Teaneck tearjerker buries important fire-safety lessons

The reconstruction of the Route 46 bridge over the Hackensack River has reduced the four-lane roadbed to two lanes. The Manhattan skyline is visible in the distance.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front-page tearjerker today on the death of four children in a Teaneck house fire a decade ago has the wrong focus.

All of the important fire-safety lessons learned in that fire and hundreds of similar blazes are buried deep on the continuation page, and many readers will never see them (A-8).

Of course, Editor Martin Gottlieb couldn't know a second Orthodox Jewish family, this one in Brooklyn, would fall victim to another electrical malfunction early Saturday, and seven more children would die (A-5). 

See The New York Times' superior coverage by several staffers, including former Record reporter Nate Schweber: City's worst toll since 2007

Part of a series

Today's story on the Seidenfeld family of Teaneck is the first of three parts in what Gottlieb is calling "AFTER THE FIRE."

But the second part -- on the fast-spreading January inferno at the Avalon apartment complex in Edgewater -- will make a mockery of the Seidenfelds.

No humans died in the Edgewater fire, which has been attributed to a workman using a blowtorch, a 15-minute delay in calling 911; and, most importantly, cheap, all-wood construction that didn't prevent the fire from spreading rapidly.

The lesson in the Avalon fire is how corporate greed can trump fire safety, but I doubt that will be clear from tomorrow's upbeat story on what is being billed this way:

"Meet the ethnically diverse group of residents trying to rebuild their lives after the fire at the Avalon at Edgewater" (A-8).

Hiding errors

Today on A-1, Staff Writer John Cichowski tries to distract Road Warrior readers from all of the errors he made a month ago in his highly exaggerated column on potholes.

The confused reporter even got wrong the two telephone numbers he provided for reporting potholes on state roads, according to the editor of the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"Road Warrior won his own award for incompetent reporting when he provided two telephone numbers for reporting potholes on state roads, when, in fact, one of the numbers is for consumer surveys to qualify for promotional items, and the other is a non-working number."

The Record's copy desk and its incompetent production editor, Liz Houlton, bear ultimate responsibility for not enforcing a policy of checking every telephone number by actually dialing the number before publication.  

A week later, the Bloopers editor went to see some of the potholes listed in Cichowski's "Black Hole Awards" column, and had this to say:

"In his Feb. 22 column, the Road Warrior was frequently delusional, incompetent or lied while he gave out his annual awards for worst potholes, which he claimed he personally checked out.

"A driver claimed that the potholes on the Route 80 west center lane over Route 19 will shake the fillings out of your teeth and tractor-trailers come dangerously close to bouncing onto another lane.

"In fact, there was barely any vehicle shaking and no trucks or other vehicles losing control due to minor potholes at this left-center lane, let alone any shaking of any teeth or fillings.

"Road Warrior reported the worst pothole for a highway on Route 20 north at the Route 4 ramp and the two worst underpasses with crumbling roads under Route 80.

"In fact, there was a very minor pothole at the Route 20 spot and the two underpasses were in relatively good shape with practically no potholes."

See the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers: 

The biggest hole is in his head 

Hiding incompetence

Also on Page 1 today, Columnist Charles Stile tries to keep alive Governor Christie's lame bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 (A-1).

Stile pens political column after political column to hide the miserable job the GOP bully is doing in New Jersey.

In a letter to the editor, Ellen Stein of Closter demands that Christie send "a refund to the state of New Jersey for all the days he is away from the job" (O-3).

Smelly Kelly

How can Columnist Mike Kelly raise the racial motive behind cops writing tickets to generate revenue in Ferguson, Mo., and ignore his own town, Teaneck (O-1)?

The township's aggressive cops often lay a speed-trap on Cedar Lane and Pomander Walk that leads to traffic charges against Hackensack residents, including African-Americans.

Did Kelly bother to find out how many of the motorists cited for speeding are black, and how much revenue is generated by all the plea bargains they take to avoid points and surcharges? 

The difference is that in his Ferguson column today he had a U.S. Justice Department report to rewrite, allowing him to declare, "It's the dirty little secret in far too many communities."

What about Teaneck, Mike?

Does a suspect's 'butter knife' justify 17 shots?

The Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. Mass-transit reporting continues to lag in The Record, especially in the Road Warrior column by John Cichowski.

More than two weeks after a mentally ill Leonia man was shot dead by police, The Record today reports on clashing descriptions of the suspect's weapon from two witnesses who called 911.

One described a "long knife," but the second person told a dispatcher on Nov. 25 he was following a man with a "butter knife."

Police video and audio tapes were released last week and reported on A-1, so it's unclear why the Woodland Park daily is just mentioning this significant conflict or why the story isn't on the front page.

And head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes hasn't asked any of her reporters for a story on whether police were justified in killing a suspect with a knife, if there are other, non-lethal ways available to make an arrest.

Open wound

Today's story says three officers fired "more than a dozen shots" at Rickey McFadden, 47, of Leonia, but the family's lawyer was quoted last week saying the cops fired at the black robbery suspect 17 times (L-1).

The new development in the McFadden case comes a day after a Page 1 story discussed the "healing process" in the year since another black suspect, Malik Williams, 19, was killed by Garfield police on Dec. 10, 2011.

For some weird reason, Editor Marty Gottlieb ran a moving Carmine Galasso photo of Williams' mother holding an urn containing his ashes on Monday's A-4 instead of with the story on A-1. 

I guess Gottlieb didn't want to generate too much sympathy over the killing of a suspect who allegedly "rushed at" officers "with a claw hammer and a metal handsaw." 

And the story was edited so poorly by Sykes or one of her minions that nothing new appears on the front page -- it's all background information.

Even more remarkable, there is no mention of the McFadden case in the Williams story, despite all of the obvious parallels. 

A nod to Hackensack

Hackensack made front-page news, but not for holding the line on property taxes.

Detective Thomas Aletta and Capt. Danilo Garcia, were acquitted by a Superior Court judge of conspiracy and official misconduct charges for allegedly helping Ken Zisa, the police chief at the time, cover up a 2004 investigation (A-1 and L-1).

Here comes the judge

The lead Page 1 story today is another poorly edited account, this one of the two men Governor Christie is nominating to the state Supreme Court.

The name of nominee Robert M. Hanna, president of the Board of Public Utilities, doesn't appear in the text of the story on A-1, which is devoted completely to Superior Court Judge David Bauman, who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother.

Last time, Christie tried nominating a Korean-American and a gay black man, but both were rejected. 

More Jewish news

At the bottom of A-1 is another example of The Record assigning a reporter to a story in which he or she has a vested interest.

Readers are familiar with all those stories about Cuba and Cuban-Americans written by two Castro-hating Cuban exiles, Liz Llorente and Miguel Perez, who are no longer with the paper.

In recent years, Staff Writer Deena Yellin has been reporting on the Orthodox Jewish community she belongs to -- without disclosing her loyalties.

Today, in a front-page story on community-based therapy for the disabled, an Orthodox Jewish high school in Teaneck is mentioned in the third paragraph. 

A photo of the Jewish students appears inside on A-6, along with more information about the school's program. 

Apparently, no black or Hispanic students are mentioned in the story.    

In an effort to publish a photo of every gee-whiz, non-fatal rollover accident in Bergen and Passaic counties, Sykes today runs an L-3 photo of a Jeep Grand Cherokee that doesn't look so grand. 

Giant miscalculation

A concerned reader sent this comment to management about the Road Warrior's Sunday column on finding a parking space at the mall:

"Road Warrior offered his best-liked reader's tip of 'Bring a giant with you' just in case there is a parking dispute between drivers who block you, disabled or otherwise, from leaving a parking spot so that your giant friend can step out of your car and shout, as he reported, '[Fee-fi-fo-fum!] Move the damn cars -- now!'

"Besides the Road Warrior's best tip being  impractical, here's some common-sense advice for everyone that could have been reported.  Pull out a cell phone, working or not working, and calmly tell any driver blocking your exit that you will be calling the police on 911. You'd be surprised how quickly they let you exit your parking space as you seem to begin dialing 911. 

"No need to worry if the offending driver has or is a bigger giant than your giant friend, or has more road rage than your giant, or how you are going to waste more of your time and go back and shop, as the Road Warrior suggested, while waiting for the offending driver to leave.

