More wasted Hackensack reporting

It's not known whether Palazzo Zisa in Palermo, Italy, has any connection to suspended Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa and his cousin, City Attorney Joseph Zisa.

Hackensack readers probably yawned loudly when they read the headline on the front of The Record's Local section today:

Cops drop

civil claims

vs. county,

prosecutor

This is another in a seemingly endless stream of stories from head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who burdens her Hackensack reporter with chronicling every burp, hiccup and fart in the complex legal cases swirling around suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa.

Sykes has been obsessed with Zisa and Michael Mordaga, the city's onetime chief of detectives, for many years, and she's thrown hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries into investigations of them.

Many lawsuits

Officers started filing suits against Zisa in June 2009. He, in turn, has filed administrative charges against them.

Today's story notes the chief was indicted on insurance fraud charges in April 2010 and on official misconduct charges in May 2010.

Since then, every motion, every delay and every legal maneuver in departmental hearings and in court has been reported in The Record -- to the exclusion of other city news -- but no one has asked residents if they are happy with their Police Department.

Apparent conflict

Nor has the Woodland Park daily explored the apparent conflict of interest involved in Zisa's cousin holding the job of city attorney and defending the suspended chief.

In December, the weekly Hackensack Chronicle listed law firms that have received the most money from the city in defense of the chief, including $535,158 paid to Zisa and Hitscherin, in which City Attorney Joseph Zisa is a partner. 

Staff Writer Stephanie Akin, who covers Hackensack, has a second story inside Local today -- about a third-grader who won a statewide "Power of Art" contest (L-3).

Free-mulch news

But overall, there is so little local news in Local, Sykes' pride and joy, the desperate layout editor had to run a four-paragraph story on Closter's free mulch-delivery program to residents (L-2) and a 12-inch story on a single house burglary in Mahwah (L-3).

The flaws in Local are more apparent now that Editor Marty Gottlieb seems to be having some success with remaking Page 1.

Town crier

A "bright" story at the bottom of the front page -- on Fair Lawn's town crier -- is by Staff Writer Karen Sudol, who is covering the Dharun Ravi trial in New Brunswick (see today's Local front).

It's likely she wrote this weeks ago and it's been sitting in "the can" until Gottlieb found room for it.

"Oyez, Oyez, Oyez," the town crier exclaims. "The Record's Local news operation has caught the Black Plague and staffers are falling like flies."

  

Christie is the butt of jokes -- not N.J.

The Aug. 27, 2013, front page of the Daily News.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Fie on the out-of-state editor of The Record, Francis Scandale, who came from The Denver Post in the state where sheep's testicles are considered a delicacy.

Today's front page is a disaster. Did Scandale have anything to do with the story in the bottom right-hand corner, where Staff Writer Karen Sudol and her assignment editor trot out the old saw that New Jersey is "the incessant butt of jokes."

Really? Is that the only way they can write a New Jersey Hall of Fame story? How stale. How outdated. How un-New Jersey.

All the jokes I've been hearing since early 2010 have been about Governor Christie and his huge butt, not about the Garden State. 

More GOP goop

Readers who glanced at the stories above the fold today -- one about the big, bad Iranians and the other peddling Republican Party propaganda from a modern-day Laurel and Hardy -- were turned off instantly. 

To the disgust of readers, The Record has joined most other media in putting more emphasis on the outcome of the 2012 presidential election than in the political paralysis that is destroying the country.

The piece on the 2014 Super Bowl date is a non-story -- another waste of space by Scandale and that horse's ass, Staff Writer John Brennan. The vast majority of readers will be sure to avoid the turnpike that day.

I found the full-page ShopRite ad on the back of the Better Living section more interesting.

Two more embarrassing corrections -- down from five the day before -- appear on A-2 today.

Cockeyed assignments

The Local section, put out by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her minions, is another disappointment to readers in Hackensack and many other towns, as well as to commuters, whose problems are routinely ignored by the office-bound Road Warrior columnist.

The L-1 lead is about the glacial pace of consolidating police dispatching in six Pascack Valley towns. How many years have they been jawboning about this?

The story on cleaning up after a Korean harvest festival never says whether the Bronx-based organizers paid Bergen County for use of the new Overpeck Park, and how much.

The report at the bottom of L-1 spends a great deal of time telling readers what a great guy the victim was, but fails to focus on how 27-year-old Eric Meyer of Rutherford threw his life away by driving his powerful Kawasaki motorcycle at an insane rate of speed.

The story says his motorcycle "kept going for two more blocks" after Meyer fell off and was killed. Yet, the reporter makes no attempt to tell readers how fast he was going -- surely, well above 100 mph.

