Failing to deliver local news

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If you are an editor at The Record of Woodland Park, you never have to explain why there is so little local news in the paper day after day -- certainly not to the Borgs, who pay little attention to the newsroom as they dream of untold riches from the sale of their former Hackensack headquarters and surrounding land.


Can't you just see North Jersey Media Group President and Publisher Stephen A. Borg waking up each morning in the $3.65 million Tenafly mansion he bought with a company mortgage? Do you think he walks down his driveway to fetch The Record or does he even get the paper delivered to his estate?


What about his big sister, Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan? She doesn't see the paper unless she goes to her office on Garret Mountain.


Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg? I doubt he goes out every morning to pick up the paper from his East Hill driveway in Englewood. Can the marginalized NJMG chairman even bend down to pick it up? Maybe he sees it in Hackensack, where he is holding down the old fort with a few reporters and the computer folks, surveying all the new, unsold Toyotas in the parking lot.


So, if you are Editor Frank Scandale (his news policy is to front page all sports stories and many sex crimes) or head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes (her news policy is to ignore Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck), it's likely you never get a call from the Borgs or anybody else about why a daily newspaper that made its reputation on covering local news is doing such a poor jobs of informing readers about what is going on in their towns.


Instead, as in today's Local section, readers get a lot of court, crime and accident news, plus one of those international custody battles that newspaper editors seem to love so much but that always read alike -- just substitute the name of the foreign country where the kids are living.


Nine candidates running for council in Teaneck, one of the most progressive and diverse communities in Bergen County? Sykes shoves it to the back of the Local section, and strips it of any information on whether the candidates are tax-weary Orthodox Jews, like the ones who tried to take over the Board of Education in the April school election.


Hackensack news? Another lawsuit filed against suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa -- this one from one of the two cops who allege he ordered them to cover up the real cause of the accident involving Zisa's  then-girlfriend. The chief's legal troubles have been reported in detail for close to a year -- to the exclusion of almost all other Hackensack news. Englewood news? Nothing.

At least on Page 1 today, to his credit, Scandale highlights more state aid cuts -- these affect legal services for battered women and others in Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties -- but the coverage of Governor Christie's budget rampage has been piecemeal. What's called for is a standing front-page element detailing the cuts and how they affect everyday life in North Jersey.

The Borgs are more concerned about image, not local news, such as the image Stephen Borg wants to create by changing the paper's slogan to "The Trusted Local Source" from "Friend  of The People It Serves." He must have come up with that fiction while enjoying an expensive wine at the Englewood wine bar in which he and his sister are investors. Recently, they claimed NJMG is proud of the "responsible journalism" it practices.


I am sure they are not fooling readers.

(Photo: The Hackensack River in Teaneck.)

When the Zisas came to power

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Here's another detailed recollection of Hackensack's past -- the election that consolidated the Zisas' power. This is from  just watching, a contributor to Hackensacknow.org. Of course, you won't find anything like this in The Record, which bid farewell to Hackensack when it moved to Woodland Park last year.

"Of course, there were more issues in the 1989 election such as the recent re-evaluation that occurred right before the real estate market tanked, causing so many houses to be over-valued (interesting pattern, since it just happened again).  And there were four complete slates running in 1989.  It cannot be understated how much the local Democratic organization was divided by the election, and how people like Daniel Kirsch wound up on D'Arminio's ticket.

"The Zisas were considered a breath of fresh air, a "clean sweep" over the stagnancy of the Fred Cerbo Administration. Cerbo was a former mail carrier who somehow rose thru the ranks of the US Postal Department, and then decided to get into politics. He had no people skills, and was once denounced by the ACLU for plotting against a school teacher circulating recall petitions. They referred to him as the Mayor of Moscow.  There were no glory days before the Zisas came to power.

"The Zisas and their political associates were good people when they came to power in 1989. They were young, energetic, and committed to preserving neighborhoods, zoning, and the environment.  They had strong family values, and four of the five elected in 1989 had children in the city's school system (the exception being Sandra Robinson). They were bursting at the seams with new ideas. They had tremendous vision for the city's future, and they wanted to stop urban decline and the spread of inner city problems. 