"I will not comment on the many bad opinions and stories offered by the Road Warrior from readers about how to find parking spots.  If readers want to waste driving time, their lives, and money based on bad advice, which is less effective and contrary to transportation experts, so be it."

  
 

Flooded, lied to and then abandoned

Image by marnanel via Flickr

All flooding looks the same,as this 2006 photo shows.

Given the frequency of flooding in North Jersey, the editors of The Record are always ready with their three-prong coverage, as today's front page shows.


First, Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes dispatch reporters and photographers to chronicle impassable streets, boat rescues and piles of furniture and personal belongings suddenly turned into trash.


Then, Governor Christie and other public officials gather at the scene of the disaster to shed crocodile tears and promise swift delivery of financial aid.


Finally, groups of fed-up flood victims threaten civil disobedience if government won't pay for long-term solutions -- that's the group of residents in the Page 1 photo today.


Royal screwing


But these poor people don't realize they have been royally screwed -- by fiscal conservatives who claim long-term fixes "cost too much," and by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin and others who back that position year after year.


The only thing for certain is next month's or next year's flood. On L-1, a related story reports some towns are waiving permit fees, so residents can repair their flood-damaged homes in time for them to be ruined again.


The off-lead A-1 story today is about politics tying up autism-research funds. Funds for Alzeimer's disease were approved. OK. I'm kidding. Scandale and Sykes care as little about old people as they do about flood victims.


God forbid, you were a reporter or copy editor on their newsroom shit lists before I left The Record in May 2008.


Jews play with fire


The third major story on A-1 today is about fire safety in Orthodox Jewish homes. Even with Rosh Hashana coming up, this is such a narrow subject, it should be on the Local front, not the front page.


An A-1 item refers readers to an A-4 story on those hikers blasting Iran. Really, who gives a shit? Next time, try the Adirondacks.


If you live in Hackensack or many other towns, you won't find any news in Sykes' Local section today.

See previous post on year's dumbest headline

When editors lose their courage

Image via Wikipedia

What secrets are hidden by Orthodox Jews in Borough Park?

You know the editors of a local newspaper have lost their way when letters from readers and OpEd pieces expose official incompetence or corruption more than the paper's own editorials and columnists.


Three letters to The Record's editor today blast Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan for giving a $53,000 raise to a "crony," who is already making $121,350 (A-18).


His job is to head an office that fights waste. What a farce.


D.C. gridlock


Four other letters comment on the sickening partisan gridlock over extending the nation's debt ceiling. 


The Record has printed one story after another filled with Republican he said and Democratic she said, but Herbert Jacobs of Teaneck says, " ... Republicans are ready to plunge the world into another Great Depression unless they get their way."


Hear Scott W. Stahlmann of Ramsey: "House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., the tea partiers and the right-wing fringe are trying to sell America with another 'big lie' ...."


It's time for President Obama, Stahlmann continues, "to stop negotiating and come out swinging. Raise revenue [by] taxing the wealthiest, close the corporate loopholes, reduce military spending and foreign aid, and leave Social Security and Medicare alone."


Rupert's cube


Another letter, this one from J. Andrew Smith of Bloomfield, calls Rupert Murdoch's empire a "God-awful propaganda machine that redefines bottom-feeding for conservatives."


An OpEd piece exposes Governor Christie's attempts "to allow municipalities where the wealthiest New Jerseyans live to continue to keep out working families" by imposing large minimum lot sizes (A-19).


Stuffed shirt


Compare all this compelling reading to what Editor Francis Scandale had to say at the screening of an HBO documentary, "Mann v. Ford" on the decades-long struggle of the Ramapough Mountain People against Ford Motor Co.


Scandale took a break from golfing to moderate a panel discussion with the filmmakers and said not a single quotable word (L-1, L-6).


In fact, the cowardly editor left it to one of the filmmakers, Micah Fink, to put the saga in perspective: "It's a very powerful story. There are basic themes of injustice, racism, poverty ...."


How could Scandale be at a loss for words? He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries on The Record's "Toxic Legacy" series in pursuit of a Pulitzer Prize, but failed to win one.