The assignment desk is really cockeyed when it tells a reporter to find relatives who will praise the victim to the sky, despite his moronic behavior on a super bike. 

Meyer doesn't deserve this obituary, and readers don't deserve this whitewash.

Editors railroad readers again

Image via Wikipedia

Fencing shown in foreground is hard to find along many stretches of track.

Does NJ Transit have a responsibility to try and keep teens and others from using active railroad tracks as shortcuts, often with fatal consequences? 


Do the editors of The Record, Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes, have a responsibility to question the state mass-transit agency on what counter- measures it takes -- such as fences and guards?


The answer is "yes" on both. But you won't find anything in the paper today on how NJ Transit contributes to pedestrian deaths by leaving wide stretches of track unfenced or unguarded.


Same tragic story


Just over a year ago, a 12-year-old Hackensack Middle School student was killed on the tracks along Railroad Avenue as he walked home from school. 


The stories didn't even mention how block upon block of track through that residential-industrial neighborhood are unfenced (or that Hackensack provides no public-school busing, exposing students to danger).


The Record's assignment editors are more comfortable with the NJ Transit corporate line every time a train kills a pedestrian: the victim was "trespassing," the train could not stop in time, the engineer blew his horn, and blah, blah, blah.


Mother's anguish


In the last two paragraphs of today's Page 1 story on the deaths of two teens in Wayne, the mother of victim Nicholas Sabina, 17, says NJ Transit needs "to take steps to improve security at the trestle (A-6)."


Even though four reporters worked on the story, her statement is just thrown in there as an afterthought, and the transit agency wasn't even asked for comment.


The Wayne teens were killed Sunday night and a Garfield teen was killed by a train on Monday afternoon, so why are there separate stories on A-1 and L-1 today?


I guess Sykes' famously lazy assignment desk couldn't get their tushes moving fast enough to put all three deaths in one package on Page 1, as a real newspaper would do.


Or Scandale couldn't be bothered to tear up the A-1 layout to get all three deaths out front.


The caption under the A-1 photo of the Wayne trestle where the teens died says it's "known to be used as a shortcut to Willowbrook Mall." That's awkward. How about, "a well-known shortcut to Willowbrook Mall"?


And is "encounter" an appropriate word for the drop headline, when two teens suffered horrible deaths and a third was seriously injured?


Christie lap dog


The off-lead A-1 story is a column by Staff Writer Charles Stile, who calls on Governor Christie to finish his first term, not run for president -- exactly what an editorial said on Monday.


In his second paragraph, Stile says Christie "engaged New Jersey in a grand debate."


What a hoot. Revisionist history already. What debate? The GOP bully used his executive powers or veto anytime the Democrats passed a bill he opposed, including the so-called millionaires tax.


(The New York Times reported at 11:09 a.m. today Christie will not seek the presidency, so we're stuck with him.)


Scandale is doing everything in his power to keep the occupation of Wall Street off of Page 1, reaching all the way to Perugia, Italy, to make the Amanda Knox story the third element on A-1 today.


C'mon, Francis. Wall Street. The seat of power. It's just across the river. This is a lot bigger than A-4 news.


Local news drought


The last Hackensack municipal story appeared on Sept. 21, and there's none today, either.


Sykes' assignment minions really are hurting for local news today, filling nearly half of L-3 with stories that belong on the Business pages.


Staff Writer Karen Sudol must have re-written a press release to get her lead paragraph on Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno (L-3). 


She wrote the official "continued to show state government's support for Garden State businesses by visiting two companies in North Jersey ...."

Christie aide scolds second-graders

Image via Wikipedia

The Record is helping Tenafly officials portray light-rail service as negatively as possible.

The lead Page 1 story today reports how Governor Christie's acting education czar "warned" minority second-graders at a "troubled" school in Trenton: "When I come back, I want everyone to be able to spell 'amphibian,' tell me what it means and think of an example other than a frog."

Staff Writer Leslie Brody commands the front page for the second day in a row to tell readers how acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf plans to bridge the learning gap. 

The generally upbeat article notes students at the school he visited Thursday are mostly poor black and Hispanic children, "who can't read or do math on grade level."

Read this to the end, as I did, and you'll find no mention by Cerf or this education reporter of whether minority students do far better in an integrated setting, as numerous studies have shown.

That's no surprise, because The Record of Woodland Park has never examined the impact of segregated classrooms -- such as those in Englewood elementary and middle schools -- on learning.

"Cerf calls the achievement gap 'morally reprehensible' and says his proposals will help close it," the reporter notes on A-10, then goes on to say the education czar believes teachers are "the single most important influence on student success."

Reporter as mouthpiece

Where is it written that reporters must quote anything an officials says, even if it contradicts reality? Where is it written that reporters should avoid challenging a news source at all costs? Where is it written that reporters must endeavor to push readers' buttons?

