How many editors does it take?

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The Record's coverage of a Cliffside Park murder could have been produced by a  journalism class at the high school, above. The story also brought reporter Monsy Alvarado out of hibernation.

How many editors does it take to get the name right of a man whose body parts were found scattered around Cliffside Park? How many editors does it take to find out if he lived alone or with another man, and whether that man was questioned by police on Monday, the day of the grisly discovery?

Today, as on so many days in the past, The Record of Woodland Park's assignment desk under Editor Deirdre Sykes demonstrates just how clueless it is.  

Eye on The Record doesn't know if Sykes or one of her minions (Dan Sforza, Rich Whitby, Christina Joseph et al.) supervised news gathering for this Page 1 story on Monday and Tuesday. But the result is the same: a first-day story that is so woefully inadequate -- a story that tells readers nothing meaningful -- it could have been produced by high school- or college-level reporters.

Misspelling the victim's name is bad enough. Are we to believe Staff Writer Matthew Van Dusen also couldn't find anyone besides the victim's employer to tell readers who this man was and what may have led to his death? 

Even today's story doesn't answer the obvious question of whether the two men arrested in the slaying and dismemberment -- the victim's roommate and "another man" -- formed a love triangle with the victim, robbed him or what?

Sykes' name tag on her computer in Hackensack said "Laughs A Lot." It probably should have said "Laughable."

Late news -- very late

On Saturday's Arizona shootings -- which Editor Francis Scandale underplayed so badly on Sunday -- did none of the editors think to scour the victims' list for a New Jersey grandmother who was one of six people slain, instead of getting the story a day late? North Jersey snowbirds have flocked to warmer climates for decades. Do the assignment editors even know that?

Governor Christie's State of the State speech Tuesday is the lead A-1 story today. It's where Christie pats himself on the back for the state's "changed direction," without hardly any mention of all the financial pain he has visited on the middle and working classes, all the cuts in mass transit, education and other programs; and all the breaks he gave to millionaires.

The final element on A-1 today is on the third winter storm. At least we don't have to wade through more mindless neighing by Staff Writer John Brennan, whose horseshit on the future of racing led the paper Tuesday.

Mercedes-Benz news page

Another six-column Benzel-Busch auto dealer ad is splashed across the middle of L-1, the front page of a section that once was Sykes' pride and joy.

Columnist John Cichowski writes again about the new crosswalk law, and seems to be firmly in the corner of all those impatient, angry and time-challenged drivers who have made pedestrians an endangered species in North Jersey.

The only mass transit news I could find today is a brief on L-2 about a woman who sat on a needle on an NJ Transit bus in Englewood.

Police, fire and court stories dominate Local again. There is no Hackensack or Teaneck news today. 

Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado hasn't written anything about the city for three weeks now, but she helped Van Dusen play catch-up today on the dismemberment story -- likely because her Spanish-speaking ability was needed on a story in which the victim, relatives and suspects are Hispanic.

Food deprivation

In Better Living, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill tells readers that to make up for holiday excesses, she is giving up wine with dinner during the week and eating "minimal sweets."

Sherrill also has put readers of the food pages on a crash diet, producing even less than her predecessor, Bill Pitcher, if you can imagine that. Pitcher was paid $71,000 a year. 

Sherrill's salary is unknown. She works for both (201) magazine and The Record, publications of the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group. Her husband, photographer Ted Axelrod, also rides on the NJMG gravy train.

A street named after Sarah Palin?

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A Leonia street in 1927. There is no Palin Boulevard in town, despite what The Record says.

The news copy desk appears to be long past being embarrassed by inaccurate headlines, typos, errors and the ungrammatical writing it misses or introduces into stories published in The Record of Woodland Park. Many errors are never acknowledged or corrected the next day. 

With Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes desperately scrambling to find just about anything to fill space, there seems to be no time to set the record straight.

Take a look at that non-fatal, accident-of-the-day photo on the front of Sykes' Local section today, the one where a woman trashed her new car, which, according to the caption, flipped and ended up leaning against a pole in Leonia.