There's also no mention today of how The Record's editorial page quickly abandoned the community when the largest civil suit in New Jersey history was settled -- netting Ringwood residents a maximum of $34,500 a person -- and urged them to take it and move on.


Today's front page


The newspaper's tarring and feathering of BCC President G. Jeremiah Ryan may lead to his firing, even though he spent "significantly less" than his annual $50,000 expense account and raised $3.8 million last year for the community college (A-1).


What the paper calls an "investigation" included a scurrilous attack on Ryan for buying "top-shelf liquor" for himself and donors. 


This from editors who once labored under a now-reformed drunk, Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, and who now work for his spoiled children, investors in an Englewood wine bar. How rich.


Orthodox Jews


The grisly A-1 story on the murder and dismembering of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky by a member of his ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, delicately avoids any discussion of homosexuality among unmarried Hasidic men.


On A-4, a photo caption doesn't say whether the giant sand dragon shown won the contest in Belmar on Wednesday.


Go fish


In Better Living, the owner of Pearl Restaurant in Ridgewood doesn't explain why he serves artificially colored farmed Atlantic salmon when wild-caught salmon is abundant and cheap this summer (Starters, F-1 and F-8).

More good P.R. for Christie

Image via Wikipedia

Like the Talmud, The Record's coverage of Englewood has hidden meaning.

The Record continues to use its front page to promote Governor Christie's conservative agenda, without characterizing his policies for what they are: an unprecedented attack on the middle and working classes in New Jersey.

Editor Francis Scandale leads Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily with the Christie administration's proposal to revise teacher-tenure rules.

We love you, Big Guy

Below the fold on A-1, Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson continues his unabashed love affair with Christie.

He reports the governor "mixed trademark bravado and self-professed humility in a speech to a conservative think tank ... that further burnished his rising star-status in national politics," but denied he has any interest in running for president. 

On the continuation page, the reporter says, "The speech, full of self-deprecating jokes, played among the crowd of conservatives, many of them young people, and journalists, including some top Washington columnists."

 

You can't buy better public relations. I wonder if Jackson is pulling out all the verbal stops for Christie because he hopes to become part of any national campaign the Republican might launch in the future.

Christie says he isn't afraid politically to call for cuts in entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- a stance that reveals growing ageism in society.

It's a trend familiar to Publisher Stephen A. Borg, Scandale and other editors, who laid off mostly older workers in 2007-08.

Christie wants to cut New Jersey's Medicaid program. He's already cut property tax rebates, school lunches for low-income children and health care for low-income women, among other programs.

Stories such as this divert attention from Christie's refusal to generate more tax revenue from millionaires, including his wealthy supporters, or raise the low gasoline tax on their gas-guzzling limos and SUVs to repair roads and bridges and improve mass transit.

Narrow focus

Letters to the editor today scold The Record for its narrow focus on Orthodox Jews in stories about young athletes who can't compete on the Sabbath (A-12). Protestants and Catholics have similar conflicts, readers say.  

Divided city

In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, you see a similar bias in coverage by Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano, who breaks a long silence today with two municipal stories from her beat -- the first since Jan. 22. 

Fabiano has written  about the efforts of Orthodox Jewish residents to cut taxes, but not about the positions of other groups.

Today, she reports the City Council voted to name a park after an Orthodox Jewish doctor who lived in Englewood, but worked in New York City (L-3). He was killed by a hit-run driver as he returned home from a prayer service.  

At the same meeting, the longtime pastor of a black church who extended his ministry to the city's "poorest neighborhoods, as well as hospitals and prisons" before his death at 81 late last month, was honored in "a special resolution Tuesday night."

I guess city officials ran out of parks to rename.

Fabiano has a second story on budget deliberations in Englewood (L-3), but I have seen nothing similar from Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado, who also seems intent on ignoring the current re-assessment of homes throughout the city as real estate values fall. 

Christie again hits public schools

Image via Wikipedia

Governor Christie's charter-school initiative is front-page news for a second straight day, but The Record of Woodland Park is downplaying how badly those 23 privately run schools will screw public-school students, especially in Englewood, an important community in Bergen County.

For example, you have to plow through today's story and turn to the continuation page (A-8) before you learn charter schools are supported by hundreds of thousands of tax dollars taken from public-school districts, which now face a 2% cap on spending increases.