If you work for Editor Francis Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and their minions, that seems to be your mission. 

Take Staff Writer Karen Sudol, who has done a number of stories on opposition to the extension of light-rail service to Tenafly -- a proposal that is the fruit of decades of effort to improve mass transit and ease traffic congestion in densely populated North Jersey.

Sudol has merely parroted statements from Tenafly Councilman Barry Honig and others, apparently wealthy people who are defending their right to drive into Manhattan, adding to already unbearable pollution. 

Today, she quotes Honig as saying light-rail service would "serve practically no one in our town," even though she reports three paragraphs earlier that 1,183 people supported the proposal in a November referendum (L-2).

She quotes Honig as saying light rail "will significantly harm the quality of life in our community," even though light-rail cars are propelled by electric motors that don't pollute and are far quieter than diesel locomotives that were proposed initially.

Maybe Honig and others in Tenafly were influenced by two long, slanted, anti-light rail stories reported and written by Tom Davis, a so-called transportation reporter who thankfully has left the paper.

Image via Wikipedia

Queasy stomachs

I've been driving past The Green Olive in a drab strip mall on Passaic Street in Hackensack for more than three years and have never had the least bit of interest in eating there, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw its "local neighborhood cooking" reviewed in Better Living today. 

The place looks like a tavern that serves food, and I don't want to try one of its mystery meat hamburgers or its pizzas. Even the usually deceptive food photos with the review can't hide the mediocrity of this pizza crust.

Restaurant Revewer Elisa Ung begins this review as she does all others, telling "The Story" of how it got started. Today, she devotes five long paragraphs to this introduction. Who cares? 

Tell me about the origin of the food, how the meat in the burger was raised, the service -- anything but the chef's work history, words of praise from his stepson and all the other rigmarole.

I know times are tight at the paper, but why does Ung have to review every restaurant she eats in? Last week, she reviewed Rumba Cubana in North Bergen, where she found "two pieces of gristle in the complimentary dip and a hair in two different dishes, both on the same weeknight visit."

Just the thought of finding that in my food makes me queasy, and I would never visit that place.

She gives two stars to The Green Olive (Good), as she did to Rumba Cubana, but that's the same rating she gave to a faux-Caribbean chain restaurant, Bahama Breeze in Wayne, where she was served raw or undercooked scallops three times.

Ung also seems to be straying from reviewing more expensive, fine-dining restaurants. The motive must be to save the troubled newspaper money, but it's a disservice to readers.

Monsy Alvarado's new burden

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For about two years, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado was sidelined to work on the so-called investigation of Michael Mordaga, the well-regarded Hackensack detective who went on to become chief of detectives for the Bergen County prosecutor.

A single story, with the bylines of Alvarado and other staffers, appeared Dec. 16. It not only wasn't good enough for Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park, but the reporters had to resort to guilt by association to get it published at all. Mordaga's name didn't even appear in the lead paragraph and his alleged conflict had ended in February 2007.

Now, it seems, Alvarado has a new burden from the head of the local news assignment desk, Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, who somehow kept her job even after pursuing the vendetta against Mordaga for nearly three years, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries. Sykes' pal, Jean Rimbach, the lead reporter on the Mordaga project, had not had a byline for two years.

Alvarado's new assignment from Sykes, it seems, is covering the lawsuits filed against Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa and the disciplinary hearings of officers who have dared to challenge their boss. In the process, she has ignored  just about all the other news about Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years. On at least two occasions in the past 18 months, her byline has not appeared for more than a month at a time.

Today, Alvarado reports, an attorney for one of the officers has asked the county prosecutor to investigate Zisa. Alvarado apparently has never asked the mayor or City Council why they haven't suspended Zisa or taken any other action in the many months since the suits were filed, including allegations he used officers to take care of private matters. Maybe bulldog Sykes picked the wrong target for her so-called investigation. Or was Mordaga just another laughing matter? Does Publisher Stephen A. Borg have anything to say about this?


The Zisa story leads Local today, but you'll also find a superficial story on downtown improvement districts by Staff Writer Karen Sudol, who ignores Hackensack altogether, not even reporting the reason the head of that district was fired last June. She also ignores the closing of several restaurants in Englewood's district, including Panera Bread and Cosi.

The front page today is dominated by Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax's long piece under the headline, "Haiti's long road." He spent maybe a week in Haiti in late January and early February, but Local hasn't  had a Teaneck story since Jan. 23. So, it's "Teaneck's long road."

You'll find more reporting exploits in Opinion, where Columnist Jersey Mike Kelly boasts of all the risks he took when he covered 9/11. His many columns since then have been mostly covering his ass.