Editors commit more crimes against readers

Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack (joseph a)

There are four interesting, newsworthy stories on the front page of The Record today, but the editors of the Local news section continue to rely too heavily on crime stories.

Local is dominated by a not-guilty plea from the suspect in the arson murder of a widow, and the testimony of a suspended police officer who is charged with altering "his license plates."

License-plate alteration? Is that big local news, even if a cop is charged with doing it?

Corrupt editing

Meanwhile, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza downplay two stories about Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan, who vetoed an attempt to water down the county's pay-to-play ordinance.

That important story is buried on L-3 -- a crime against Bergen readers, who lived for too many years under disappointing Democratic county administrations.

Time to go

If Sykes and Sforza aren't deciding the best "play" of stories, The Record can save tons of money by kicking their lazy, incompetent asses off of Garret Mountain.

If they decided to bury this anti-corruption story, the Borgs should certainly kick them out. 

Editorial treats


Look at the L-1 story on Daniel Rochat, suspect in the murder of Barbara Vernieri, whom he had known for decades -- a follow-up on his arrest (Page 1 on Friday).

As usual, Bergen Prosecutor John Molinelli is giving out information on the investigation and Rochat bit by bit, and Sykes and Sforza are acting like lap dogs yapping for treats.

He gets mail

On the front of Friday's Local section, most of the Road Warrior column is based on e-mails from readers -- another sign Staff Writer John Cichowski ran out of ideas long ago (L-1).

Commuting by car, bus and train is a daily ordeal in the metropolitan area, but Cichowski devotes his thrice-weekly column to issues that have nothing to with the daily trek to and from work.

Oh, on the continuation page, Cichowski does mention how some commuters can take their bicycles aboard trains (L-10).

But he fails to note that all of the new local buses operated by NJ Transit (they're painted white) have front-mounted bike racks.

That omission is typical of Cichowski's incomplete, often inaccurate columns.

(See previous post, "Reader blasts Road Warrior errors.")  

Uneducated news play

With five pages of Friday's Local section devoted to higher education, there is little local news.

Sykes and Sforza buried a preview of Donovan's veto all the way back on L-10.

At the top of that page, a story on an NJ Transit bus driver who was charged with vehicular homicide -- allegedly killing one of her passengers -- doesn't even include the number of her local bus line.

Was it the No. 780 bus, which runs from Englewood through Hackensack to the city of Passaic, where the 49-year-old man was killed? Let the guessing game begin.

Welcome profile

Also buried in Friday's Local section is Staff Writer Denisa R. Superville's wonderful profile of Teaneck institution Lou Schwartz, 100 (L-11).

Usually, thanks to Sykes and Sforza, we only read about people like Schwartz after they're dead.

Stranding readers

If I was stranded in Mahwah and starving, I wouldn't eat at the mediocre Zaytoon, the subject of a full-blown restaurant review on Friday (Better Living, BL-20-21).

Why does Staff Writer Elisa Ung bother to write about places like this? Couldn't she do capsules under the heading: "Certainly not worth the detour"?

She got paid for eating there, and The Record picked up the check, but that's no reason to waste our time.

Where is the local news in our local paper?

There are no stories from Bergen County's biggest towns in The Record today.

The 8-page Local section in The Record today dramatizes how little local news is being generated by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her clueless minions.

I couldn't find any stories from big Bergen County communities -- Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood, Ridgewood et al. -- but Sykes needed minor accident and brush-fire photos to fill the section (L-2 and L-3).

And too many of the stories in the section are follow-ups to previous reports:

Another hearing on the proposed 47-story residential towers in Fort Lee, a project that is being treated like North Jersey's Pyramids (L-2) ; another protest march in the fatal police shooting of Malik Williams, 19, of Garfield (L-3); another hazardous-waste collection (L-3), another boring Road Warrior column (L-1), and yet another story on a study of Bergen County  law-enforcement consolidation (L-1).

Columnist crashes

The main element on the Local front today is a round-up of soil contamination in parks and fields that has been the subject of numerous individual stories.

A "road warrior" is someone who travels frequently, especially on business, so who came up with that title for a commuting column that has deteriorated into a column for drivers since John Cichowski took it over?

His column today -- how to operate a car for dummies -- is one of the worst in recent memory, because Cichowski himself is clueless on how cars work, as is evident from all the inaccuracies in his work. 

Why not rename the column, "Car Warrior, "Fender Worshiper" or "Dummy Behind the Wheel"?

Budget muddle

On Page 1, I had trouble following the "analysis" on spending in Governor Christie's budget, and wonder why it took almost three weeks to pull it together.

The main element on the front page is an appalling story by Staff Writer Barbara Williams on how a national medication shortage is affecting a 58-year-old cancer patient from Saddle River, with a sidebar on a 5-year-old girl with leukemia (A-1 and A-6).

But the stories don't say whether the national health care law addresses those shortages.

Busted

On A-5, a photo taken a year after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan shows a bus being lifted off a rooftop. 

It appears to be in better condition than the buses used on NJ Transit's No. 780 route between Englewood and the city of Passaic.

Just desserts

In Better Living, The Corner Table column explores traditional Irish fare -- heavy with meat, meat and more meat, plus fried food -- one of the worst diets on the planet (F-1).

North Jersey is full of Irish pubs that serve food, so why did staff Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung choose only two, both in far-off Ramsey?

On Friday, Ung gave us another lukewarm review of a restaurant, Rosario's Trattoria in Midland Park, where she liked the desserts better than anything else on the huge menu.

Travel weary

With rising air fares and a rising number of fees, more consumer-oriented reporting would be welcome in the Travel section, where such stories are few and far between.

Today, I was bored to tears by the cover story on a staffer attending a wedding in India, as well as Travel Editor Jill Schensul's column on one foreign airline's "social media project."

Telling black readers to go elsewhere

Image via Wikipedia

A story on the front of Local today reports an incident where a customer announces over a public-address system that blacks should leave the store. Hasn't the The Record of Woodland Park been telling blacks, Hispanics and white residents of Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other Bergen County towns to go elsewhere for news of their communities?

The Record has yet to report the impact of state aid cuts on Hackensack schools -- even though details have appeared in the weekly paper owned by North Jersey Media Group and many other Bergen districts have been covered in that regard.


On Page 1 today, Staff Writer Ashley Kindergan does a terrific job telling readers what led to the murder of a popular Bergenfield teacher, allegedly by her violent husband. Kindergan, one of the best reporters at the paper, easily outdoes bloodhound Jerry DeMarco's Cliffview Pilot.

The coverage of NJ Transit fare hikes is pathetic. The A-1 story is reported and written by Tom Davis and Karen Rouse, two transportation reporters so lazy they have refused for years to ride and write about local buses such as the decrepit 780 (Englewood-Passaic city), patronized mostly by blacks and other minorities, that are not even worth the fares charged now, let alone the revised 10% hikes. Is that a surprise when you remember how clueless the assignment editors are?

Then, on  A-10, Alfred P. Doblin, the selfish little man who edits the Editorial Page, has the nerve to run an editorial opposing the higher, 25% increases for rail riders -- without disclosing he is one of those who will be affected. I guess The Record pays Doblin a salary so small, it will be strained by the new fares.

In Better Living, two of the three food articles focus on pork belly (photo) and beef. Readers are running for their Lipitor.