Will Hackensack residents benefit from flight-path change?

Malcolm A. Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, shared ownership of this private jet with real estate mogul Jon F. Hanson, a family friend who has been identified in media reports as chief fundraiser for Chris Christie's successful gubernatorial campaigns.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The flight-pattern change for small jets using Teterboro Airport could bring relief to Hackensack homeowners fed up with round-the-clock aircraft noise.

But in today's front-page story in The Record, Staff Writer Paul Berger focuses on reaction from municipal officials along Route 17 -- the new route chosen by the Federal Aviation Administration "to provide relief for the Hackensack University Medical Center area" (A-1).

The medical center "area," of course, includes Prospect Avenue high-rises, where some residents fear using their terraces in warm weather because corporate jets come so close on their approach to Teterboro.

Aircraft noise

In fact, homeowners in Hackensack's Fairmount section, Teaneck and nearby towns have been hounded by the roar of corporate jets and other aircraft noise around the clock for decades, in what is a major quality of life issue The Record has largely ignored.

Residents can't invoke anti-noise ordinances or enforce an overnight ban on flights because federal laws governing corporate jets supersede all state and local statutes.

Mayor sounds off

The quote of the day today is from Mahwah Mayor Bill Lafloret, who complained the FAA didn't bother to send him a notice about the new Route 17 flight path, which will be tested for six months starting on April 4:

"So now we have to sacrifice our quality of life in Mahwah for the 1-percenters of private corporate jet customers trying to duck into Teterboro. It's unacceptable" (A-8).

One of those 1 percenters is Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, who co-owned a private jet with real estate mogul Jon F. Hanson, a confidant of Governor Christie's.

Rail strike?

There isn't a single reference to Christie in today's Page 1 story on a possible shutdown of NJ Transit rail operations on Saturday (A-1).

Staff Writer Christopher Maag reports "no indications of compromise" from the state's mass transit agency or the unions whose members have been working without a contract for more than five years.

Rather than mediate, the GOP bully went on vacation this week to celebrate his 30th wedding anniversary, and the sixth year of his war on the working and middle classes in New Jersey.

Meat-centric reviews

If you don't eat meat, there is little to interest you at the two halal restaurants recommended in today's Informal Dining review (BL-1 and BL-16).

Staff Writer Elisa Ung does praise "a bonus for vegetarians" at Juicy Platters -- "basmati rice, fragrant with turmeric and cumin," made with vegetable broth.

Still, Ung doesn't mention whether Juicy Platters in Fair Lawn or Kebab Platters in Clifton offers fish or egg dishes for non-meat eaters or anyone who is dying for some relief from the onslaught of kebabs, gyro and hamburgers in North Jersey. 

Which Borg is calling the shots?

Tenafly officials are fighting NJ Transit's plan to extend light-rail service to the old railroad station, above. They believe Publisher Stephen A. Borg and other residents have a constitutional right to drive to work in a gas-guzzling limo or SUV.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Readers in Hackensack, Englewood and many other towns did a double take on Tuesday, when they saw three long stories about Tenafly on Page L-3 of the Local news section.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg just happens to live in the wealthy borough.

Each story reminded readers of how little news they have seen about their communities since Borg replaced his father as publisher in mid-2006, when local journalism took a back seat to personal gain and keeping the paper afloat during the recession.

Today's Local section doesn't bring any relief, as head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her incompetent deputy, Dan Sforza, can't seem to inspire their reporters to cover their towns. 

King of the Hill

With the so-called Englewood reporter gamboling with Governor Christie in Trenton, there is no news about that city's struggling downtown or its mostly minority schools, even though Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg has lived on the East Hill for decades.

The younger Borg attended the presumably all-white, private Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood.

All Hackensack readers get is a "scene setter" on today's  court hearing to determine whether their convicted police chief must give up his job (L-3). 

Porn allegations

Mac Borg had so little to do after his spoiled brat of a son pushed him aside, he allegedly spent a lot of his time looking at pornography on a computer and sharing it with other managers.

