Minnesota? Texas? Florida? Montreal?

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Has a new reporter been assigned to cover Teaneck?

At the afternoon news meeting Tuesday, Editor Francis Scandale asked to see the first few paragraphs of the local reaction story to the Rep. Anthony Weiner sexting and photo-eroticism scandal.

Editor Deirdre Sykes, who runs the assignment desk, replied, What scandal?

So, on Page 1 of The Record today, an Associated Press story reports Weiner confession reaction from Minnesota, Texas and other states -- even Canada -- but nothing from Montvale, Teaneck, Clifton or anyplace else in North Jersey.

Here's the explanation: With an eye on the heat index, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza sent out a memo to all the local reporters to stay inside because of Tuesday's near-90 degree temperatures.

Staff Writer Jean Rimbach and other reporters replied, asking Sforza how his advice on Tuesday was any different than his usual, do-nothing recommendation.

Global harming

Editors, reporters and headline writers did their best to control the damage from today's lead Page 1 story on Governor Christie ordering another major cut in state environmental goals.

The headlines don't even come close to telling the story, and the upbeat lead paragraph doesn't hint at the storm clouds on the horizon.

More jock itch

A photo of professional football players practicing at Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell? Front-page news or more desperation from Scandale, whose brain is in his jock strap?

Remembering Teaneck

A Teaneck story at the bottom of L-1 today carries the byline of Staff Writer Andrea Alexander. Is she the replacement for Joseph Ax, whose last story about the township appeared on May 4?

Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado wrote six stories about the city between May 21 and June 3, but missed a contentious Board of Education meeting Tuesday night, when more than 100 angry parents showed up.

Where was Alvarado? Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes assigned her to cover the hugely important primary elections on Tuesday.

Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano left the paper, so the last non-police story about the city appeared on May 9. 

Taking a break

Eye on The Record will return in several days. 

Please send me your assessment of the paper, editors, columnists, reporters and the Borg family. I'll try to publish all of them.

Or you could read the most popular posts, listed at the right, and the comments they elicited. That's always entertaining.

It's a democracy everywhere but here

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Leonia is virtually ignored by The Record's Local section.

Isn't it rich?

The off-lead story in The Record of Woodland Park today says Ramsey might ban free speech "on school property when children are present" (A-1).

Free speech has been banned in the newsroom for ages, and editors reminded reporters, "This isn't a democracy."

In recent years, Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg has rushed into court to defend the paper's First Amendment rights, then turned around and disciplined whistle-blowers and other employees who spoke their minds. 

Page A-2 today has four embarrassing corrections, including one that fixes a Page 1 story from May 17. 

Politically obsessed

On the front of Local, why does Columnist Charles Stile portray the attempt to restore $7.4 million to Planned Parenthood clinics as a battle between Democrats and Republicans?

Isn't he enough of a journalist and columnist to declare Governor Christie "insensitive to women," without reference to politics?

Now that Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax left the paper, township resident and local-obit reporter Jay Levin is picking up the slack with a story on the community vegetable garden (L-1). 

Who is picking up the slack in Englewood, Englewood Cliffs and Leonia now that Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano has left?

See previous post on AOL Patch

Did they really mean to say that?

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Township Hall in Teaneck. Are there any bodies buried there?

On the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today, Staff Writer Joseph Ax reports a Teaneck woman "was found stabbed and beaten by firefighters."

On A-11, a headline declares "Christie as a role model for governors" over an OpEd column by former Managing Editor Jim Ahearn, who is far less certain in the text.

On A-4 in Tuesday's paper, Staff Writer Michale Gartland reported "$100 million in proposed Republican cuts at a Hackensack unemployment office" ...that ..."could lead to the elimination of more than 20,000 jobs in New Jersey."

In the case of the two news stories, just moving around a few words in one sentence would have cleared up the fractured, ambiguous writing. 

But after years of hearing higher-ups on the news side scold them for editing stories aggressively, the news copy desk is on autopilot. 

Laughable errors like this show just how incompetent Editor Francis Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her sub-assignment editors are: They fail to turn out sparkling, clear writing every day. Even their lead paragraphs are flawed.

Today's front page

Page 1 today has another strong New Jersey focus in all four stories, but sloppy assignment-desk editing really stands out.

In the A-1 story about a Teaneck resident who was shot dead before his house was set on fire, Ax reports the 59-year-old victim "lived alone," but on A-6, the continuation page, readers are told he is separated from his wife. 

They're not mutually exclusive, but why wasn't his wife mentioned right away or, for that matter, his two grown daughters?

And isn't it weird how the victim's autopsy results were disclosed a couple of days after his death -- in contrast to the autopsy of Teaneck Police Officer John Abraham, who died in a high-speed crash of his police cruiser on Oct. 23, across Teaneck Road from headquarters.

Those results were never released by Teaneck Police Chief Robert Wilson and Ax never tried to get them from other sources. Was Wilson trying to hide something about Abraham's condition the night he died?

