Should Bergenfield police chief make more than Christie?

It's been rough going for local-news readers of The Record since the Borg family abandoned Hackensack in 2009. But local drivers were pleasantly surprised to find a new surface on what was a crudely patched stretch of River Street in front of North Jersey Media Group's old headquarters, above.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's upbeat front-page story on Bergen County's first female municipal police chief raises obvious questions the lazy editors of The Record don't bother addressing.

Staff Writer Nicholas Pugliese waits until deep into the continuation page to mention what is foremost on the minds of Bergenfield taxpayers:

How much will the town pay Capt. Cathy Madalone, who is the Borough Council's choice to succeed former Police Chief Michael Carr (A-6)?

Pugliese not only doesn't tell you how much she will be making, but also omits whether that is more or less than Carr's salary.

Well, it turns out Capt. Madalone is being paid $173,228, including longevity pay -- significantly less than the total of $190,536 Carr received as chief.

If Madalone gets a raise when she becomes chief, is it appropriate that she make more than Governor Christie's $175,000 (and the same question applied to Carr)?

Pugliese also doesn't address whether Bergenfield, which has a large Filipino-American community, has any Filipino officers.

Another question

Given all the problems in North Jersey and the state, is Editor Martin Gottlieb, a New Yorker, just being contemptuous of local concerns by running another silly sports column on what is supposed to be the paper's premier page (A-1)?

In Local today, there is extensive coverage of a hit-and-run that took the life of a Paterson teen on a bicycle (L-1), and a house fire in Passaic city that displaced six families (L-3).

Other Law & Order and court stories appear on L-1, L-3 and L-6.

What is long overdue is for Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza to work with their layout editors and designate a page or a page and a half  in the back of their section for crime, court, and accident news and photos.

Welcome change

In Better Living, for a welcome change, recipes for radicchio salad and shrimp salsa appear on BL-2.

More fishing for news

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The desperate editors couldn't run the photo on Page L-3 any bigger -- it's as wide as it can get, as wide as the page. Let down by the lazy assignment and news staff under Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes for yet another day, the layout editors had no news for that page today, and plugged the hole with a photo of people fishing and looking as bored as readers of The Record of Woodland Park.



Who can blame them? No news of Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other important towns appears in Local today. Local? Why not call it Yokels, which is how Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale regards residents of key communities. Bears in West Milford get better coverage than Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years.

On Page 1, the paper reports that failing students in some districts now have to pay for summer school. Isn't that good news for taxpayers? But is it really A-1 news? 

The plan to break up Teterboro -- a plan few thought would be successful -- is on hold, the lead story on the front page discloses. Why did the paper write endlessly about the politics of the proposal, but not bother to report on Teterboro Airport's impact on the quality of life of tens of thousands in Hackensack, Maywood and other towns annoyed by noisy aircraft filled with such fat cats as the Borgs?


For cutting-edge food coverage from Better Living, see the newest junk food on F-1. The copy editor calls a doughnut cheeseburger part of a "culinary renaissance." "Artery-clogging renaissance" would be more accurate. A reader-friendly story would report on what healthy options are available at the fair.

(Illustration: Teterboro Airport. Only two runways, but endless noise.)

Decade in review: Our paper changed

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Don't let today's decade-in-review edition of The Record of Woodland Park fool you about changes in North Jersey. You won't read a word about how the former Hackensack daily began a slow decline under the leadership of  a dictatorial editor who downplayed the importance of local news and two greedy Borg siblings who backed him.

But I want to interrupt this condemnation to praise Road Warrior John "Drivers' Best Friend" Cichowski for finally paying some attention to bus riders in today's column on the Local front, although the headline overstates the case. Now, he should ride one of the creaking local buses, such as the No. 780 between Englewood and the city of Passaic, to see a real horror show.

The lazy, incompetent editors assigned Staff Writer Mike Kelly to write the decade in review on Page 1. "It's been a weary and worrisome 10 years," he writes. Indeed, I can say the same for his columns. Kelly writes about bricks and mortar, and infrastructure, and touches oh-so-briefly on changes in the media, including declining newspaper readership, but is silent in those two bare paragraphs about The Record.

You won't find anything in his boring piece -- or the reviews on the Local front and elsewhere -- about how we've changed as a people or how the election of our first black president unleashed racism and opponents so desperate to smear him they invoked the Holocaust or simply told lies -- aided and abetted by the media.

Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Scandale came to The Record at the beginning of the decade and -- faced with his biggest story ever, 9/11 -- showed a colossal lack of news judgment by running Tom Franklin's incredible flag-raising photo on a back page. Then, in response to falling readership, he commissioned coverage aimed at 20-year-olds, and later banned one-town stories from the front page.

After the final weekday news meeting, Scandale used to send one of his subordinates over to the news copy desk where I worked to tell us what words he wanted on the front page and what words he didn't want there ("Frank wants this..., Frank doesn't want that...") One day, Chris Maurus, then the Page 1 editor, announced that Frank didn't want any mention of the Pulaski Skyway (photo) in a front-page story about crumbling infrastructure. Why?  He had never used it and he didn't think our readers knew where it was.

