Enough construction updates already

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As if we didn't read enough about Ridgewood in Monday's paper, here is another detailed story in The Record of Woodland Park about a construction project in the village. The assignment desk and reporter take what is basically a construction update and pad it mercilessly, while trying to give it a negative spin by quoting residents whose lives are disrupted by the project.

The piece on today's Local front is by Staff Writer Tom Davis, a transportation reporter infamous for his attacks on light rail, including its planned extension to Englewood and Tenafly.  


In today's piece on making the Ridgewood train station handicap accessible, he pulls out all the stops: Cranes "tower over this bucolic community." "Stores and shops dating ... to the 19th century are visible to train passengers." There's more:

"Tubes, beams and pipes are scattered around the site as cranes and bulldozers move quickly through concrete rubble."

This is great reporting, but Hackensack readers might be asking themselves why they've never seen a story on a permanent replacement for NJ Transit's Anderson Street Station, a historic structure that burned down, what, two years ago? Rail riders have had to make do with a crummy bus shelter since then. 



It's a marvel how head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and such minions as Dan Sforza get reporters to do construction-update fillers and dress them up as real stories, while continuing to ignore news from Hackensack and other Bergen towns. Or did The Record miss the project in Ridgewood until now?


Monday was the first day since July 17 without coverage of the parking-garage collapse in Hackensack. The stories, as numerous as they were, often didn't contain even basic information, such as whether Prospect Avenue remains closed. It does. And the stories also overlooked major information, such as the massive project being pushed for 329 Prospect, diagonally across from the high-rise where the garage collapsed.


A letter to the editor today from Thomas J. Lyndon of Hackensack (A-8) reports that "for the past year," the city Board of Adjustment has been considering more than a dozen variances for a 20-story, acute-care hospital with "five levels of underground parking."


I guess we haven't read about this proposal -- especially relevant in view of the garage collapse -- from Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado, because apparently she has been ordered by Sykes to ignore all Hackensack news outside of the legal troubles of suspended Police Chief Ken Ziza.


Today's front page is an all-New Jersey affair except for a big photo of soldiers in Afghanistan, an image that looks posed. The editors, desperate for a color photo, again demonstrate how A-1 design trumps journalism. Were there no Jersey photos worthy of Page 1?


Here's belated recognition for Staff Writer Jeff Pillets, whose A-1 story on Sunday exposed the waste and corruption behind the making of the New Overpeck County Park, which was 60 years in the making. However, I did think he was nitpicking over erosion and slow-growing grass.


Still, will anything come of his story? The contracts have been awarded, millions of dollars in taxpayers' money have been  wasted. Maybe his story would have changed things if it was written a year ago or two years ago.

(Photo: Original Anderson Street Station in Hackensack.)

Cure for a bad newspaper?

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This is the post for Friday, July 23, 2010.

If you doubt the front page of The Record of Woodland Park is for sale to the highest bidder, just look at the ridiculous story filed by Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson today. Page 1 clearly shows the desperate editors are ready to prostitute themselves at the drop of a big name.

Those laughable, Cold War-era Russian spies were swapped more than two weeks ago, and readers promptly forgot about a story that didn't amount to anything in the first place. But here is Jackson and Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale selling out to the well-oiled Hollywood publicity machine by linking the spies to "Salt," a movie starring Angelina Jolie that, guess what, opened today. There's also a lukewarm review in Better Living. 

In view of the downsizing of The Record and Herald News and the decline of  local news, can the former Hackensack daily really afford a Washington correspondent? Couldn't Jackson be of better use in Trenton or Woodland Park? How much does he actually contribute? If today's story is any example of his worth, I say, Throw the bum out.


The Local news section is a standing joke, thanks to head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, who has so many "pals" among local reporters, productivity has plummeted.


Road Warrior John Cichowski has an L-1 column today on roadside curiosities. Gee-whiz.  Approaching his seventh anniversary as a columnist, he has become a curiosity.


Leading A-1, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado and Staff Writer Nick Clunn weigh in with the seventh straight day of coverage on the Prospect Avenue parking-garage collapse, in a story that demonstrates the continuing decline of assigning, reporting, writing and copy editing at the paper.

The collapse occurred last Friday or seven days ago, not six, as she reports. She says residents removed "select belongings" from their apartments. What kind of belongings are those? 

In all seven days of coverage, readers never get any real sense of what it means to be thrown out of a luxury apartment in a heat wave, possibly without a car. Alvarado never spent any time with the evacuees or told of their experiences. Today, she reports the new Mercedes of one tenant, a trauma surgeon, was crushed, but doesn't tell readers how the woman has been getting around.

TV news says the building's landlord is paying tenants' hotel bills and other expenses, but are the tenants still required to pay rent? Your guess is as good as mine.


Local has no municipal news from Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood today. The paper didn't correct Thursday's error on when the Hackensack budget was adopted, nor has there ever been a story on the budget and tax levy. The reporter, Erik Shilling, had the wrong month.


On L-2, the caption with a photo of Paterson's new mayor doesn't explain why he held his inaugural ball in Garfield.


In Better Living, Food Editor Bill Pitcher seems to have a lot of reservations about food quality and preparation at Segovia Steakhouse in Little Ferry, yet he gives it a two-star rating. He refers to mussels he didn't eat -- because they were so foul-smelling he "couldn't get more than a few" past his nose -- as a "ration," a word better suited to describe military or prison slop.


In Starters on Page 17 of Better Living, free-lancer Amy Kuperinsky misspells the Greek word for large lima beans. They are called gigantes or giants.

 (Photo: Hollywood studios in 1922.)