Local yokels

Police news about a mosque break-in and a story on evidence in the official misconduct trial of suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa is all Hackensack residents get today. 

But Sykes loved the story about the first pink-footed goose sighted in New Jersey, and put it on the front of her Local section, with a map and photo, and plenty of text on the jump page. 

The story doesn't answer an obvious question: What color is its poop? Yellow? Green?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Sushi made from yellow-fin tuna.

Eat your mercury

If you think that goose would make good eating, don't miss the recipe for yellow-fin tuna, from Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill, who doesn't tell readers the fish she feels "good about" has elevated levels of harmful mercury (F-1).

Defending the status quo

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Map shows Teaneck's position in Bergen County.

In a region filled with small towns and bloated salaries for police and fire chiefs, you'd think The Record of Woodland Park would have lashed out at the police union for blocking Teaneck's plan to save taxpayers $250,000 a year by replacing two chiefs with a public safety director.

Staff Writer Joseph Ax reported the proposal in August and the Township Council's approval in September, but head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes never ran a story pointing out how neighboring Hackensack and Englewood have Police and Fire Departments that are also ripe for a single leader to produce the same significant cost savings in their communities.

So, where is the editorial today blasting Teaneck officials for abolishing the newly created public safety director position, which would have paid $110,000 a year (L-2, Wednesday)? Where is the supposed outrage over skyrocketing property taxes under the antiquated home-rule system? 

 Westward bias

Readers in Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck know how little news coverage they've received in recent years -- with Sykes and her clueless minions running the show -- but now they have evidence that Sykes, Editor Francis Scandale and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin are really defenders of the status quo. 

Instead of running an editorial about Teaneck police, Doblin is foaming at the mouth over the golden parachute for Paterson's police chief. That's in line with the greater emphasis on news of Passaic and Morris counties since The Record moved to Woodland Park and, out of incompetence or sheer laziness, reduced coverage of Bergen County.

Does Sykes expect readers to take her seriously when she gives L-1 play today to a story on tiny Demarest studying whether to share "police services" with Closter and Haworth? Besides shared police-dispatching duties, when has any Bergen County town ever approved consolidation with another town's police department?

Francis loves Pablo

Was Scandale upset when he learned he had hard news and a dramatic photo of a rescue for the front page today -- a male driver was killed by a falling tree during Wednesday's furious rain and wind storm, but his wife survived? 

That meant the editor couldn't run another one of those "lost" Picassos on Page 1 or a photo of football or baseball players or more drivel from Staff Writer John Brennan on the future of the Meadowlands. That meant he didn't get to high-five and slap the asses of the other male editors in Wednesday afternoon's news meeting.

Look at this brilliant sentence in the A-1 storm story:

"No other serious injuries were reported, but headaches and a few minor injuries were reported across North Jersey ...."

If the newspaper is going to start reporting headaches, it will have an endless stream of copy to run, especially in view of all the headaches readers get from poor local news coverage and inane editorial decisions under Scandale and Sykes.

Lots of free publicity

Just about two weeks after a big story on the first Business page gave a million dollars of free publicity to Capital Grille, a new high-end steakhouse in Paramus, another lavish, uncritical piece on the same restaurant appears today on the front of Better Living.


Free-lancer Amy Kuperinsky doesn't tell readers whether the beef is naturally raised, but she takes pains to get in a plug for Bahama Breeze in Wayne, a faux-Caribbean restaurant that is owned by the steakhouse chain. Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung forever cheapened her ratings by giving two stars (Good) to Bahama Breeze.


The other food story on the Better Living front is a fascinating glimpse at kosher recipes from a Teanfly woman who grew up in South Africa, but crass commercialism intrudes when readers turn to the continuation page, F-5.


"Quick bites," from Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill, are press releases from companies that send her free food and other items.


She discusses a new book on her bedside table, "Celebrity Chefs of New Jersey." Sherrill, a chatty, pretentious airhead, says in her last sentence:

"Sadly, the Chefs to Watch chapter includes the late Joe Cerniglia of Campania in Fair Lawn, who took his own life in September."

I'm sure she means his death was sad, not that his being featured in the book is sad, but the features copy desk has never met a sentence it knew how to edit. That's as true now as it was when frumpy Production Director Liz Houlton was running the desk.

Incompetent editors must go

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The Record predicts a deal on Xanadu, right, will come "by the end of the year."

Judging from the size of the sports-gambling patch on Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park today, Editor Francis Scandale must have high-fived all of the males at Tuesday afternoon's news meeting and slapped their asses, too -- in a male-bonding gesture peculiar to him.

Every time sports trumps real news on the front page, Scandale likes to celebrate with his fellow males in a locker-room-like explosion of emotion.


Does he really think readers are so interested in what happens in the Meadowlands in the next three years? 

What about lower taxes?

