Balanced front page is more irresponsible journalism

Lunch in Manhattan sounds like a good idea. But if you park for two hours at the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal, it will cost $24.

Or you could park illegally as many do and grab a street-corner falafel sandwich.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today seems to have everything -- from the horrors of civil war in the Middle East to a silly column on whether Rutgers' football team can compete with the "elite."

There is news about Bergen County's first statue of Martin Luther King, the glacial probe of the George Washington Bridge lane closures and a cautionary tale about sexual assaults on college campuses.

This "balanced" front page is the ideal every newspaper editor tries to achieve.

The New York Times has been turning out front pages like this for decades, and The Record has been doing a good job of imitating that great newspaper since a Times veteran took over the Woodland Park newsroom in early 2012.

But given the shocking nature of the revelations about chemical attacks and other war crimes in Syria, isn't the media guilty of neglecting that conflict in order to bring readers fluff and feel-good stories?

In view of the long-established Syrian community in Paterson, what excuse does Editor Martin Gottlieb have for the superficial coverage of the civil war there?

What happened to the pressure the media should be exerting on President Obama to deal with the Syrian dictator as he did with Libya's leader?

More corrections

Three more detailed corrections appear on A-2 today -- further evidence that Production Editor Liz Houlton isn't doing her job in return for a six-figure salary.

On A-3, the story about a 9-year-old girl who was allowed to fire an Uzi sub-machine gun, accidentally killing her instructor, claims the incident has sparked a "debate."

That's nonsense. There is no debate.

The accident shows the ugly side of our gun-happy society. No 9-year-old should be allowed to fire a gun.

Truck fatalities

Three people burned to death on Route 280 in East Orange after a dump truck slammed into their car in congested traffic (L-1).

Since June, trucks -- mostly tractor-trailers -- have been responsible for killing several people, including a comedian riding with Tracy Morgan on the New Jersey Turnpike and a Waldwick police officer on Route 17 south radar patrol.

And a trucker killed himself when he slammed into the back of another rig on the George Washington Bridge.

A rare case of heads-up reporting

Image via Wikipedia
Of all the issues The Record could report from Washington, the editors pick the obscure deaths of 13 sailors in Libya.

After reporting thousands of house burglaries in recent years, The Record finally examines the weak laws that has one investigator "arresting the same guys over and over again."


The editors routinely miss or don't bother with the big picture, leaving readers to wonder how this case of heads-up reporting came about.


It's likely the lazy assignment desk under Editor Deirdre Sykes had nothing with do with it. So, maybe we can thank a relatively new reporter, Staff Writer Rebecca D. O'Brien, who wrote today's Page 1 story.


Or, maybe the impetus came from Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who has watched burglaries in Tenafly getting closer and closer to his McMansion -- a $3.65 million jackpot.


D.C. circus


With another strong story on A-1 -- the African-American observance of Kwanza --  why did Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson waste readers'  time with an effort to repatriate the remains of 13 sailors who died in Libya in 1806?


Jackson has sat on his hands all year as Tea Party Republicans have paralyzed  Congress. Is this how he spends his time, looking for the obscure and irrelevant to report and ignoring the big story in front of him?


On L-1, another apartment fire claims a single victim (a 62-year-old Dumont man who lived alone), and reporters forget to ask whether the victim was a smoker.


Reversing course


Better Living food writers continue to increase coverage for the home cook, bringing back a standing feature of the Food section folded by Borg after he took over as publisher in 2006.


The section was folded -- despite the obesity epidemic and the need for more, not less, reporting on food.


On F-1 today, readers will find the "Shopping Corner" -- what was called "No Cooking Tonight" when Patricia Mack was putting out the Food section.


After Mack was hounded out of her job by then-Features Editor Barbara Jager, the new food editor, Bill Pitcher, focused coverage on restaurant and chefs. 


The new food editor, Susan Leigh Sherrill, said in a speech recently that she had been told to ramp up coverage for the home cook, though she didn't say who gave the order.

A lot of paper to recycle

The plastic bag I picked up from the driveway today was fat and heavy -- filled with The Record of Woodland Park and advertising inserts. Since I'm not in the market for anything, they went right into the recycling bin, and that was most of what was in the bag.

The most important story the incompetent, lazy editors could find to put on the front page was one about shopping -- par for the course since The Record spent a considerable chunk of money in an unsuccessful bid to get Sunday blue laws repealed. A story reporting a bigger state budget gap gets shoved inside. Doesn't that minimize its importance, despite the Page 1 tease?

There are three mentions in the paper, including on the front-page, of the increased demand for free food from pantries, but the Borg family has never fully acknowledged publicly how it contributed to the recession by ending North Jersey Media Group's highly profitable commercial printing, laying off more than 50 press workers, merging The Record with the Herald News, and shedding an unknown number of newsroom and advertising staffers, while capping severance pay at 12 weeks.

Nor has anyone calculated the impact on the Main Street economy of  Hackensack, where The Record was  founded in 1895 and prospered for more than 110 years, before the Borgs moved printing of the two papers, the main newsroom and hundreds of workers out of Bergen County -- months ahead of a schedule that appeared in a Business section story quoting Stephen and Jennifer Borg, the siblings running NJMG.

Don't worry. The recession hasn't seemed to hurt the family of Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, NJMG chairman. I can just imagine the Borgs gathering for Thanksgiving today in Stephen's $3.65 million Tenafly mansion, bought with a mortgage from Dad's company, as was his previous, $2 million home.The turkey dinner the paper once bought for newsroom workers on duty today is a distant memory.

Hibernating reporter Giovanna Fabiano emerges from her den to report in the Local section today that the Libyan ambassador to the U.N. is expected to move into the Englewood mansion Libya bought in 1983. There were only six stories about Englewood in the paper in August -- and five of them were about Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. A story about adoption of a new master plan for Englewood -- of far more interest to the vast majority of residents -- gets only brief mention today.

These stories about the Libyans are designed to push readers' buttons and it's clear the editors hope to divert attention from the shameful job they are doing covering local news in Englewood, Hackensack and Teaneck. They also are driven by two men, Pay-To-Play Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes, a relentless self-promoter, and Shmuley Boteach, a wealthy, publicity-hungry rabbi who didn't seem to have a problem buying a mansion next door to the Libyans, but went ballistic when Gadhafi said he intended to stay there in the summer. Then, curiously, several weeks later, a long, promotional story about Rabbi Boteach's new book about pop king Michael Jackson appeared in The Record.