"In 1989, Ken Zisa was a low-ranking police officer in charge of interacting with the city's youth. By all accounts, he excelled at that task.  Jack Zisa was a young accountant in his 30s working out of a humble little office on Hudson Street, and son of a former Mayor.  First Cousin, Joe Zisa, was an attorney, son of a former city judge, with dreams of following in his footsteps.

"What happened to the Zisas? Why did  they change?.  Why did all this happen?"

Homer Jones, another contributor to Hackensacknow.org, offers this in answer to those questions:

"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

(Photo: Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.)

A good photo trumps a good story

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The big photo of a non-fatal gas explosion on the front of The Record of Woodland Park today wastes space that could have been devoted to news, but I guess there was no news. A good part of Local is devoted to the story, as well. It must have been what newsroom pros like head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes calls "a slow news day."

Years ago, when a similar, non-fatal explosion and the death of an elderly woman in a high-rise competed for Page 1, a photo of a leveled house won over the other story, because we didn't have a photo of the fire that killed her.

Gee, another A-1 story reports, Governor Christie is upset by the teachers union joke about his death. Lighten up, governor, literally and figuratively. You are the one responsible for your health, and you don't seem to be doing such a great job trying to ensure your own longevity.

You won't find any Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck news in Local today, but L-2 carries a house ad congratulating The Record's staff for winning the general excellence award for the third year in a row in the New Jersey Press Association's 2009 Better Newspaper Contest. (Photo: Teaneck High School.)


As I told Publisher Stephen A. Borg in an e-mail on April 4, 2008 (one of those that led to my firing): "You won't be winning any awards for the way you treat older workers." That 2008 message was called inappropriate and unprofessional at the trial of my lawsuit.

Maybe we need a Better Newspaper Management contest.

Hackensack gets wiped off the map

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Malcolm A. Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, grew up in a big house at Summit and Fairmount avenues in northern Hackensack (map). Today, "Mac" is one of a couple of dozen people left at The Record's landmark building not far away.

When you drive by 150 River St., you might mistaken the parking lot for an annex of nearby Hackensack Toyota. The lot, once crowded with employees' cars, is filled with new but unsold Japanese cars -- hundreds of them.

Now look at the lead Page 1 story today on cuts to North Jersey high school athletics. It doesn't even mention Hackensack. The entire Local section also ignores the city where The Record was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years.

The only news from Englewood is a crime story. Teaneck? Not today. Nada. Zilch. 

But for the second day in a row, a columnist blasts Governor Christie for forcing NJ Transit to propose 25% fare hikes and service cuts. This hits the pocket of Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, who commutes to Woodland Park by train, and he's pretty upset.

Doblin portrays Christie as an imperious ruler who doesn't leave his private car to see how the people live or how hard it is for them to get around using mass transit.

All in all, a pretty skimpy paper, especially if you live in Bergen County.

'We cover Hackensack'

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"What does that guy mean?" head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes says to one of her minions, as her laughter starts rolling across the Woodland Park newsroom. "Of course, we cover Hackensack."

"Oh, do we cover Hackensack! Didn't I have a bunch of reporters investigating a former Hackensack detective [Michael Mordaga] for almost three years? Don't I have Monsy [Alvardo, the Hackensack reporter], Shawn [Boburg] and Jean [Rimbach} chasing another great story?

"I mean," she says, chuckling, "look at A-1 today [in The Record]. "Hackensack is all over the front page!" (Does her computer still carry the name tag: "Deirdre 'Laughs A Lot' Sykes"?)

Indeed, the big snowstorm photo on Page 1 today shows an unidentified man walking in none other than Hackensack, although the street isn't identified. For the second big storm in a row, a pedestrian in Hackensack was featured on the front of the former Hackensack daily (after the Feb. 6 storm, it was an unidentified woman walking on Main Street). But the map under today's photo omits snowfall totals in River City. Now, that's coverage.

On A-2 today, two more corrections appear -- three corrections and one clarification in three days. The paper's accuracy is questionable and damages its credibility.

Except for a lawsuit reported in Local today, there is no other Hackensack news in the paper.