Aren't they really much more concerned about what happens in their towns in that time, and whether they'll get a break on their property taxes, as Governor Christie has promised, and how little they've been seeing about that in the paper?

Today's speculative Meadowlands "analysis" is by Staff Writer John Brennan, who struggles as a reporter and writer despite all the years he has under his belt.


In his second paragraph, he seems to be saying you'll have to have tickets to the Super Bowl in 2014 to  shop at Xanadu or go to the racetrack. Huh? If you turn to the continuation page (A-6), your eyes will glaze over at the mass of information only insiders really care about.


There's more sloppy writing and editing in the lead story about departing Paterson Police Chief James Wittig. 

How well he did his job is assessed with nary a mention of the drug trade or prostitution that flourishes in some parts of the city or the number of murders. Where has Staff Writer Alexander MacInnes been?

Editors sleep at computers

  
Did he write the atrocious third paragraph or did some editor screw it up and pass it along to the news copy editor, who was half asleep?

"The City Council, at a special meeting Tuesday, was expected to discuss the agreement with Mayor Jeffrey Jones, which Wittig signed last month."

And the third A-1 story today makes you wonder why Scandale gave the front page to Christie for a rehash of the same speech he has given a dozen times -- attacking the teachers union, "incompetent" teachers and superintendents who make more than him. 


Readers in Bergen County and in Passaic County, outside Paterson, must be reeling from from the lack of municipal news in the paper, especially in Local, the section that is the pride and joy of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.


A story from Teaneck, on L-2, is the only municipal news in the section today, and it's the first from Staff Writer Joseph Ax, who covers the township, since Nov. 4. There is nothing from Hackensack, except a water main break. The rest is police, fire, crime and court news.

The accident-of-the-day photo is blown up on the front to fill space, but at least staffer Tariq Zehawi captured a dramatic moment in the rescue of an injured driver.

Road Worrier John Cichowski must have Alzheimer's diseases, because today he gives us his 105th column on the Motor Vehicle Commission, and his seventh on the Lodi office. He not only forgets what he wrote last week, but he has completely lost sight of his mission to report on commuting problems.

Nepotism is alive and well
 
In Better Living, for the third day in a row, food coverage consists of a single recipe, this one from Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill, whose weekly "In Your Kitchen" column gives free publicity to a cookbook. The photos are by her third husband, Ted Axelrod.

Nepotism is well-ingrained at The Record, where a number of editors met their spouses. 

Husband-and-wife-teams included Sherrill and Axelrod; Production Director Liz Houlton and George Cubanski, who succeeded her as head of the dysfunctional features copy desk; and Features Director Barbara Jaeger and sports reporter Steve Adamek, who is more unpleasant than his wife, if you can imagine that.

Sykes and Graphics Editor Kevin O'Neil were another wife-and-husband team until he left The Record under mysterious circumstances. So were Leslie Brody and Elliot Pinsley.


Of course, the most corrosive nepotism was Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg putting his two spoiled brats, Stephen and Jennifer, in charge of North Jersey Media Group, and allowing Stephen and Scandale to run the former Hackensack daily into the ground.

Police spoon feed reporter on death of Teaneck officer

Teaneck Police Officer John Abraham.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You'd think reporters at The Record of Woodland Park would gag on all the no-comments, "we can't release that now," "the results will take a few days" and all the other bullshit they hear from news sources, especially the police. 

You'd think they'd do independent reporting, showing the hustle and legwork of a great reporter -- one who doesn't take no for an answer. You'd be wrong, of course.


Today, as on so many days in the past on other stories, you have Staff Writer Joseph Ax reporting that Teaneck police refused to release any information on the cause of the crash that killed Police Officer John Abraham early Monday, when his car slammed into a telephone pole across Teaneck Road from headquarters. 

Do they have something to hide?

This kind of half-assed reporting has long been acceptable to the lazy, incompetent editors at the former Hackensack daily: Francis Scandale, Deirdre Sykes, Tim Nostrand, Dan Sforza, Richard Whitby -- the list is too long for inclusion here.

What happened to the newspaper that feuded openly with the Hackensack Police Department for many years over the release of information?

"So what should I tell the copy desk?" Sykes shrieks, punctuating her question with a run-on peal of laughter. "Should I tell them to use the word 'mystery' or 'puzzle' in the headline? Oh, I love this. Wait till Frank [Scandale] hears about this in the news meeting. This is a great L-1 lead story. Good going."

Did Ax go to the scene to look for skid or brake marks? Did he try to reach the paramedics or the hospital on the officer's injuries? Did he call the prosecutor's fatal accident unit and the medical examiner, which performed an autopsy Tuesday? How about the wife? Did he ask her why her husband was working a double shift?

Readers are left to find clues in the two photos that ran Tuesday or go to the scene, as I did Wednesday.  The A-1 photo shows Abraham's Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor was moving at a high rate of speed when it hit the pole between the doors on the passenger side -- one of the strongest parts of the body structure -- yet the force of impact bent the car noticeably.

