You have to read Page 1 from the bottom up

To vote against the well-honed political machine that has dominated Hackensack for decades, residents will have to go to Line 11 at the bottom of the May 14 ballot, below, to elect independent City Council candidate Victor E. Sasson, editor of Eye on The Record and Do You Really Know What You're Eating?  Readers of The Record also have to employ this bottoms-up strategy.

After 7 straight days of front-page, sky-is-falling coverage of the Boston marathon bombing, local readers have learned to unfold Page 1 of The Record to find news that hits closer to home.

Editor Marty Gottlieb, who is walking around the Woodland Park newsroom humming "April in Paris," devotes most of the front page to the "big story" of the day, throwing crumbs to local-news readers.

Below the fold

Today, readers who look below the fold will find a story on the continuing decline of Catholic schools in Hackensack and other communities, and a report on towns investing in lightning-detection systems (A-1).

On A-2 today, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes acknowledges an error in the Dean's List she uses as filler in place of local news.

User unfriendly

On Sykes' Local section front, an interesting story on Fair Trade coffee farmers in Guatemala omits the address of the Teaneck General Store or any other place North Jersey readers can buy the coffee (L-1).

On L-2, a story on a proposal to limit comments by Englewood City Council members to 10 minutes doesn't say how much time residents have to comment or whether other municipal councils also impose a ceiling on their members.

In Hackensack, residents have a 5-minute limit, even though only a handful of people show up for the meetings.

Anyway, City Council members have been ignoring what they say for decades.


Better Living

The "Contact Us" box in Sunday's Better Living section continues to list Susan Leigh Sherrill as food editor, despite rumors she is leaving the job.

Sherrill has kept her Twitter handle as @susanlsherrill, but on the site she appears as Susan L. Axelrod, using her photographer husband's last name.

The Better Living editor is now Marc Schwarz, replacing Stephanie Rivers, who was hired in September 2011 to replace Barbara Jaeger.

Editors ignore people Christie screwed

Image via Wikipedia

Editor Francis Scandale has portrayed Silk City as Sin City, where drugs and prostitution have corrupted scores of Bergen County suburbanites.


 

When is the last time The Record ran an interview with advocates for abused children or the parents of a child denied an after-school program?

Have you seen anything on women whose grandmothers are in nursing homes facing $29 million in cuts proposed by Governor Christie? 


What about the views of low-income parents whose children no longer get a nutritious, state-subsidized breakfast at school?


Sixteen days into the state's new fiscal year, Editors Francis Scandale and the clueless assignment editors working under Deirdre Sykes don't care about any of those people or the thousands of others suffering under Christie's mean-spirited budget.


What do you want from them? They never talk to readers, just sit in the office all day long, eat lunch and move their bowels. 


Hey, they're journalists at a once-great suburban daily. Do you really expect them to send reporters out to measure all the pain the GOP bully of a governor has inflicted and put it into words?


But someone is giving a voice to Christie's victims.


You can read all about the cuts in the letters to the editor that keep on pouring in, such as the three on Page A-11 today from Dianne Douthat of Wayne, Duane Ross of Waldwick and Jessica Cheng of Cranbury under the heading:

Series of attacks

on N.J.'s poor

Kudos to Letters Editor Charles Saydah, a lifer, for printing these letters and others. Keep them coming.


Of course, printing letters from readers doesn't fulfill the responsibility of Scandale, Sykes, Dan Sforza, Christina Joseph, Rich Whitby and other editors to bring the budget cuts to life.


Page 1 sleeper


What do readers get instead?


The lead Page 1 story reports more mea culpas from media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who lost two loyal editors in the growing phone-hacking scandal.


I wonder how much soul-searching is going on at The Record's Woodland Park headquarters among Scandale, Sykes and their minions for all the questionable tactics they've employed?


Look at that deadly dull, bureaucratic process story on curbing the state's nearly 600 local authorities, boards and commissions at the bottom of A-1. 


The third paragraph begins, "It will be a year from now and likely much longer before the authorities, board and commissions must upgrade their online transparency ...." 


OK. They spend $5 billion annually, but why is this snoozer on A-1?


More 'woops'


Page A-2 has the second correction in a row on a Paterson story, though this one is labeled a "clarification."


Someone should clarify how everybody missed a typo in the A-1 photo caption with the soccer story. "In" appears instead of "is."


Sykes' Local section is filled today with Law & Order copy ad naseum, including yet another study of two towns merging their police departments and a plan to have the superfluous Bergen County police patrol three towns.