Did anybody get to the end of the Food Editor Bill Pitcher's tedious, two-star review in Better Living of a bar and steakhouse in Midland Park? Who made dinner reservations there for tonight?

Readers fight to survive

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"Charter schools fight to survive."

"Libraries feel pinch."

These headlines in The Record of Woodland Park today easily could have read: " Readers fight to survive" and "Readers feel pinch."

The more the lazy, incompetent editors ignore the diversity of Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other towns, the more readers find the paper irrelevant to their lives.

Even the stories they do run often are incomplete or superficial -- evidence that head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes and her sub-editors don't know anything about the 70 towns in Bergen County or simply don't care.

For example, the Page 1 story on charter schools doesn't say much about the Englewood initiative or why there aren't more charter schools there, given that city's segregated public elementary and middle schools. The Wayne library is featured in the story about funding on the front of Local, but there little detail about Hackensack or other Bergen libraries. And the L-1 story on Lyndhurst's downtown only serves to highlight the absence of stories about Hackensack's downtown, among others. (Photo: Church on the Green, Hackensack.)

When he took over in 2006, Publisher Stephen A. Borg ordered the desperate editors to institute daily education and food coverage -- even though everyone knew that was just hype and nothing of the sort happened -- but he forgot all about the paper's mission: local news. And so have the reporters and editors.

Are the Borgs still proud?

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It's hard to imagine how the Borg family still could be proud of The Record of Woodland Park. The former Hackensack daily has moved out of Bergen County and largely abandoned readers who could once count on it for news of their towns.

Does Malcolm A. Borg, Stephen A. Borg and Jennifer A. Borg even read the paper? They seem to have been working at cross-purposes in the last few years.

The spoiled siblings -- he's the publisher and she's vice president and general counsel -- engineered the abandonment of Hackensack, slowly moving production of their two daily papers and then a downsized staff out of the city. The elder Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, has insisted in keeping his office in the old headquarters building and seems determined to be carried out of 150 River St. feet first.

Today's front page carries only two stories -- neither of which seems worthy of Page 1 play. The DNA identification of a Cresskill woman missing 10 years leads the paper, but the story doesn't explain why it appears more than six weeks after the I.D. The rest of the page is devoted to purchase of two steel shipping containers -- just two -- for use as housing in Haiti.

Local is filled with court, crime and fire news -- what passes for local news these days -- and a story on two northern Bergen towns concerned about trains blocking emergency vehicles, as if they are the only communities with that problem.

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You won't find any Hackensack (map) or Teaneck news, but Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano reports new Mayor Frank Huttle will form a task force to ask residents about programs they want. This in a wealthy community with separate elementary and middle schools for whites and for blacks and Hispanics, and no community center, unlike Fort Lee, which built a beautiful one several years ago.

This is Fabiano's second story about Englewood in two days. Wow. That's covering your town.

Hard news, soft news, no news

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It happens overnight. The front page of The Record of Woodland Park goes from hard news to soft news or no news with a command from dictatorial Editor Frank Scandale. When I worked there, the Page 1 editor would emerge from the afternoon news meeting and start listing what "Frank wants" and what "Frank doesn't want," even down to the words copy editors were to put into headlines.

Scandale, of course, is only yielding to the pressure on him to sell newspapers as local readers abandon The Record. And you thought putting out a newspaper was a group effort?

Today, an extended story on "sexting," with a large photo illustration, dominates Page 1, informing readers "a federal court may soon decide the legality of sexting" or "sending racy pictures of a young teen" over a cellphone.

Although the story reports a teacher at a Bergen County regional high school was charged with engaging a 16-year-old girl in sexting, the federal appeals court case involves a Pennsylvania school district and a ruling is expected "within the next few months." Even though that court has jurisdiction over New Jersey, the case seems destined to go to the high court, so what's the compulsion of putting this on the front page today?


What about Haiti? Old news. What about a poll on whether state residents think Governor Christie can cut property taxes? A promo on the front is enough. What about local news? There is no local news worthy of Page 1.

The bottom corner of A-1 has another story on autism, which only serves to highlight how little The Record reports on Alzheimer's disease. The editors are incompetent, lazy and desperate, and now we can see they also are discriminating.