The police car ended up on the sidewalk, pointing in the opposite direction of travel on that side of the four-lane street, which is a long S-curve. No side air bags are visible in the photo, and a side impact may not have deployed the front airbags. If the officer wasn't wearing his seat belt, he would have been thrown around violently inside the vehicle. 

The lack of skid marks may indicate he fell asleep or had a heart attack. The Police Interceptor has a history of safety problems, including power steering that "freezes" on hard turns and at high speeds.  


There's no other Teaneck news in Local today, nor any from Hackensack or Englewood.


Tunnel vision

The lead story on Page 1 today reports Governor Christie is pulling the plug on the Hudson River rail tunnels, although his authority to end a bistate project has never been explored by the paper.

Rail travel into Manhattan is already at capacity, but the end of the project won't inconvenience wealthy people like Christie, the Borgs and the governor's fat cat supporters, who believe they have a constitutional right to drive into the city or be driven there.

The real flaw of the tunnels is that they won't deliver rail travelers to the East Side of Manhattan, not that they won't connect to Penn Station (the latter is cited by Editorial Page Alfred P. Doblin to explain why he opposed them). But neither is enough to sink the proposal. Many cities, especially in Europe, have several major rail stations or terminals.

Christie's decision to stop the project is another blow to the middle class -- just the latest of the many royal F.U.'s from the Republican bully. 

Ass-slapping news meeting 

How many of the male editors' asses did Scandale slap in celebration of his decision to put Staff Writer John Brennan's poorly written story about inexpensive sports tickets on Page 1 today?  

Brennan's drivel runs on A-1 only because Scandale can't inspire his staff to produce anything better.

Day of the 'dead copy'

Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill is fast fulfilling the stereotype of the dumb blonde. Just take a look at her "explanation" of why she started "In Your Kitchen," a column based on a cookbook recipe that runs with her husband's photos:

"Judging by the number of cookbooks delivered to my desk every week, it is clear that people are hungry for recipes and stories about food and cooking."

Huh? Not at all. What is clear is that publishers are showering her with free books every week in the hope she will give them a million dollars worth of free publicity, which she gladly does and passes off as a service to readers. 

Today, for example, she focuses on a recipe for pan de muerto from a book called "A World of Cakes" (Better Living front). Why would a reader want to tackle this complicated recipe when there are so many wonderful Mexican bakeries in North Jersey?

Look at the big smile on her face in the photo on F-1.  She loves free stuff -- cookbooks, lunch at the James Beard House, deliveries from ShopRite. Does she also accept free meals in return for her gushing, non-critical reviews in (201) magazine? Maybe she is just acting dumb.

Local news reporters in a horse race?

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The first Chilean miner rescued on Tuesday.

I never thought it possible, but since mid-July, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado appears to be filing more stories from her beat than the reporters who cover Teaneck and Englewood for The Record of Woodland Park. The three Bergen communities are among the county's most populous and they are certainly the most diverse.


But under the lackadaisical leadership of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her clueless assistants in the past two and half years, coverage of all three has suffered greatly as the local reporters are sidetracked on investigations or, in the case of the Teaneck reporter, sent to cover the earthquake in Haiti.

Even if Alvarado is leading Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano and Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax, the Hackensack reporter has little to be proud of as she has virtually ignored city affairs while pursuing stories about the Police Department and suspended Chief Ken Zisa. 

Today, she doesn't have a story in the paper. And sometimes she just catches up to coverage in the weeklies. This is the legacy of Sykes' F.U. attitude toward Hackensack since the paper moved out of the city where it was founded.

And Sykes' and Alvarado's hands have been forced, as in the case of the parking garage collapse on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, a national story they couldn't ignore, but one they never really did justice to.


Between July 15 and Tuesday -- about three months or 90 days -- there have been 41 stories about Hackensack, not counting police and fire news. 

In that time, nine stories were published about Englewood, where Malcolm A. Borg raised the two spoiled brats who have allowed Sykes to run amok in the newsroom. Sixteen Teaneck stories have appeared since July 15.

Who's the patsy?

The federal trial of Ridgefield Mayor Anthony R. Suarez is back on Page 1 today. He took the stand in his own defense, but no one has asked him why he met with a developer and a go-between in Patsy's Restaurant in Fairview -- and not in town hall.

Shafting the reader

Can the news copy desk make the rescue of the Chilean miners any duller? Today's A-1 head: "'An inspiration.'" Wednesday's A-1 head: "Miners being lifted toward freedom." Katie Couric said it all and a lot better on CBS News, paraphrasing now, A miracle unfolds before our eyes.


See earlier post, Telling like it is?

Old news: Lead story has big flaws

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The lead paragraph of the lead story on Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park today calls a Teaneck woman's death an "apparent homicide." In the third paragraph, the prosecutor confirms it is a homicide. Why "apparent homicide"?
 
