his role in another partisan column -- this one blaming Democrats for not being able to override Governor Chistie's antiabortion veto of family planning funds.

Except for a police chase, there is no Hackensack news in Local today. Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado apparently missed or ignored a July 29 meeting of First Ward residents who complained  about the behavior of the homeless from the new county shelter a couple of blocks away. Read all about it in the weekly Hackensack Chronicle.

Maybe head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes told Alvarado she needed her beauty sleep and not to cover the neighborhood meeting. 

The L-1 story on sisters putting up for sale one of the last farms in Saddle River makes no mention of the state's farmland preservation program, though that money may have been among the funding cut by Governor Christie to avoid taxing millionaires like the Borgs.

Does anyone edit the restaurant reviews in Better Living? Judging from the first paragraph, Santorini Taverna in Fort Lee leaves its doors open on the hottest days. Who would want to eat there, even though it gets a good rating? Today is Food Editor Bill Pitcher's last day at The Record, but we may see more of his work in weeks ahead. One of his recent reviews noted he visited the restaurant two months earlier, and he hasn't given a firm date for Elisa Ung's return.

Restaurants from only 15 North Jersey towns are listed in the health inspections column today on Page 21 of Better Living. Bergen County alone has 70 towns.

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.)