But not discriminating enough to recognize the importance of local food news. Above the masthead on Page 1, the editors promote the syndicated Relish magazine, which is inserted into  The Record and hundreds of other newspapers, but not the local market or deli or recipes from local chefs that appear today in Better Living.

The Road Warrior column on the front of the Local section contains a major inaccuracy. The massive Toyota recall involves accelerator pedals that stick, not "unintended acceleration," also called pedal error, which is when a driver mistakenly presses down on the accelerator pedal, thinking it's the brake pedal. This has happened in vehicles where the two pedals are too close to each other.

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Two huge photos of the old Giants stadium (above left) on L-1 tell you there isn't any good local news today in the former Hackensack daily, so the editors had to fill the space with fluff. Inside, the only traffic accident pictured occurred near the paper's new headquarters in Woodland Park.

Education, development or municipal news of Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other important Bergen County towns? Not today. You have to wonder how some reporters keep their jobs. As for the editors, they're secure in the  knowledge the Borgs are too busy enriching themselves to pay much attention to what is happening to a once-great local newspaper.

Leaving readers in the dark

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Staff Writer Joseph Ax, on assignment for The Record in Haiti, seems to be fascinated with the pre-dawn darkness or maybe he is just trying to show the lazy, desperate and incompetent editors back home in Woodland Park that he is working hard amid all the cutbacks at the paper.

For the third day in a row, he begins his dispatch with something that happened before the sun rose on the humanitarian crisis there (the first day, it was volunteers gathering for breakfast in the lobby of a Dominican hotel). It's hard to tell if his dispatches are getting any editing on the assignment desk or the news copy desk.

This could be a case of head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes holding the story past deadline, then sending it over with some excuse so the news copy editors don't have time to question or edit it. Unlike the shrieking Sykes, they're expected to make deadline, so they just have time to slap headlines on it, write photo captions and spell-check the file.

Unable to come up with news of Hackensack (map), Teaneck, Englewood or other important Bergen County towns, editors have to run large and small photos on the front of Local about a Haitian relief drive by Dominicans in Paterson, sending readers to L-6 to read  a detailed story. This follows numerous stories about such efforts by Haitians, doctors, pastors and other North Jerseyans after the Jan. 12 quake, in an apparent bid to chronicle the sending of every T-shirt to the stricken nation.

More drivel by Columnist Mike Kelly also appears on the front of the section. This is "one of those small North Jersey stories that could easily go unnoticed," he writes, "amid the hustle and bustle that passes for life" -- just like Kelly's pushing around words passes for journalism. This so-called story should have gone unnoticed because it's been done a million times. Is this the best local story the veteran journalist can come up with? Where is his assignment editor, staring down the shirt of an attractive, young female reporter?

Try another newspaper

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If you live in Hackensack, Teaneck or one of the other important Bergen County towns, you won't find any local news in The Record of Woodland Park today. Maybe you should start subscribing to a weekly.

Much of Page 1 is devoted to a "plume of contamination" in far off Pompton Lakes, the second day in a row the story has been on the front page.

In the Local section, police, fire, weather and Haitian relief news is all you'll see from a handful of towns. For yet another day, Hackensack residents lose out. Development news? Education news? Municipal news? Environmental news? Nada, zero, zilch.

You have Frank Scandale, Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, Dan Sforza and all the other lazy, incompetent editors to thank for that.

Wait until next year

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Continuing its apparent boycott on news of Hackensack and many other important Bergen County towns, The Record of Woodland Park may be telling us to wait until next year. I guess the lazy, incompetent editors didn't make a New Year's resolution to do a better job of covering local news.

For the third day in a row, most of the front page today is devoted to the Jets football team and airhead reporter John Brennan, who squanders his trip to Indianapolis by turning in some of the most lackluster copy I've ever seen. The bottom of the front page goes to the poor schmucks who live in polluted Pompton Lakes (map), where DuPont, and town and state officials have been screwing around for more than 20 years on cleaning up groundwater contamination. Isn't home rule a great system?