Just take a look at the helpful definition of charter schools supplied by two veteran education reporters, Staff Writers Pat Alex and Leslie Brody. Not only is it on the continuation page, but it doesn't mention public funding of the charters -- until further down in the story, where the Englewood superintendent is interviewed.

Are we to assume Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes believe readers are so intimately familiar with education funding that the paper doesn't have to provide important background information high up in the story -- in this case, on Page 1?

Or is this and other stories slanted to put Christie's programs and policies in the best light possible, especially by minimizing how each charter school hurts public school students in the same district?

Oy vey!

In Englewood, the state approved a Hebrew immersion school that will serve students in that city and neighboring Teaneck, two communities with a significant number of Orthodox Jewish residents.

Richard Seagall, the Englewood superintendent, says only 15 families expressed an interest in the school, and that his district will be paying to educate children who are attending private schools now. 

"It's going to be a pretty big hit," he said of the money taken away from the Englewood public schools, which are predominantly black and Hispanic.

So, here's the scam: Orthodox Jewish families refuse to send their kids to public schools, but have to pay thousands in school taxes anyway. Then, on top of that, they have to pay $10,000 or more a year to send their kids to private Jewish days schools. Now, with the charter school, the public schools will pay for most of that private education.

The charter schools are another example of how Christie blows his wealthy supporters, while blowing off the middle and working classes.

Mac is livid

I'm sure Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg is cursing that there were no charter schools when he spent a fortune to send his spoiled brats, Jennifer and Stephen, to expensive private schools. What does he get in return: They pushed him aside and now run North Jersey Media Group, ignoring the journalistic standards that had been built up over so many decades. 

Look at all the crap on A-1 today. Why lead with a story on the $98,000 pension for the former head of a controversial Bergen County agency, if despite reforms, he was grandfathered in to receive benefits for life? Half a page on travel plans of Jets fans? Give me a break.

More rich folks

Why do most of the 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH -- the series running on the Local front this month -- seem to be rich and famous, and live outside North Jersey? 

Sykes' pick today is builder Ara K. Hovnanian, who has coped with the depressed housing market by laying off nearly 75% of his workforce, not by cutting his and other executive salaries, nor by reducing his order of custom-made clothing.

His second home is listed as Locust, Monmouth County, a hamlet I have never heard of. Hmm. Is that locust, as in the insect that destroys crops? The Hovnanian story is paired with a six-column luxury auto dealer's ad above the fold.

The snow and freezing rain Tuesday morning proved a nightmare for pedestrians in Manhattan, many of whom slipped and fell. But there's nary a word of how North Jersey pedestrians fared in the photo caption with a weather photo on L-3 today.

Kitchen nightmare

If you count the thumb nail of the smiling food editor, a dozen photos and lots of directions in small type accompany a single recipe in Better Living today. Who besides a newspaper editor has all that time to spend in the kitchen?

A Jewish education conspiracy?

Image by Mirza R via Flickr

Teaneck might have to give $1.4 million to a Hebrew-immersion charter school.

How far will Orthodox Jews in Englewood and Teaneck go to use public funds to educate their children -- without having to actually send them to public schools?


Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park reports on an ingenious solution to a dilemma faced by parents who send their children to Jewish day schools at a cost of up to $15,000 a year, but who still are obligated to pay high property taxes, a good part of which funds the public schools they reject.

The Shalom Academy proposes a Hebrew-immersion program to serve students in Englewood and Teaneck. If its application is approved, Teaneck might have to give the school $1.4 million of its tax dollars and Englewood slightly more, Staff Writer Pat Alex reports.

Although Alex deserves praise for laying out the elements of this proposed educational sleight-of-hand, she doesn't go far enough. She should point out that any money Englewood has to give a charter school only makes it more difficult for the district to improve its elementary and middle schools, which are virtually all black and Hispanic.


Her story also could use more background. A few years ago, a slate of Jewish candidates promised to rein in spending, but were unsuccessful in their bid for seats on the Teaneck school board, and before that,  the same thing happened in Englewood. Now, a citizens panel of rich East Hill residents has asked the city to cut aid to the public library.