The lead paragraph says the body was discovered by firefighters "battling a blaze," but none of the photos of the house show the effects of fire. Couldn't have been much of a fire. The lead paragraph begins, "Authorities are investigating" the death. We should hope so. You don't have to say so; it doesn't advance the story one bit.
 
The time of the fire is never given ("late Tuesday," whatever that means). This certainly is of no help to anyone who drove down that street or neighbors who need help associating a pedestrian or a stranger with the crime. By omitting the time, readers won't wonder why this major crime story wasn't in the next day's paper.

The lead paragraph of a story is the most important, but this one was botched, as so many have been. Just the other day, Staff Writer John Brennan's lead on the first game at the new Meadowlands stadium was incomprehensible, besides being dull.

Whether a reporter is a good one like Staff Writer Joseph Ax, who covers Teaneck, or a bad one, like Brennan, all need eagle-eyed editors backing them up. Sadly, The Record -- an editor-driven newspaper -- has some of the biggest turkeys in journalism. 

The local assignment editors under Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes likely were the first to edit Ax's and Brennan's Page 1 stories. They blew it big time on both pieces. Then, the stories would have been seen by four more sets of eyes: a news/layout editor, a copy editor, a copy desk supervisor and the Page 1 proofreader. All were on autopilot or brain dead.

When The Record was printed in Hackensack, the first copies were rushed up to the news copy desk, where copy editors read every headline, caption, lead paragraph and more to find typos and other errors, and most of them were fixed during the press run.

After genius Publisher Stephen A. Borg moved printing to Rockaway Township in 2007 (and dumped 55 press workers in the process), the news copy desk in Hackensack and later Woodland Park no longer saw the first copies off the press. Errors big and small are now delivered to readers.


There are other problems with today's lead story, especially with the A-1 headlines giving no clue the victim was a well-known gadfly in the township. 

There are other problems with Page 1. Why a front-age story on a $40 million stimulus grant for first responders? Far better in that space would have been the state's anemic economic progress, banished to L-7. 

Unless Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale -- Borg's chief "yes man" -- didn't want to draw attention to how North Jersey Media Group contributed to the severe unemployment and to emptying storefronts  along Hackensack's Main Street, while giving the boss $3.65 million to buy a McMansion in tony Tenafly.


Gee. I thought The Record reported a couple of months ago the legislative proposals to break up Teterboro were non-starters. But we continue to see front-page stories about them. 

The only Hackensack news today is a follow-up to the arrest of a former teacher's aide who disrupted one of the rare school board meetings covered by the paper. Why are 15 inches of precious space on L-3 devoted to this? Did anything happen in Englewood? Ridgewood? 


I got a laugh out of the lead paragraph in the L-1 story about a Lyndhurst homeowner who tried to pay his property tax hike with coins and dollar bills. It begins, "After receiving an unexpected hike [in] his property taxes...."


Unexpected? He lives in North Jersey, and didn't expect a hike? Everyone knows property taxes only go up. Does anyone who voted for Governor Christie really believe he can keep his pledge to lower property taxes?

(Map: Far-off Rockaway Township in Morris County, where North Jersey Media Group owns a printing plant that churns out The Record, Herald News and other publications.)

'Let's just cover the mostly white towns'

The Mother Hen threatens a reader.

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Given the consistent lack of coverage of Hackensack and Englewood -- two of Bergen County's most diverse towns -- isn't it possible head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes held a meeting and said the following in laying out priorities for her municipal reporters?

"OK. Everyone, come closer. You know Deirdre likes to keep her 'chicks' nearby (followed by shrieks of laughter). In view of the downsizing of The Record and Herald News, and the move out of Hackensack, today we're going discuss which towns will get good coverage and which towns we'll try to ignore.


"Now, I met with Frank [Editor Frank Scandale] and Stephen [Publisher Stephen A. Borg], and they want us to ignore most of our diverse communities -- including Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood -- and cover the mostly white towns -- such as Ridgewood, Glen Rock and Tenafly. They're our kind of people, our kind of demographic.


"OK. Monsy [Alvarado, the Hackensack reporter], that means when you're through with the Michael Mordaga probe -- and that should be soon, because it has dragged on for nearly three years -- you are immediately to start hounding Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa, and don't write any story that doesn't include the chief or the Police Department. So just ignore the city budget, tax hikes, schools, development and so forth.


"Now, Giovanna [Fabiano, the Englewood reporter], that means forget about segregated Englewood schools, forget about the Jamaican community (they're only good for making the rum cake I can't keep my hands off at Thanksgiving), forget about the city. Write as  much as possible about that publicity hungry rabbi -- Botox, Boteach, whatever -- and the Libyan-owned mansion next door. Nothing like a mini Arab-Jewish conflict close to home. 