You'll find lots of "filler" stories today, the kind the desperate editors have to run in the absence of real news, like the story on A-4 about three-wheel motorcycles in Los Angeles. The crisis in Haiti stays inside today, but do readers really need three stories on North Jersey doctors, a pastor and a nurse who went there?

There is good news for consumers in the Business pages, for a change, word that Governor Corzine signed a law before he left office allowing sellers' real estate agents to give rebates to buyers. I'm still waiting for a story on real estate agents who represent buyers and get paid by sellers.

Have you ever heard of anyone being jailed for not going to a deposition -- confidential testimony given under oath in a civil lawsuit before a trial? Of course not, but in a Page 1 promo and in the Local section, reporter Ashley Kindergan quotes a plaintiff saying he wants the Bergenfield mayor jailed. This is a non-story.

You have to wonder why head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes and the editor who supervise Kindergan, one of the best reporters on the local news staff, pushed this turkey for the front of the section. And what do you make of Columnist Jersey Mike Kelly's latest, pathetic effort?

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 Yes. Hackensack residents feel good about next year.

Three-day weekend for staff

If you thought, after looking at Saturday's edition, the staff of The Record of Woodland Park started its weekend on Friday, today's paper only reinforces the impression. Except for a Michael Gartland story on lavish spending by a non-profit Bergen County agency on Page 1, you'll find barely four inconsequential stories about Bergen towns in the entire paper.

You know there is no municipal, development or education news of Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood -- or many other Bergen towns -- in the former Hackensack daily by looking at Page L-6 and the three, long, wire-service obituaries of people you may have never heard of -- that's what the lazy, desperate, incompetent editors call "filler." You also know it by a brief on L-2 about kindergarten registration in Ramsey -- a waste of precious space for information that goes home in every kid's backpack. Does reporter Allison Pries really think this is education news?

So what do you find in today's former Bergen Record? Stories about the Passaic County Sheriff's Department, a possible festival in West Milford, budget woes in that sprawling township, smoking at a Morris County college and a deer hunt on Garret Mountain -- near the paper's new headquarters. The incompetent editors put a story about three New Milford Eagle Scouts on L-1. Wow. That's real news.

There isn't much in the rest of the Sunday paper, which squanders most of the front page on a stupid football game and the endless palaver over a guard who left his post and a man who entered a secure area at Newark airport to see his girlfriend off. On the front of Better Living, a copy editor must have thought it clever to say: "Where North Jersey chefs go to get their eats on." How ridiculous.

It's hard to believe Publisher Stephen A. Borg can read the paper day after day and not wonder why it consistently fails its Bergen County readers or what the editors and some of the reporters are doing to earn their salaries. When I still worked in the old Hackensack newsroom, other staffers reported that sports reporter John Rowe overheard the wealthy, arrogant Borg say his goal in cutting costs was a news staff where no one made more than $40,000 a year.

I doubt Borg achieved his ridiculous salary goal for the staff, but since he took over and promoted Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Scandale to vice president, The Record and North Jersey Media Group's laughable Web site -- northjersey.com -- sure read like they are being put together by demoralized, low-paid workers.

Desperate scramble for news

The lazy, incompetent editors of The Record of Woodland Park really must have been scrambling for news by the looks of today's front page. Three sanitation workers in Fair Lawn were sickened by a chemical, but is that any reason to put a huge photo of a garbage truck on Page 1? Are we all in danger? And is the football game promoted under the masthead so earthshaking?

The lead A-1 story is about continuing job losses -- 85,000 in December. Isn't it time the editors assigned reporters to interview victims of the recession to put flesh, blood and emotions into the statistics? I guess they are secure in the knowledge the Borg family is interested only in enriching themselves and will continue to ignore the shameful job the editors are doing in covering local news.

Take a look at the Local section today. Far more attention is being paid to schools in mostly white communities than to those in highly diverse Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood, which has segregated elementary and middle schools.

With no Hackensack news on most days, readers are getting accustomed to waiting for the weekly Hackensack Chronicle, delivered with the former Hackensack daily on Fridays. This week, we learned the city manager asked union workers to forgo their scheduled raises in 2010. The weekly also has carried a story on how Mayor Marlin G. Townes, a computer wizard,  saved the city thousands of dollars by making its computers more efficient, asking nothing in return.