Readers were never told who fired Francis "Frank" Scandale as editor last October, but the elder Borg seemed to have asserted himself with the selection of Marty Gottlieb of The New York Times to take over the newsroom in late January.

Gottlieb, who started his reporting and editing career at The Record, is 64, and would have been an unlikely choice for Stephen Borg, whose disdain for older workers is well known.

Front-page Marty

Unfortunately, Gottlieb seems to have spent all his time improving the front page, and has done little to stem the precipitous decline in local news coverage.

The younger Borg could have cleaned house on the assignment desk and hired more reporters to cover municipal affairs, but he chose instead to grab $3.65 million in North Jersey Media Group money for a mortgage on his McMansion in Tenafly.

Downsizing

Not long after he moved in, Stephen Borg continued to "downsize" The Record -- sending copy editors, photographers and others to join press operators on the unemployment line -- and ended the paper's long run in Hackensack, where it was founded in 1895. 

In addition to its impact on Main Street businesses, the exodus of NJMG and its flagship daily to Woodland Park and Rockaway translated into less news coverage of River City.

Recently, Sykes and Sforza ordered reporters to ramp up their coverage of house burglaries in Tenafly, including those in Borg's neighborhood.

Today's paper 

A Page 1 story reports homophobe Dharun Ravi has apologized -- finally. Now, readers can look for another column from staff homophobe Mike Kelly on more "unanswered questions" surrounding the case.

You can be sure poor Tyler Clementi of Ridgewood is turning over in his grave.

Does anybody really take seriously Christie's latest high-court nominee, Bruce Harris, an openly gay black lawyer who has no courtroom experience and who would have to stay out of any cases involving gay marriage (A-1)?

He's a really bad choice to replace John E. Wallace Jr., who was the high court's only African-American justice when Christie canned him in 2010.

Railroaded

On A-9, transportation reporter Karen Rouse makes light of air-conditioning problems at Penn Station in Manhattan.

There's no explanation why she has never reported how uncomfortably hot it has been in the NJ Transit waiting area since the onset of warm weather.

Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to mine readers' e-mails for column ideas -- instead of leaving the office and reporting on commuting problems (L-1).

Tuesday's paper

Gottlieb thinks potential traffic problems at American Dreams Meadowlands is front-page news, but the New Yorker doesn't seem have noticed all the traffic nightmares we already have.

That must explain how little coverage we have seen in The Record about Christie's and the Port Authority's abysmal lack of commitment to mass transit.

Bergen County's most-diverse communities, including Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck, have been poorly covered, but prosperous towns have gotten more coverage.

That might be why Gottlieb made such a big fuss on Tuesday's Page 1 over the planned opening of Wegmans in Montvale, near the New York State border. 

It would be a non-event for most food shoppers in the rest of Bergen.

They already have a wide selection of high-quality food at Whole Foods Market, Costco Wholesale, Fairway Market, ShopRite and H Mart, most of which beat Wegmans' prices.

Along with the three Tenafly stories on L-3, a story discusses police overtime in tiny Harrington Park, where Sykes lives. 

(201) family

(201) family is an offspring of (201) magazine, the publisher's pet project, and the June 2012 issue was delivered with today's paper.

Among contributors, former sports reporter Marc Schwarz is listed as "assistant director of Features and Travel Editor for The Record."

If Schwarz is travel editor, what is Jill Schensul? 

The Father's Day issue focuses on Super Dads, and the cover photo shows a wealthy father and his four sons -- in the image of Stephen Borg himself.

The Wegmans in Woodbridge.

Mac's pal gets front-page play again

Image via Wikipedia

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Mac Borg and Jon Hanson.

Today brings another Page 1 bully pulpit in The Record for wealthy real estate developer Jon F. Hanson -- a close, jet-setting friend of  Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg and Governor Christie's adviser on the state's sports and entertainment industries.


How cozy. Thanks to Christie, Borg and Hanson don't have to worry about a millionaires tax, giving them more money to buy fuel for the business jet they co-own -- the one that roars overhead just as you're trying to enjoy your backyard.