In 2006, Stephen A. Borg took over running the dailies from his publisher father, repudiated Scandale's 20-year-old feature coverage and nearly everything else Scandale did, yet promoted the editor to vice president. Borg, tiring of his $2 million house in Tenafly, obtained a $3.65 million mortgage from North Jersey Media Group so he could trade up to an estate in the same town.

He and his big sister, Jennifer A. Borg, NJMG vice president and general counsel,  invested money in an Englewood wine bar, a curious move for the children of a reformed alcoholic, and had a story about the place published in The Record's feature pages.

With more than $3.5 million tied up in Stephen's house, NJMG's two daily papers -- The Record and Herald News -- underwent a restructuring in 2008 and the smaller staffs were crammed into a newsroom in Woodland Park, virtually completing the company's abandonment  of Hackensack that began with the move of all printing to Rockaway Township. That forced NJMG to give up its hugely profitable commercial printing operation.

At the same time, news coverage of the city where The Record was founded in 1895 and had prospered for more than 110 years declined drastically. This year, more than a month passed on two occasions without a story about Hackensack in the former Bergen Record.

Around the time of the restructuring, Jennifer Borg capped severance at 12 weeks' salary, because payments to veterans who had left were adversely impacting the bottom line. This year, NJMG retirees were informed of cuts in their medical benefits.

Through 2007, 2008 and most of 2009, hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries were squandered on an investigation of a single law enforcement official led by editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, head of the assignment desk. A single story was published Dec. 16 on the Local front, and it certainly was laughable.


The "what made news" review on the Local front today touches on 36 towns -- compared to about 90 in The Record's circulation area. You want to laugh? Read the items about Hackensack and Englewood. Yet more than half of L-7 is devoted to a model train club in Paterson.

See anything good in the paper? Click on "comments" at the end of this post and let the world know.

Little more than a tabloid

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The Record of Woodland Park gives off a tabloid vibe today. It's filled with crime, court or traffic accident news, including the lead story on the front page. Half  of Page 1 is filled with a sports stadium story -- again. But if you are looking for municipal, development or quality of life news from Hackensack, Englewood or many other towns in North Jersey, you'll be disappointed -- for yet another day.

In the Local section, there are no fewer than 10 court, crime or  accident stories. Eleven, if you count John Cichowski's Road Warrior column, which gives royal treatment to the traffic-violation woes of one driver. Doesn't he have anything better to write about?

Teaneck reporter Joe Ax attended the first public hearing on a Queen Anne Road home where Jewish services have been held for about two years. Neighbors are fighting the synagogue, which didn't apply for variances. Shouldn't the township be faulted for allowing worship there?

This reminds me of the wealthy neighbors who opposed a synagogue on Walnut Street in Englewood, including Malcolm A. Borg, the powerful chairman of North Jersey Media Group, which publishes The Record. Borg and his East Hill neighbors fought the congregation's expansion, and Borg even used Bruce Rosen, a lawyer who does a lot of work for NJMG, to represent opponents. The initial stories acknowledged Borg's role, but later reports by then-Staff Writer Maya Kremen omitted any mention of Borg or of Rosen's affiliation.

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung reports on a mediocre Indian restaurant in Fort Lee, yet describes it as "one of the great institutions of the North Jersey dining scene," presumably because it has been open 30 years. She might have been better off reviewing one of  the Indian restaurants on Main Street in Hackensack or strolling along Main Street and stuffing her face at five or six places in one evening for a report she once called "Progressive Dining."

Are we in trouble yet?

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The state's huge financial problems are back on the front page as The Record of Woodland Park continues its now-you-see-it, now-you-don't coverage of  the  "mountain of debt"  in New Jersey -- third highest in the nation.

The onetime Hackensack daily's lazy, incompetent editors finally acknowledge former Gov. Chirstie Whitman's "borrowing spree" after running a column by her a while back that blamed everyone but herself for the mess the state is in. And, on Page A-12, the focus is taken off politicians and put on taxpayers, who  are criticized  for approving bonds to preserve open space. This reflects the Borg family's long-held goal of  covering  North Jersey with shopping centers and keeping the ones in Paramus open on Sundays to boost the paper's advertising revenue.

You won't find any development, education or municipal news about Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895, but the front of the Local section today has the juicy details about a municipal court appearance by a bimbo complainant from Wayne.

Inside, you'll find the second story in less than a month about establishment of a "green team" in Englewood that will apparently duplicate the work of the city's Environmental Commission, but no mention about whether this will lead to recycling of  TV sets, computers and other electronic devices, something Hackensack has been doing with little fanfare for more than a year.

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung gives two out of four stars to Cafe Amici in Ho-Ho-Kus, but such a rating is meaningless after she gave the same number of stars to Bahama Breeze, a chain restaurant that serves fake Caribbean dishes in Wayne. And while she continues to obsess over the quality of desserts, missing for another week are any health inspections of Wyckoff restaurants.

She describes a "giant" cupcake as "impeccable," "dense and moist with a thick cream cheese," then adds, innocently, "We're guessing it wasn't low-fat." Indeed. Readers likely are guessing that she isn't "low-fat," either.