Now you see it, now you don't

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The print and online versions of Staff Writer Joseph Ax's Teaneck school election story today differ a good deal. Missing from the newspaper is the following paragraph:

"The growing Orthodox population has accelerated the disparity in racial and ethnic makeup between the school system and the town as a whole. As of October, only 14 percent of the schools’ 4,000 students were white, compared with 52 percent of the town’s overall population."

Who was the editor making up pages on the news desk of The Record of Woodland Park that cut that important graph?

Although Ax says an Orthodox Jew now sits on the school board, he doesn't bother to tell readers just how this man has been voting on fiscal and other issues. Where was his assignment editor? Where was the news copy editor? Where was the slot? Sitting on the can reading the Daily News? (Map: Teaneck.)

Burying a really good story

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You'll really have to search for one of the best stories in The Record of Woodland Park today. Some knuckle-headed news editor -- probably under orders from clueless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes -- decided a bid by Orthodox Jews to win election to the Teaneck school board is of little interest to anyone.

Two elements on the front page don't belong there: a big baseball photo and Toyota halting the sale of a low-selling luxury SUV. They tell readers there is no news today. (Photo: Teaneck High School.)

But in the back of Local, at the bottom of Page L-7, Staff Writer Joseph Ax reports three Orthodox Jews who send their children to yeshiva are running against three school board incumbents. The challengers are concerned about low test scores despite Teaneck spending more money than other districts, the story says. 

Critics of the Jewish candidates say their only motive is cutting school expenses and their property taxes. There is no mention of studies showing how minority children do better in an integrated setting than in one where parents pull their kids out of public schools. Today's story also doesn't give the percentage of minority and non-minority public-school students in Teaneck. Maybe Ax is doing a follow.

When Orthodox Jewish candidates attempted a takeover of the school board in Englewood, the story ran on Page 1, largely due to my nagging from the news copy desk. I lived in Englewood at the time and my son was attending the segregated public schools there, and I passed on campaign material sent to my home to the Englewood reporter. I also edited the story and wrote the headlines.

The Jewish slate was defeated. Yet, Englewood's elementary and middle schools are still segregated, which you might not know from the recent, sporadic coverage of that city.


Looking for Hackensack news in the former Hackensack daily? Sucker.

Avoiding the real stories

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The Record of Woodland Park today is another exercise in avoiding real stories while pandering to sports fans and giving more precious space to a publicity hungry rabbi who gives a bad name to me and other Orthodox Jews.

The desperate, incompetent editors often have no choice, because they stopped inspiring their reporters long ago. They keep their jobs, because the Borgs -- Malcolm, Stephen and Jennifer -- ignore the paper's precipitous decline while they pursue their selfish interests, including a wine bar in Englewood and stopping the expansion of a synagogue on the East Hill street where the elder Borg lives.

The Record sent a reporter and photographer to Indianapolis to cover Sunday's football game, but apparently they could find only one Jets fan and a few former North Jersey residents. But that didn't stop the paper from devoting most of the front page to this inanity. I hope reporter John Brennan will like Indiana so much, he won't come back.

I'm with Kathleen M. DuHaime of Westwood, whose letter to the editor appears today on Page A-11. She noted Page 1 coverage of the Jets victory Jan. 18 "struck a jarring note." She added:

"While the whole world's attention is focused on the disaster in Haiti and the deaths and suffering of thousands of people, The Record, once again, chooses to give precedence to a sports event. May I suggest you 'gotta believe' that world events of this magnitude are far more important than a football game."

 Although part of an inside page is devoted to the humanitarian crisis today, The Record appears to be slowly returning to the time when U.S. media simply ignored the Haitian people.

Naive Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano continues to turn her back on that city's segregated elementary and middle schools, its downtown traffic congestion and its Jamaican community, but she found time to be exploited by a publicity hungry rabbi, no doubt encouraged by head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, who is desperate for local news. Fabiano's and Sykes' "bullshit meters" both need tune-ups. Where is Editor Frank Scandale, swimming with the fishes?

In August, Fabiano wrote seven stories about Englewood (photo) -- five of them about the rabbi's attempt to stop the Libyan leader from staying at his country's estate. Has the reporter ever asked the rabbi why -- 11 years ago -- he bought the Palisade Avenue mansion next door if he hates the Libyans so much? Not long after the news coverage, a flattering article about the rabbi's new book on Michael Jackson appeared in Better Living.

Maybe the rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, could switch mansions with the elder Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group. Then the rabbi could simply stroll down Walnut Street to the synagogue, and Borg and his wife could invite the Libyans over for dinner. That would end two "controversies" in one stroke.

In today's story, which runs on the front of the Local section with a big photo of the rabbi, the reporter seems to be trying to justify more coverage of this man's selfish quest to get rid of the Libyans by saying -- falsely -- that the East Hill estate has been "the center of controversy for decades." That's nonsense. She also gets the month wrong for the flap over Moammar Gadhafi coming to Englewood.

Sykes and Fabiano's assignment editor should be ashamed of  foisting this sham story on readers. Of course, when you have no real news from Hackensack, Englewood and many other Bergen County towns, you have to print any crap you can find.

That's something we have been seeing almost every day since The Record moved its headquarters and hundred of employees out of Hackensack last year, abandoning the city where it was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years.