Editions are as dreary as days without sun

Hackensack is offering a 30-year tax break to attract a West New York apartment developer who promises to build 222 units over a parking garage on land at 86-94 State St. and 31 Warren St., above and below, with completion scheduled for 2015. Tenants will be able to hop on a Manhattan-bound bus across the street or file for unemployment in the beige-colored building, above right.

 

Everything about Governor Christie is so big it's a miracle he can still get his foot into his mouth, as he did at a Paterson church on Tuesday.

But why did Editor Marty Gottlieb put the story on Page A-3 of Friday's paper, instead of out front, where readers were hit with more about Superstorm Sandy and Pope Francis for the second day in a row?

The pastor of St. Luke Baptist Church has asked the GOP bully to apologize for referring to Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver as "an African-American female speaker of the Assembly who represents ... East Orange and Orange, where there are failing schools all over."

No surprise. One of the first things Christie did in 2010 was dismiss John E. Wallace Jr., the state Supreme Court's only African-American member.

Friday's paper is dreary from Page 1 to the classifieds.

Out of focus

Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi appears to be losing his chops after chasing so many ambulances and capturing so many rollover accidents for head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza.

What's duller than his A-1 photo on Friday at Ridgewood High, with its blurry images of students' backs and a bunch of parked cars in front of a brick wall with the hard-to-read name of the school? 

Out of gas 

Instead of just listing gasoline stations that charge the same for cash or credit -- such as the Shell station on Cedar Lane in Teaneck -- Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to froth at the mouth over credit-card surcharges (L-1).

Out of excuses

On L-3, Hackensack reporter Hannan Adely reports Councilman John Labrosse has belatedly raised an objection to the city's plan to pay $500,000 in legal bills for two police officers, even though he voted to approve the deal.

City Attorney Joseph C. Zisa Jr. told Eye on The Record he is recommending the city pay the bills, and won't ask a judge to rule on how reasonable the fees are.

Labrosse, who is seeking another term in the May 14 election, changed his mind after candidate Victor E. Sasson noted the councilman's own campaign literature is silent on what he has accomplished in the past four years.

The Record's editors still haven't published a story about Sasson's independent candidacy, but did do stories about the Labrosse slate and another organized group in the Hackensack contest in late January and early February.

Out of local news

How long have North Jersey Media Group and The Record been promoting "The Big Book Drive" for Paterson children (L-1)?

Could this be the Borg family's way of distracting readers from the precipitous decline in local news in the past 10 years?

Why is Better Living defending smokers "frustrated" by outdoor bans on their filthy habit (BL-1)?

Even when non-smokers aren't choking on cigarette smoke they still have to live with the disgusting nicotine stench from smokers' clothing and drivers who toss lit butts out of their cars.

Hackensack: The good, the bad and the ugly

In many Hackensack neighborhoods, condominiums or apartment buildings replaced homes, as was the case on Fairmount Avenue, near Main Street, above. But the residents of this building don't have much of a view: the rear parking lot of a nail salon with faded awnings and the rusting backs of billboards, below.

This is only one block among many where a business use that has been grandfathered in seems totally inappropriate today, but as far as I know, city officials aren't doing anything to improve the situation here.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

I have always been struck by the interesting architecture I have seen around Hackensack, including a small firehouse on Main Street that would be at home in New Mexico and all the impressively large homes along Summit Avenue.

But there is a lot more to see than that, though you wouldn't know it from The Record, which has ignored the city's architectural gems, as well as its run-down neighborhoods, even when it called Hackensack home.

A firehouse on Main Street in Hackensack.

  

Here are some of the places I discovered in the past 5 weeks:

What looks from the street to be an old barn shares a Poplar Avenue parcel with a large home. No registered voter lives there. A wall of the barn carries the CBS Eye logo.

One of the beautiful homes on Maple Hill Drive that once overlooked the golf course of a country club. See the street sign, below. Today, the home has a view of the Nellie K. Parker Elementary School. A woman I spoke to said the family has sold the home and is moving to Florida. She said she wasn't registered to vote.

Golf Way is another nearby street.

Which city owned building has this arrangement?

Here's another business use on Gamewell Street, not far from Union Street, that seems inappropriate today. A large open lot on the block, below, appears to have been used by another business, possibly a warehouse, that was torn down.

The owners of this home didn't sell out to high-rise developers on Overlook Avenue, above and below, but they abandoned the place for another, unknown reason. Today, business jets scream overhead as they approach Teterboro Airport and ambulances wail as they race to Hackensack University Medical Center. The neighborhood has one of the highest per-capita uses of custom-made earplugs.