See earlier post: "Did you see this in The Record?"

In tabloid mode

The murder of a 9-year-old North Jersey boy in the city is the best the desperate, incompetent editors could do for the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today.

Doesn't that big Page 1 photo of grieving relatives make you sick over the paper's tabloid-like exploitation of them? Why doesn't the reporter discuss the obvious child-care issues of entrusting a child to relatives on a regular basis. Later, we have to endure sloppy editing, with a quote from the principal of the boy's school running twice at the end of the story.

At the bottom of the front page, another EnCap story appears, as if anyone still cares about the botched attempt to remake Meadowlands garbage dumps. Do we need any more examples of how New Jersey is a political cesspool of greedy developers and even greedier public officials? Why not highlight the good that may come of this debacle -- open space and more solar energy -- instead of leaving it to the end of the story? 

On Page A-4, there's a flattering "profile" of Mary Pat Christie, who will become first lady Jan. 19. The reporter doesn't have the good sense to ask her whether she is going to encourage her husband to eat a healthier diet or reform a campaign-finance system that allows only the rich to run for county or statewide office in New Jersey.

Looking for news of Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood in the Local section? You won't find any. Yet a great deal of space is squandered on 10 political figures "to watch in 2010." I'm wondering whether we'll see any of them in handcuffs.

The rest of the paper went right into the recycling bin.

You tell me what's good

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Critics of "Eye on The Record" complain I rarely or never say anything good about The Record of Woodland Park. Well, why don't you tell me about the good journalism you see in today's paper. Click on the "comments" at the end of the post and you can praise the paper to the sky, anonymously, if you prefer.

Does anything on the front page today interest you? What about the speculative story about New Jersey losing federal aid and a congressman or woman, because of slow population growth? Or the other Page 1 stories, one about Hackensack University Medical Center's push to reopen Pascack Valley Hospital or fraud against a Paterson church? Is there anything inside the paper that should have been played on the front?

On Page A-8, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin or another writer blesses the decision to return a 9-year-old boy in Brazil to his American father, but a far more compelling custody battle is reported on the Local section front, where a judge imposes a 14-year jail sentence on the Spanish mother of a 9-year-old girl. Why the Brazil case? Should we expect another editorial tomorrow? Should the parents or foreign family involved -- both sides -- be taken to task for their hardened positions? Or is the American parent always right, as this editorial seems to say?

Besides the sentencing of the Spanish mother, there are eight court, crime or accident stories, or related stories, in the Local section, but no municipal or development news about Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood, Ridgewood or a host of other towns the paper is supposed to cover.

What's good today about the Business section, which refuses to document the waste, and the adverse impact on both the environment and commercial airlines of the private jet fleets at Teterboro Airport? Or the quality of  life of residents of Hackensack and other towns under its noisy flight paths?  What's good about the Sports section today? What's good about Better Living today?

This will come back to haunt us

The inconsistent news treatment of the state's growing budget deficit in The Record of Woodland Park will haunt taxpayers in 2010, because editors desperate for more sensational coverage likely don't have readers' best interests at heart.

The lead headline in the former Hackensack daily today says, "More budget cuts on way" -- the first time in a while state finances have made the front page. The deepening deficit was apparent right after Chris Christie was elected in early November, but the story has jumped onto and off of Page 1 since then, usually displaced by crime news, pathos and endless stories about the new Meadowlands sports stadium.

Today, a good third of A-1 and two-thirds of an inside page are devoted to a 1973 murder case and the spot in a New York State park where the body of a 7-year-old girl was found. Earlier this year, there were a series of stories about the convicted murderer's latest parole bid. Isn't there any other "news" worthy of Page 1 today? Couldn't this story have been done with a single photograph inside the Local section? What's the point of revisiting this case?

The rest of A-1 is given to Paterson offering free gun locks to avoid a repeat of the slaying of a 5-year-old boy by a 6-year-old who found an illegal handgun in his home.