Editor Francis Scandale indulges Staff Writer John Brennan, whose endless pieces on Hanson's panel often land on the front page. Of course, hundreds of calls have flooded the news desk, clamoring for such coverage.


Another lie


If "truth-serum" statements were barred from a recent cold-case murder trial in Hackensack, and courts have consistently ruled them inadmissible, why bore readers with a long story on A-1 today?


Can anyone make heads or tails of a column by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin on Tom Hanks and Bergen Community College President G. Jeremiah Ryan (A-11)?


Screwed for decades by Ford Motor Co.'s toxic dumping, by the legal community and by the media, adults in a mixed-race Upper Ringwood community may be tested for lead poisoning (Local front). Duh.


Second opinion


The Record's editors and columnists can't write dispassionately about Christie, but Brigid Harrison, a political science and law professor, doesn't have that problem.


In her column on Page O-2 of Sunday's Opinion section, Harrison talks about the governor's style:


"Brashness we found charming 18 months ago is wearing. And divisive. And indicative of deep-seated insecurity. And unpresidential."


Just think. If the GOP bully runs for president in 2012, we'll be rid of him in about 16 months.

Law firm's potential conflict

Image by vaXzine via Flickr

Suspended Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa and North Jersey Media Group, which publishes The Record, are represented by partners in the same Florham Park law firm.

Named partner Bruce S. Rosen, a former Record reporter who now represents NJMG, also served as the attorney for Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg when Borg and neighbors opposed the expansion of a synagogue on his block in the East Hill section of Englewood.

Zisa, who is defending himself against criminal charges, as well as civil lawsuits from police officers he once supervised, is represented by Patricia Prezioso, a partner in McCusker, Anselmi, Rosen & Carvelli.

The Record's Hackensack reporter, Monsy Alvarado, has been pursuing the Zisa story since at least June 2009, and has written numerous stories about Zisa's law enforcement job and business interests, as well as covering the criminal charges against the chief, the lawsuits and disciplinary hearings for officers who filed them.

It is not known whether Alvarado and her supervising editors consulted Rosen in their efforts to get documents or other material they needed for those stories.

A potential conflict would arise if Rosen and Presiozo -- or law firm staff working for them -- discussed their clients or their legal strategies with each other or saw any of the files relating to those clients.

When Rosen worked at The Record from 1975-86, he told colleagues that Mac had given him at least one mortgage to buy a home.

Is this any way to cover Hackensack?

Image via Wikipedia

A month can go by without a story about Hackensack in The Record of Woodland Park and then two will pop up, as in Local today. But is the paper really covering the city it once called home?

The two "Hackensack stories" appear on L-1 -- the head of the police union draws a six-month suspension for posts on an online forum and the owner of Cubby's barbecue restaurant is portrayed in a new book as a peacemaker with the North Koreans.

The cop story is among more than two dozen Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado has written since June 2009, chronicling the legal pissing match between Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa and rank-and-file police officers. No other agency is covered nearly as well.

In fact, Alvarado has not covered a single City Council or Board of Education meeting in that time. On June 13, 2009, she reported the Main Street improvement director had been fired two months earlier, but she never gave a reason and never did a follow-up.


A number of construction projects are under way around the city -- and others have been suspended -- but nothing ever appears about them in the newspaper. Who is Alvarado's assignment editor?

On Monday, at the Wicker Warehouse on River Street, an owner hadn't heard that Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg is one of the few people left in the former landmark building at 150 River Street -- now an albatross around the necks of the sibling rivalry running North Jersey Media Group, Stephen and  big sister Jennifer Borg, who apparently have pushed their father aside.


"So The Bergen Record is now located in Passaic County," the merchant said matter of factly.

Jennifer Borg has made no secret her father wants to keep a presence in Hackensack -- even though most of the news gathering and all of the printing takes place in Passaic County and Morris County, respectively. And Mac wants to stay in River City even after the sale of that enormous pile of bricks and surrounding land.

On Page 1 today, don't you think the lazy, incompetent editors could have done more with the Republican mayor who told Governor Christie to "go slow" on his slash-and-burn budget cutting? Instead, we get a baseball team visiting the president all over Page 1. Give me a break.