Both the Oritani Field Club building on Camden Street, above, and The Record's old headquarters on River Street, below, have dates with the wrecking ball.

The boyhood home of Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg at Summit and Fairmount avenues had a 14-acre backyard. He yielded to pressure from neighbors, and today it is natural space.

Here is another large, open lot that appears to have been the site of a business at Berry and Second streets, not far from Hackensack High School.

Today's paper

Thanks to Editor Marty Gottlieb, this is the kind of front page local readers can cozy up to on a gloomy and chilly day: 

Stories on North Jersey doctors taking money to promote name-brand drugs; a house owned by the Passaic County sheriff that the county may buy for a road project; and the possible restoration of a Paterson stadium that was home to Negro League teams.


Why can't we get this kind of news every day, replacing Gottlieb's national and world views, and the long, ponderous process stories that put readers to sleep?

Also on A-1 today, The Record reports that "pay to play" is thriving in the Christie administration, first with the Sandy clean-up contract and now with the private operator hoping to run the New Jersey Lottery.

This from a Republican governor who made his reputation as a corruption buster when he was U.S. attorney. 

It's a long story

On the front of Local, three long stories and a column are all that fits, ranging from 34 inches to 50 inches.

The Record is sponsoring a book drive for Paterson children -- as today's L-1 story reports for the umpteenth time -- and one of the "contacts" listed is Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg, head of the North Jersey Media Group Foundation and part of a publishing family that believes it is American royalty. 

Hackensack news

Inside Local, Hackensack news includes a story about three police officers, two of whom will resign after pleading guilty in a 2011 assault case (L-3).

A day after the filing deadline for the non-partisan election, The Record also lists the candidates in Hackensack's May 14 City Council election (L-3), and mentions my candidacy for the first time: 

"Vote for Peace and Quiet"

Victor E. Sasson

Today, Staff Writer Hannan Adely called to interview me over the phone for a story.      

Second look

Under Gottlieb, story lengths have grown, countering a trend toward shorter, more readable stories before he took over in January 2012.

Coupled with a shrinking paper and a smaller news hole -- less space for stories than before -- that means much less variety for readers. 

On Sunday, the lead front-page story on hospitals in Passaic city and Newark was an astounding 120 inches long, including photos; and the rehash of a 1992 murder case ran 94 inches.

On the Opinion front, Charles Saydah's scholarly dissertation on affordable housing was 104 inches long -- which exceeds the actual number of low- and moderate-cost units in most towns.

Editors at The Record are barking up the wrong tree

On Monday, when City Hall was closed for Presidents Day, Hackensack sent a private contractor to cut down city owned trees on Euclid Avenue without notice to residents. No one answered the phones at the Department of Public Works or other offices.

The top half of the tree was fed directly into a chipping machine called the "Beever," which helps explain why so many reporters at The Record never learned how to spell.

This tree and two others on the block were damaged by Superstorm Sandy. The trees could have been more than 160 years old, dating to the development of Fairmount in the 1850s.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR


The only bright spot on Page 1 today is the upbeat story about how the Ridgewood and Fair Lawn libraries are helping impoverished Paterson give every child a book to take home and keep.

But readers soon learn North Jersey Media Group, The Record and the Herald News are involved -- so this is just another public-relations ploy to cover up the irresponsible decline in coverage of Hackensack and so many other towns.

Afternoon naps have become a fixture on the local-news assignment desk of head Editor Deirdre Sykes and her snoring deputy, Dan Sforza.

More Paterson crime

Typical of The Record's coverage of Silk City is the story below the fold on a black pastor who is on trial in the apparently premeditated attempted murder of his "longtime mistress" (A-1).

Meanwhile, Editor Marty Gottlieb keeps hitting readers over the head with yet another story about the investigation of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. (A-1).

Is there an explanation in the lead A-1 story -- on the $3.9 billion PSE&G is spending to get systems ready for the next superstorm -- why this wasn't launched after the devastating pre-Halloween storm in 2011?
 
Sykes' and Sforza's Local news section is silent again on Hackesack municipal affairs.

Selling out readers

In Better Living, the Starters piece on Ridgewood Fare is so promotional readers wonder whether the pricey restaurant had to agree to a display advertising contract in return (BL-1).

Joyce Venezia Suss, the writer, quotes Ridgewood Fare's general manager praising the place to the sky, but she is getting paid to say all of that, so what are readers to think.

Why is this so long? Is Suss getting paid by the inch?

The clueless Suss even quotes the restaurant's flunky as saying "all proteins" are "slow-growth and hormone-free," but that could mean they are filled with harmful animal antibiotics.

What a disgrace.