And the headlines don't focus on Englewood and Teaneck. Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes sought put the Hebrew school proposal in a wider context of the Christie administration's support for such charter schools.


In Sykes' Local section, a headline on L-5 gave me a cynical chuckle:

UPDATE: ENGLEWOOD NOW A GREEN COMMUNITY

Of course, that's a reference to an environmental program. But the city has long been divided along color lines -- in its neighborhoods and in its schools -- a sad fact Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano has carefully avoided in just about everything she writes.

Dan Sforza and Christina Joseph, two of Sykes' clueless minions on the assignment desk, covered Englewood as reporters, but apparently learned nothing about the city they could pass on to Fabiano.


One of the untold stories is dramatic development of Englewood's main street and other parts of the city that accompanied big demographic changes in the past two decades, principally an influx of wealthy Orthodox Jewish families. 

What has happened to all the property taxes the city raked in from new apartments and condominium projects along Palisade Avenue and on both sides of Route 4? They certainly haven't been spent on the schools or to open a community center.


The Englewood update story in Local is just about the only municipal news in the section.

Rare sighting in Hackensack

Image by romulusnr via Flickr

I pulled into a parking space at my polling place Tuesday afternoon and rubbed my eyes. Could that be Monsy Alvarado, the reporter assigned to cover Hackensack for The Record of Woodland Park? Judging by how little she writes about the city, could be this one of those rare times she was actually covering a story in the paper's former home?

I waved to her, then went inside to cast my vote for the school budget and three candidates for the school board. When I came out, I interrupted her conversation with a man and asked why she hasn't been covering Hackensack. She said she couldn't talk to me because she was speaking with or interviewing the man. But she said I could call her.

Today's paper carries her bare-bones, seven-paragraph story with election results, and Hackensack residents are quoted elsewhere in the paper. But there is no explanation for why two incumbents were bounced off the board.

On the front of Local, Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano's story provides absolutely no context for readers on the defeat of the budget in that city, except for reporting the mayor's last-minute campaign against the tax levy. (Last week, the Teaneck schools superintendent was ordered to withdraw a letter asking for residents' votes in support of the budget there. Go figure.)

Fabiano has done her best to ignore segregated elementary and middle schools in Englewood. Has she even updated readers on integration efforts at the high school? (A black student in the Academies@ Englewood in Dwight Morrow High School told me the other day she cannot use copiers at the school unless she brings in her own paper.)

What about the role of the many Orthodox Jews and other white residents -- who send their children to private schools, as former Publisher Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg did with Jennifer and Stephen -- in the defeat of the budget? Is Fabiano going to report the vote by ward in a follow, and get to the bottom of what happened?

Where is the news judgment?

Image via Wikipedia

Flooding and power outages are what you'd expect after a fierce rain storm, but why would the editors bury the full story of how two Orthodox Jewish neighbors were killed by a falling tree as they returned home from services Saturday evening in Teaneck (map)?

Does The Record of Woodland Park have to run a picture of flooding in Wayne on Page 1 after every major storm? Doesn't Wayne always flood? Just what is the man in the photo doing? The caption doesn't help. In the story, quotes from residents sound like reporters have them stored on save/get keys.

Was the storm a nor'easter, as the paper reported yesterday? A sidebar on A-7 is the only story today that refers to a nor'easter. Also, there is nothing to put this storm in context. Was it worse than previous rain storms?

Maybe the story about the devout Jews didn't make the front page because it was poorly done by Staff Writer Joseph Ax.

Most of it was devoted to telling readers what great guys they were, but it remains unclear whether one of the men was an Ashkenazi Jew who didn't make the longer walk to his usual synagogue because of the bad weather and attended his Sephardic friend's synagogue across the street, exposing both to the falling tree on the walk home.

The story has background information on Sephardic Jews, yet omits any description of the seven-day mourning period all Jews observe -- wives and children sitting on cushions on the floor in clothing torn to show their grief, as they greet a steady stream of mourners. Also, it is likely the men were buried Sunday evening; again, the story is silent on that point.

In Local, a Leonia schools story appears on L-2, written by Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano, who also covers Englewood. Except for one interview with the Englewood superintendent, she has virtually ignored the city's schools since taking over the beat in the summer of 2008.