"Yeah. That brings me to you, Joe [Ax, the Teaneck reporter]. You're covering Teaneck too much. We might have to send you some place like Haiti. Let's hope the country gets hit with an earthquake, and then we'll just ignore the township.


"Now, Mary Jo [Layton], you're one of our medical writers so keep close tabs on the controversial proposal to expand The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, and write as many stories as you can. Don't bother to investigate any of the claims of the white protesters -- just rehash them time and again. That makes good copy. And don't say whether a bigger hospital will pay higher taxes, easing the burden on all residents.


"Anyway, Frank and Stephen say the paper is in favor of the expansion, because of the extra advertising revenue that will bring in, and Stephen is on some kind of hospital council, but we have to make a good show of giving voice to the opponents. Editorial Page Editor Alfie Doblin is on board with the mixed message.


"OK. Chickies, go do your thing." (More howls of laughter.)

Today's paper


Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton was assisted by two other reporters in covering the Ridgewood Planning Board approval of The Valley Hospital expansion, which is the main element on Page 1. This guarantees many more stories on the Village Council vote, site plan review, even a possible lawsuit, so Mary Jo can make a career out of the story and please her boss, Deirdre.


Take a look at the Page A-6 list of groups that were going to lose state aid, but now will receive it, under a deal between Governor Christie and Democrats. It's clear Christie has been waging war against higher taxes on behalf of the Borgs and other wealthy folks at the expense of poor schoolchildren, the disabled, the mentally ill and others.


If you count the Ridgewood story on A-1, there is coverage today of about six towns among the 90 or so in the former Hackensack daily's circulation area -- but nothing from Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood.


"Mother Hen" Deirdre, you and your "chicks" are doing such a great job.

Now you see it, now you don't

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The print and online versions of Staff Writer Joseph Ax's Teaneck school election story today differ a good deal. Missing from the newspaper is the following paragraph:

"The growing Orthodox population has accelerated the disparity in racial and ethnic makeup between the school system and the town as a whole. As of October, only 14 percent of the schools’ 4,000 students were white, compared with 52 percent of the town’s overall population."

Who was the editor making up pages on the news desk of The Record of Woodland Park that cut that important graph?

Although Ax says an Orthodox Jew now sits on the school board, he doesn't bother to tell readers just how this man has been voting on fiscal and other issues. Where was his assignment editor? Where was the news copy editor? Where was the slot? Sitting on the can reading the Daily News? (Map: Teaneck.)

Burying a really good story

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You'll really have to search for one of the best stories in The Record of Woodland Park today. Some knuckle-headed news editor -- probably under orders from clueless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes -- decided a bid by Orthodox Jews to win election to the Teaneck school board is of little interest to anyone.

Two elements on the front page don't belong there: a big baseball photo and Toyota halting the sale of a low-selling luxury SUV. They tell readers there is no news today. (Photo: Teaneck High School.)

But in the back of Local, at the bottom of Page L-7, Staff Writer Joseph Ax reports three Orthodox Jews who send their children to yeshiva are running against three school board incumbents. The challengers are concerned about low test scores despite Teaneck spending more money than other districts, the story says. 

Critics of the Jewish candidates say their only motive is cutting school expenses and their property taxes. There is no mention of studies showing how minority children do better in an integrated setting than in one where parents pull their kids out of public schools. Today's story also doesn't give the percentage of minority and non-minority public-school students in Teaneck. Maybe Ax is doing a follow.

When Orthodox Jewish candidates attempted a takeover of the school board in Englewood, the story ran on Page 1, largely due to my nagging from the news copy desk. I lived in Englewood at the time and my son was attending the segregated public schools there, and I passed on campaign material sent to my home to the Englewood reporter. I also edited the story and wrote the headlines.

The Jewish slate was defeated. Yet, Englewood's elementary and middle schools are still segregated, which you might not know from the recent, sporadic coverage of that city.


Looking for Hackensack news in the former Hackensack daily? Sucker.

$230,000 a year? For what?

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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.)

Where is the news judgment?

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Flooding and power outages are what you'd expect after a fierce rain storm, but why would the editors bury the full story of how two Orthodox Jewish neighbors were killed by a falling tree as they returned home from services Saturday evening in Teaneck (map)?

Does The Record of Woodland Park have to run a picture of flooding in Wayne on Page 1 after every major storm? Doesn't Wayne always flood? Just what is the man in the photo doing? The caption doesn't help. In the story, quotes from residents sound like reporters have them stored on save/get keys.

Was the storm a nor'easter, as the paper reported yesterday? A sidebar on A-7 is the only story today that refers to a nor'easter. Also, there is nothing to put this storm in context. Was it worse than previous rain storms?

Maybe the story about the devout Jews didn't make the front page because it was poorly done by Staff Writer Joseph Ax.

Most of it was devoted to telling readers what great guys they were, but it remains unclear whether one of the men was an Ashkenazi Jew who didn't make the longer walk to his usual synagogue because of the bad weather and attended his Sephardic friend's synagogue across the street, exposing both to the falling tree on the walk home.

