Journalism jock itch rules again

Image via Wikipedia

Even when the Yankees lose, Editor Francis Scandale just can't stop the itching from his jock strap and resist the need to slap the other male editors' asses in the news meeting, where he undoubtedly ordered the layout drones to cover most of the front page today with a photo and caption about those turkeys.

The other stories on Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park are more federal fine-tuning on the cost of the Hudson River tunnel Governor Christie dislikes so much, a story about charter school teachers who have joined a union and another on third-party candidates. 

How boring can you get? A-1 seems to alternate between gory, tabloid news and process stories that put readers to sleep. 

In Local, Hackensdack reporter Monsy Alvarado has the second story in three days on the possible rezoning of the struggling Main Street shopping district -- after she ignored public forums on the proposals held in the past couple of months.


Today's story reports the City Council on Thursday night hired a planner and an attorney "to help revamp zoning regulations along Main Street." Why is this buried on L-3?


Gee, I'm surprised the city doesn't already have enough planners and attorneys to do the job in-house. Alvarado reports Douglas Doyle of the DeCotiss Fitzpatrick & Cole law firm will be paid $125 an hour. The hourly rate for Planner Francis Reiner isn't given.

The reporter doesn't quote one of the city's many gadflies on the need to hire them.


City taxpayers should be concerned because the Main Street Business Alliance hired Street-Works LLC of New York to work up a detailed proposal for rezoning Main Street, with specific suggestions on what kind of developers could be invited to remake downtown, including a return to two-way traffic.


Is the planner and attorney hired by the council just going to duplicate that work?

See previous post on the first anniversary
of Eye on The Record

You can blame the editors

In commenting on the lack of local Bergen news in The Record yesterday, I didn't really  pay attention to the main element on the front page -- the ticker-tape parade for the Yankees in the city. If I had, I would have noticed that the four staffers assigned to the story all are local news reporters and two of them -- Joseph Ax and Giovanna Fabiano -- are supposed to cover Teaneck and Englewood, respectively.

How do editors such as Deirdre Sykes, the micro-managing head of the assignment desk, expect these local reporters to cover their towns, if they are assigned to stories that general assignment reporters should be doing? Where was John Brennan, Scott Fallon and other general assignment reporters yesterday and what were they doing?