In the Local section, finally, there is a Hackensack story for a change by Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado, who now apparently  is free of  the nearly three-year, failed investigation of moonlighting by Michael Mordaga, the former chief of county detectives. It seems the city is buying a building for a new arts center. Hooray. Desperate for local news, an Englewood chimney fire that didn't cause any injuries gets big play. Don't the lazy, incompetent assignment editors know readers can see right through this?

Maybe John Cichowski is burnt out by having to write three columns a week, plus covering transportation news on occasion. What else can you conclude from his Road Warrior column today, chastising readers yet again over clearing snow from the roofs of their vehicles. John, you are a nice guy and journalist, but please get out of that Garret Mountain newsroom you have made your second home and ride some trains and buses to familiarize yourself with the woes of commuters who leave their cars at home, if they even own one.

I winced at the headline on Page F-3 in Better Living over a story about three veteran French chefs in Bergen County. I'm sure these accomplished seniors, who are in their 60s, love being called a "dying breed."

Crime news is all we've got

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The fatal shooting of a 5-year-old Paterson boy by a 6-year-old is certainly serious, as is a mother strangling her newborn. But they became front page news in The Record of Woodland Park today because the lazy, incompetent editors hope these headlines will sell papers, something the former Hackensack daily has had trouble doing for many years, and because they simply had no better stories for Page 1.

Maybe it was too cold for the reporters to leave their Garret Mountain newsroom. A really large photo of the Wayne mom flanked by her high-priced lawyers -- yes, two lawyers -- at her arraignment is such an obvious desperation move to fill up what once was The Record's premiere page. Now, anything goes.

The tabloid feel of today's paper continues in the Local section, where the full story of the mom's not guilty plea is the lead story at the top of the first page. Below it, half of L-1 is taken up by a report that Hispanics allege an assault at Englewood's middle school was racially motivated.

I would hope this attack would focus attention on segregation in that city's middle and elementary schools -- a subject the paper has gone out of its way to avoid for years, while reporting in detail efforts to integrate the high school. In fact, Staff Writer Nick Clunn, who is not the regular Englewood reporter, completely omits any mention the middle school is segregated. Shame on Clunn, shame on his editor.

A full page and a half of the eight-page Local Section is filled with Paterson or Passaic County news, including a fatal fire with two enormous photos showing the aftermath. The story has absolutely no information about the victim, except her sex. Don't look for any municipal, development, education or quality of life news about Hackensack (map), Teaneck or Englewood, despite their diversity.

In recent months, I have read two detailed stories about Ridgewood's downtown and another about Westwood, but none about these three core Bergen County communities, where a large number of the paper's readers live. Did The Record's pullout from Hackensack hurt Main Street merchants? Your guess is as good as mine.

Mixed signals

Is there an infrastructure story The Record of Woodland Park doesn't love to splash across the front page? The one about cell towers today is so upbeat and so lavishly illustrated I almost forgot that most of them have long been considered ugly and possibly dangerous in terms of their impact on nearby residents' health.

I almost forgot, that is, until I saw the editorial on Page A-13 today about a cell tower that some Little Falls residents are calling a monstrosity. So how did cell towers suddenly become a prudent and financially sound addition to the municipal landscape or as the headline says, "Towns see beauty in cell towers"? I guess news side was scrambling for a Page 1 story today and had nothing else but this weak effort from Staff Writer Allison Pries. But the people who write the editorials and the residents of Little Falls did their own thing. How embarrassing, especially since Pries' story (deliberately?) omits any mention of Little Falls.


Another embarrassment also appears on Page 1 today, the lead brief about a student assaulted at the middle school in Englewood, with the "full story" appearing on the front of the Local section. Is this the only way the segregated middle and elementary schools in that city can get any attention from the former Hackensack daily? Has the paper's lazy and incompetent editors ever assigned a reporter to detail what efforts are being made to integrate those schools?

Don't look for any real news today from Teaneck, Englewood or Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895 and prospered for more than 110 years until the Borg family, in a bid to preserve their personal wealth, moved printing of the paper and its reduced staff out of River City.