Twelve precious inches on L-2 are wasted on a stolen landscape truck with fake plates in Oradell. Why isn't this a brief?

Marc Schwarz


On Page F-2 of Better Living, Marc Schwarz is listed in the Contact Us box without a title above his name -- a change from when he was listed as assistant features editor under Features Editor Barbara Jaeger, who was shown the door earlier this month.


Is he the new features editor?

Who does the editor identify with?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Even if he had consensual sex with the Manhattan hotel maid whose credibility is weak, how does Dominique Strauss-Kahn's wife feel?

Editor Francis Scandale gives big play on Page 1 today to freedom for Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the sexual-assault case against the former IMF chief seems weaker. 


Scandale put the story on The Record's front page because:

• The accusations, arrest and indictment were on the front page, and in the interests of fair play, so should major questions about the credibility of the hotel maid.

• Or, the editor identifies with men whose brains are in their penis.

I guess Scandale didn't have any more New Jersey news and had to fill space with a long sidebar on Strauss-Kahn's chances in the French presidential election -- a subject of no interest in the Garden State (A-6).


Editor goes ape


Before that story broke, Scandale had ordered A-1 play for a story on a baboon making a surprise visit to his human relatives in Freehold (A-3).


The baboon must have eaten some of those sick, tumor-laden oysters from the polluted Hackensack River (A-1).


Publisher Stephen A. Borg was all set to sell the landmark building at 150 River St. in Hackensack to an oyster processor who claimed River City bivalves would some day rival those from Louisiana.


We get letters


A letter to the editor from James D. Storozuk of Fair Lawn says the Woodland Park daily erred on June 25 in calling  a self-propelled military vehicle "a tank" (A-13). 


That's like calling The Record "a newsletter," he said. You just wait, Jim.


A second letter, from Valerie Haymes of Hackensack, reveals the noisy truth about living near Teterboro Airport, in contrast to the June 28 propaganda piece that ran on the OpEd page.


Even the photo -- of a small prop plane against a blue sky filled with puffy, white clouds -- was a lie.


Hot news


Desperate head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes pads her Local front today with yet another story on solar panels and a photo of a fender bender.


A major story on a new job in New York State for the former Hackensack superintendent of schools appears on L-1 today, but readers find only an L-6 brief on the return of the city's first Hispanic mayor under a  rotation system.


Readers of Better Living are greeted by a major story on hot dogs, complete with photos and lists (F-1 and F-4). Yet, the reporter couldn't find any place that serves uncured, preservative- and antibiotic-free beef hot dogs.


Excessive consumption of conventional franks has been linked to cancer.


Jaeger takes a powder


It looks like Features Editor Barbara Jaeger is history.


The Contact Us box on F-2 today is missing her name as well as her title. 


The first name listed is her assistant, Marc Schwarz, who lost the "t" in his last name many years ago and periodically travels around the world to look for it.


Jaeger's exit follows that of Steve Adamek, her husband, who covered basketball and golf for The Record. His stuff stopped appearing on northjersey.com in late May.


Jaeger, who is about 59 years old, and Adamek were two of the most unpleasant people in the newsroom to deal with. 


Many say Jaeger got her first job -- as a part-time news clerk in 1974, right out of college  -- only because her father worked at The Record.


If Jaeger received severance, it would have totaled 12 weeks' salary under changes imposed by Vice President Jennifer A. Borg -- one-third of what she would have gotten under the old system, or one week's pay for every one of her 36 years at the paper.


Cut food news 


Jaeger hounded Food Editor Patricia Mack into retirement in 2006 as part of a pattern of discrimination against older workers she supervised.


She also rolled over and played dead when the younger Borg folded the Food section.


Reporters and editors who unsuccessfully applied for jobs in her department would console themselves -- and be consoled by other workers -- that at least they wouldn't have to work for such a difficult woman.


Among her supervisory traits was scolding employees for expense-account items she considered excessive or unnecessary. 


George Cubanski also left. He worked for Jaeger and supervised the features copy desk, where he allowed numerous errors to get past his cursor. 


Cubanski took over from Liz Houlton, his wife, who was promoted, despite the poor job she did as copy desk slot.


Jaeger and Adamek, Cubanski and Houlton, and Sykes and Kevin O'Neil were three of the married couples employed in The Record newsroom for many years, despite their lack of talent.


Years before O'Neil's exit, many co-workers couldn't figure out what he did as head of graphics at the Web site.


When he got the heave-ho, Sykes kept her job, just like Houlton kept her job when her husband left. 


Did they make a deal with the spoiled Borg siblings to help trim the payroll in these challenging economic times?