The caption, written by a news copy editor, says the accident occurred at Fort Lee Road and Palin Boulevard -- as in GOP heroine Sarah Palin. But there is no Palin Boulevard in that stubbornly Democratic town -- it's Paulin Boulevard.

It gets even worse

But there's something more egregious on that same page. 

Has Staff Writer Matthew Van Dusen, who covers Ridgefield, started flacking for the mayor?

The lead story on L-1 is a thinly disguised trial balloon lofted by Mayor Anthony R. Suarez, who incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees in winning an acquittal on federal bribery conspiracy charges in October. The first paragraph notes, "Victory didn't come cheap." The story continues:

"Now the question is, Who will pay his legal bills?"

But the only one who appears to be asking the question is Van Dusen, who couldn't find anything else about Ridgefield to report. There's not a word of comment from the mayor himself. 

It sounds like Suarez doesn't have the balls to propose, at a public meeting, getting reimbursed by the borough's insurer, so he has Van Dusen write a story to throw out the possibility taxpayers are going to get stuck for legal bills from Michael Critchley -- one of the best criminal defense attorneys money can buy.

Animal news

Sykes, the head assignment editor, couldn't come up with enough local news to fill the section today, so she runs another story about harness racing on L-1. That story and others about the Meadowlands belong in the A-section, but she's so desperate, she'll run anything that fills all that space her clueless minions leave empty.

L-3 today is filled not with municipal news, but with police and fire news, plus news about the police in Hackensack, where Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado is chronicling every burp, hiccup, fart and hacking cough of the disciplinary hearings for cops who sued suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa. 

The harness racing story on L-1 isn't the only animal news today. The bottom of the front page is filled with reporting about the first day of the black bear hunt after a five-year moratorium.

The story gives the weight of the biggest bear killed -- 661 pounds -- much like the signs giving the weight of a fighting bull entering the ring in Mexico City -- another venue for brutalizing animals. One hunter is even quoted as saying he is going to barbecue bear meat.

In view of how little Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill contributes to the Better Living section, readers will have to satisfy themselves with this morsel of "food news."

There's more to the story

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I enjoyed reading the census story on the front page page of The Record of Woodland Park today, especially because it was the only scrap of local news about Hackensack (A-8), where I live. But I didn't feel the reporter fully captured the experience of being an enumerator or a respondent.


For one thing, she forgot to tell readers that enumerators hand out an information sheet in English or Spanish to concerned residents, pledging that answers are confidential and protected by law. "Your answers will only be used for statistical purposes, and no other purpose."

 Staff Writer Matthew Van Dusen has four stories from the towns he covers in the Local section today, and Staff Writer Nick Clunn has two. Clunn also wrote a Hackensack story last week (apparently, Monsy Alvarado, the Hackensack reporter, was overwhelmed). Reporter Giovanna Fabiano has a story about Leonia today, but nothing about Englewood, which also is her assignment. There are no Hackensack or Teaneck stories today.


Wide variations in productivity in the newsroom appear to be of no concern to Editor Frank Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes or the Borgs, who control North Jersey Media Group. So-called investigative reporter Jean Rimbach has averaged only one byline a year in recent years, and Alvarado has gone a month or more in not filing a story.


When I was still at The Record, the only reporters scolded about their productivity by Managing Editor Frank Burgos were older. The salary of one veteran reporter was cut $10,000 unilaterally, and she was assigned to cover towns -- considered to be a demotion. Were any young reporters called on the carpet?


You might be able to attribute all of this to the mobile-journalist system that Scandale championed. Many reporters were given laptops and cellphones and scattered -- hanging out in diners or even working out of their apartments. This served to empty the Hackensack newsroom to the point where the entire operation was picked up and shifted to office space in Woodland Park and the offices of NJMG weekly papers -- following the move of all printing to Rockaway Township.


The decline of productivity and local news coverage seemed inevitable.