The story has background information on Sephardic Jews, yet omits any description of the seven-day mourning period all Jews observe -- wives and children sitting on cushions on the floor in clothing torn to show their grief, as they greet a steady stream of mourners. Also, it is likely the men were buried Sunday evening; again, the story is silent on that point.

In Local, a Leonia schools story appears on L-2, written by Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano, who also covers Englewood. Except for one interview with the Englewood superintendent, she has virtually ignored the city's schools since taking over the beat in the summer of 2008.

Hiding Mac Borg's role

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Don't you find it curious that today's L-3 story on the East Hill Synagogue in Englewood (map) omits any mention of how Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg was among neighbors who opposed the congregation's expansion on his East Hill block?

Nor do I see the name of attorney Bruce Rosen, who has done a lot of legal work for The Record and who represented Mac and other opponents. (When he was a reporter at the paper in the 1980s, Rosen said Mac gave him at least one mortgage to buy a house.)

At least the lazy, incompetent editors tried to bury the synagogue story omissions. (For non-Record folk, Mac Borg is chairman of North Jersey Media Group.) I recall asking Assignment Editor Dan Sforza two or three years ago, when I was a copy editor, why a short story on this same dispute didn't include Mac's name, and he said there was "no room" to mention it. Editors today can't use the same excuse for this much longer story.

Then, on Page 1 today,  a long, tortured tale about an international custody battle seems to have been deliberately distorted to shower the father with sympathy.

When you look at the headlines and the moody photo on the front page, you can only conclude the paper wants you to like this man and hate his wife. But it's only on the jump page, you discover he has been accused of of sexually abusing his own kids, and left all of them behind to escape a criminal complaint, the woman's attorney says.

It's not "a father's nightmare." It's the readers who are having nightmares.Was this the work of the courthouse reporter trying to sell the story for the front or the devious editors?  

Three corrections appear on A-2. Way to go.

Joseph Ax has stopped acting like a foreign correspondent and gone back to reporting municipal affairs in Teaneck, where he is assigned. Today, he has two stories in Local, compared to none about Hackensack, Englewood and a lot of other Bergen County towns.

A photo of the Woodland Park police chief on L-2 incorrectly says he is behind a "podium," when he is, in fact, standing at a lectern.The caption doesn't say where the swearing-in was, but I'm sure the editors could have left their Garret Mountain newsroom and popped over for refreshments.

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Bill Pitcher cranks ups the hyperbole in a three-star review of sushi restaurant Umeya in Cresskill. (Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives in nearby Tenafly, in a house that is bigger than some Japanese villages.) Pitcher calls the raw fish "pristine, salmon tasting as clean as the water it was plucked from."

Of course, the salmon likely was farm-raised and, thus, artificially colored, and probably it contained other contaminants. Pitcher also fails to mention fish served raw must be frozen first to kill worms.

Young Borg's big mistakes

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Mistake that turned

his life upside down

When I first saw this headline on Page 1 of  The Record of Woodland Park today, I thought it would be appropriate to describe mistakes made by Publisher Stephen A. Borg that turned employees' lives upside down.

After he took over from his father, he moved printing of The Record and Herald News to Rockaway Township from Hackensack, sacrificing highly profitable commercial printing and prompting the layoff of more than 50 press workers, not to mention incurring the high cost of fuel and extra wear and tear on the Mercedes delivery trucks burning up Route 80 every day.

 Then, he scattered workers in the Hackensack newsroom to the four winds, depriving editors and reporters of a shared purpose, which you can see in the lousy local news coverage and a front page that chases every sensational story just to sell papers.

Now, the landmark building is nearly empty -- with Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg making North Jersey Media Group's last stand -- and 150 River St. apparently is unsellable in a down market. Wasn't unloading the underused building and surrounding land the whole point of moving to Woodland Park?

But today's A-1 headline is not about Borg, it's about the poor, lovelorn schmuck who ducked under a rope at Newark airport and triggered a security lock-down -- in other words, much ado about nothing. Is this really front-page news? Even the judge didn't think so, giving the defendant community service and fining him $500.

Governor Christie is on A-1 again today, blasting his predecessor for making a deal that will prevent Christie from laying off unionized state workers before January. So, the governor is pissed at Jon Corzine. How many thousands are pissed at Christie, who is planning a wide range of cuts that would affect working and middle classes, while easing the tax burden on the Borgs and other wealthy families?

So what's on the front of Local? A burned body found under a Route 46 bridge in Little Ferry is the best the lazy, incompetent assignment desk under Deirdre Sykes can do today. Three of the four education stories on L-2 are from Passaic County.

With Staff Writer Joseph Ax writing about Haiti again, there is no Teaneck news. Nor will you find any stories from Hackesnsack, Englewood and a lot of other Bergen County towns.