In Better Living, the puzzling phrase "Progressive Dining" is back on a food story about Rutherford's Park Avenue. Newspapers call this a "bug," but it was missing from the last story in this "occasional series" by Staff Writer Elisa Ung. She has never explained what is "progressive" about gorging herself at five or six places in one evening.

Where are the people?

Cover of The Talk of the Town

Day after day, the voices of residents are missing from The Record of Woodland Park. The paper is one of the few in recent decades that never adopted a time-tested journalistic form, used by other papers big and small, called "The Talk of the Town."

Sure, you'll see gadflies quoted or residents at a protest or public hearing on a quality-of-life issue that some crummy town has allowed to fester for decades, such as the closed Pompton Lakes munitions plant all over the front page yesterday. But where are the voices of the rest of us?

We read endless stories about infrastructure, such as the road repair "expose" on Page 1 today, while the voices of the poor schmucks who have to ride NJ Transit's decrepit local buses are ignored. A school official quits and it leads the Local section or a renovated borough hall is finished and the story is lavish and illustrated (both on L-1 today). But what are the people in the coffee shop saying?

Look at the three Teaneck stories that ran today and yesterday. A public hearing finally is being held on a synagogue that has held services for about two years. Two years? The other stories, which ran today, are about insurance against lawsuits and a grant to hire firefighters -- more in the mind-numbing stream of bureaucratic coverage.

If every new municipal reporter at The Record did a "Talk of the Town" -- interviewing residents at the Starbucks, supermarket and elsewhere -- they would get an instant education. They'd learn about quality of life issues and something about how well or how poorly their town is being run. It would be useful for these columns to appear at least once a year for each town. Of course, that's a lot harder than strolling over to the fax machine in the Woodland Park newsroom to fetch a press release.

I wonder what residents of Englewood have to say about the nightmarish downtown traffic -- aggravated by police foot-dragging on installing turn lanes at congested intersections. I wonder what the residents who live across the street from an open-air police firing range have to say about hearing gunshots and shotgun blasts as early as 8 a.m.?

A Record reporter named Dena Yellin did a round-up of police firing ranges some time ago, but omitted the Englewood range. This is the kind of "regional" story that has largely replaced coverage of individual towns.

Christina Joseph, who assigned the story to her, sent it along to the news copy desk without noticing the omission, even though Joseph had covered Englewood as a reporter before she was promoted. The anonymous news copy editor apparently knew nothing about  Englewood, so the story ran as is -- another slap in the face to people who live there. Isn't that pathetic? Especially from a paper that once prided itself on local coverage.

If you are going to do a "Talk of the Town," it will require good, old-fashioned legwork. For a reporter, there is no substitute for going and seeing for yourself. Reject the advice of your lazy, incompetent editor to do stories by phone.

I'm sure residents of the high-rises in Hackensack have a lot to say about the business jets screaming overhead on the way to Teterboro Airport. Some are so frightened by how close these fat cats' planes come, they don't use their terraces in good weather. Would a higher approach altitude for these jets give high-rise dwellers and their neighbors relief from the noise? Does Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado care? Does her editor care?  Does The Record care?

Story idea for the Teaneck reporter

Image via Wikipedia

My question in Tuesday's "Eye on The Record" post about whether Teaneck was insured for millions of dollars in legal settlements, awards and fees was answered by "Margot." She also suggested that reporter Joe Ax, who covers the township for The Record, do a follow-up. Here are her comments:

I can answer one question, raised in Paragraph 5 above [in the post, "What a swell guy he is, 12/15/09"]: No. Teaneck has not had any insurance to cover these lawsuits. Some time in the past, the Township Council decided, in it's infinite wisdom, to save money by "self-insuring." At more or less the same time, the council determined that it should fight any suits, without regard for their merits, in order to discourage other suits. Now the council people tell us they would like to purchase insurance but, naturally, we are too high risk to purchase it affordably. I think there is definitely a story for Mr. Ax here: Who were these council members who proposed these disastrously short-sighted policies, and what role might they continue to play in shaping township decisions through current council members who have enjoyed their political patronage in the past 2-3 council terms?

 
Sounds like an excellent idea for a story. Let's hope this comes to the attention of Ax, whose coverage of Teaneck appears to have been flagging of late.