The front of Buisness shills for the makers of 3-D TVs (photo) with lots of color, upbeat headlines and text full of quotes from executives salivating over the prospect of huge bonuses.

The media's enduring arrogance

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Don't you hate it when the media decide what is important to you or go on and on about themselves? Today, The Record of Woodland Park has the arrogance to tell readers they were riveted to the computer or TV to hear Tiger Wood's apology, then takes up more valuable space on Page 1 to cover how the media covered the story.

This is nonsense. It must have been a slow news day on Garret Mountain if the Tiger Woods story is all the lazy, desperate, incompetent editors could come up with. The reporting staff must have been in weekend mode, guarding better stories for the Sunday paper -- if they even had better stories -- like so many mice hiding a juicy morsel of cheese.

Sure, Woods is one of the greatest and wealthiest athletes of our time. But he also is a sex-addicted husband with the means to make his fantasies real. The poor schmuck needs help, not the judgment of so-called journalists. Editor Frank Scandale should be ashamed of himself, running gossip on the front page, while his editors and reporters neglect day after day to tell readers what is going on in their towns or hold municipal officials accountable.

There's only one other story on the front today, about the health problems of Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who is 86 and undergoing chemo for stomach cancer. I am sure older readers, who are probably in the majority, are more interested in Lautenberg's health, because they all know people facing the same problems or are heading there themselves.

The thin Saturday paper has little to offer elsewhere. Local has a dramatic story about a police officer who used his cruiser to guide the car of a stricken man to a halt on Route 208, but there is also a lot of Passaic County news and no real news from Bergen County.

Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax can't come up with anything better than a follow on the double murder that was all over the front page yesterday. You'd think Ax, who went to Haiti and spent a week or more away or writing about earthquake victims, would have a backlog of Teaneck stories to report.

Do you think Scott Fallon or another reporter should look into whether a developer gave campaign contributions to Hudson County or North Bergen officials to get approval for a shopping center at the base of the Palisades? Fallon today reports on a court ruling that doesn't stop excavation.

Staff Writer Elisa Ung omits giving prices for the hot drinks promoted on the front of Better Living today, and apparently isn't aware the sake used by Sushi Lounge owner Joe McCafferty -- Yaegaki Dry -- is a really cheap, California-brewed rice wine more suitable for cooking than drinking. Ung describes McCafferty's Tokyo Hottie drink as "crafted" and a "sake-based play on the classic hot toddy." What hype.

A paper driven by clueless editors

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The clueless assignment editors really had reporters for The Record of Woodland Park chasing a bunch of interesting but ultimately irrelevant stories, as today's paper clearly shows.

The former Hackensack daily long has been editor-driven and too few of  the reporters are independent enough to come up with their own ideas or even have the ability to re-wirte their own stories. The rest need a lot of hand-holding by the assignment editors, who are under the overbearing Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, head of the local news assignment desk.

Last night, I was enjoying free-range Australian lamb chops with a couple of glasses of shiraz for dinner when I looked at the clock and had an unpleasant flashback to the many nights I spent on the news copy desk, listening to shrieks of laughter from Sykes echoing across the Hackensack newsroom. Such long-suffering layout editors as Ron Meyer, Randy Splaingard and Jim "Corny" Cornelius could only keep their heads down.

Looking at today's front page, I wonder whether Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, who was promoted by Sykes after doing a mediocre job as transportation reporter, had one of the current transportation reporters, Tom Davis, go to the small airport in Atlantic City to do a story on a security system some say would work at Newark Liberty (logo appears above).

The story -- full of nothing more concrete than shoulds, woulds and coulds -- takes up most of the front page. Yet, Sforza and Davis have been too lazy to do a story about the shabby local bus system so many North Jersey residents have to contend with. When the rear brakes started screeching on new NJ Transit buses used on routes to Manhattan, then-transportation reporter Sforza couldn't be bothered to do a story. He preferred to write about "highways of the future." What a disgrace.

Two Record reporters worked on the Page 1 story about the pilot of a small plane who died along with four others in a Monmouth County crash. He was from Lodi, but does that justify all this coverage? Did I miss a story on the dismal safety record of these annoyingly noisy small planes and what, if anything, the federal government and manufacturers are doing about it?

These two front-page "wonders" forced the incompetent editors to bury on Page A-8 a story about the brutal French colonization and rape of Haiti, and a crippling embargo that sounds a lot like what the U.S. did in nearby Cuba after that island gained independence.

The commuting reporter, Road Warrior John Cichowski, has another driver-oriented column on the front of Local today, in a section without any municipal, development or education news about Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck, the three most diverse towns in Bergen County. (Monsy Alvarado, the Hackensack reporter, was puulled off her beat to work on the air crash story.)

Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax has his first byline today on a so-called local story since returning from Haiti, but a visit to Teaneck High by ethically-challenged Sen. Bob Menedez isn't local news by any stretch of the imagination, despite what Ax's desperate assignment editor said.