Readers get more slanted reporting on Teterboro jet noise

This Teterboro Airport-bound business jet was among several I saw passing low over homes and an elementary school in southwest Hackensack on April 18 -- two weeks after a new flight path was supposed to keep aircraft away from nearby Hackensack University Medical Center and Prospect Avenue high-rises.

The Fanny Meyer Hillers Elementary School is in the neighborhood, which hasn't seen any relief from aircraft noise.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today and this past Monday reports a new flight path to keep noisy corporate jets away from Hackensack never went into effect on April 4.

That wasn't news to residents of southwest Hackensack, where business jets heading for Teterboro Airport continue to skim the roofs of Prospect Avenue high-rises and Hackensack University Medical Center.

In fact, Staff Writer Paul Berger, who wrote tens of thousands of words on the flight-path change before April 4, was clueless until he was contacted by Hackensack gadfly Regina DiPasqua, who was quoted on Monday's front page:

"They are still flying very low," said DiPasqua, who lives near the airport and hadn't noticed any difference in jet noise that drowns out conversation and television.

"You can read the numbers on the plane," she added.

Slanted coverage

Today's coverage reports the Federal Aviation Administration says it will be another six weeks before the new flight path goes into effect, requiring pilots to begin following Route 17 in northern Bergen County (A-1 and L-1).

In the weeks before the initial start date of April 4, Berger quoted officials in Mahwah and other towns, bitching and moaning that noisy jets would be flying over their communities and schools.

I never saw similar reporting from Hackensack after moving in 2007 to the city's Fairmount section, which is under the noisy landing paths of both Teterboro and Newark Liberty International airports.

Nor has The Record quoted residents of Teaneck and Englewood in recent years about aircraft noise from Teterboro jets.

Hackensack news?

Staff Writer John Seasly has a follow-up today to the announcement by Hackensack Police Director Mike Mordaga that he is leaving the job on May 16 (L-1).

Seasly has written more stories about the city's Police Department than any other agency.

However, the reporter continues to ignore Hackensack schools and Board of Education.

Fort Lee readers will find a story on their school budget and tax hike on L-3 today, but Seasly never reported the March 1 adoption of Hackensack's much larger school budget or any details.

The $79 million tax levy to support a $104 million school budget was approved last week by a tiny minority of the 20,000 Hackensack residents who are registered to vote.

Missing the real story about Teterboro Airport

Frequently patched but not repaved since 1979, this stretch of Euclid Avenue in Hackensack's Fairmount section gives drivers a rough ride on the way to Summit Avenue. It's one of many streets that have been neglected as taxes have risen.

Business jets on the way to Teterboro Airport roar overhead and appear to skim the rooftops of Prospect Avenue high-rises in Hackensack. Residents get the noise and passengers on the jets get to sip single-malt whisky as their planes touch down gently.

Residents of Hackensack, Teaneck and other towns who have complained bitterly about aircraft noise took a quick look at the Page 1 photo of a man pointing a revolver skyward and thought:

Someone has finally acted out their fantasy of trying to scare away the multimillion-dollar aircraft.

The Record's story on bird strikes completely misses the point about Teterboro Airport, which continues to have a huge negative impact on the quality of life in Bergen County.

This is really a story about the 1%: all of the wealthy owners of those business jets, including Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg.

And how they are pitted against the 99%: homeowners and apartment dwellers whose complaints have fallen on the deaf ears of the editors and the Port Authority, which owns and operates the airport, and rakes in tens of millions of dollars in landing fees.

Has the Woodland Park daily ever covered a meeting of the airport's liaison committee, which includes a Hackensack City Council member and other officials?

Dissing Hackensack 

A second front-page story -- on towns that turn public services over to the private sector -- discusses a half-dozen communities among the 90 or so in North Jersey, and ignores the most diverse -- Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood.

In the past several years, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, seem to have made a conscious decision to concentrate coverage on the wealthy or mostly white towns in Bergen County.

Vote against women

A letter to the editor accuses Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, of standing with his friends in the Tea Party, not with the women of New Jersey, when he voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (A-9).

Garrett is the moron in Congress residents of Hackensack, Fair Lawn and most of Teaneck, among other towns, are stuck with after he was reelected in November.

Residents have The Record to thank for writing off his Democratic challenger, and concentrating its coverage on the arch-conservative Garrett. 

Rote journalism  

Today's Local section contains no news of Hackensack except a photo taken at the middle school (L-3).

Check out the imaginative over line for the beautiful photo by Kevin R. Wexler: "THAT'S DANCING".

No. That's a bored copy editor.

 

A funny thing happened to Hackensack reporter

Image via Wikipedia

A funny thing happened to Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado on the way to the Woodland Park office or wherever it is she hangs out while ignoring basic coverage of River City, where The Record was founded in 1895. A parking garage on Prospect Street collapsed, forcing the evacuation of the attached luxury high-rise and forcing Alvarado and other staffers to cover Hackensack for a change.


Since the initial collapse on Friday, the story has been front-page news, including today, when Alvarado reports on city inspections of other parking garages. But the paper still has not given readers details of Hackensack's proposed budget and tax hike, or reported the naming of a new mayor.


For the past few years, Alvarado appears to be the kind of reporter who has to be told what to cover, and she has been taking her cues from head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who acts like a Mother Hen to her staff. 

Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale, meanwhile, doesn't appear to be much of a force in the newsroom, even after Publisher Stephen A. Borg stopped taking an active role in editorial decisions that rightfully were Scandale's.


Desperate for a big A-1 photo today, all the editors could come up with was the aftermath of a storm in Belmar. The lead story reports that despite the drastic cuts in the state budget, we face a deficit almost as large as before. So much for the property tax cuts promised by Governor Christie -- friend of the rich and enemy to just about everybody else.


Local has no Teaneck, Englewood or Hackensack news. A new feature, Brief Tributes, is a roundup of local obituaries (L-6).

In Better Living, Food Editor Bill Pitcher discusses one of his obsessions -- beef short ribs -- a perfect dish for the heat waves we've been having.

Now readers search for answers

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If the past is any guide, The Record of Woodland Park may have one or two more stories about the parking-garage collapse in Hackensack, then ignore the city where it was founded for another couple of months. Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado will go back to napping on the doorstep of suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa, but won't be able to get a quote from him on his mounting legal troubles.


Most of the local reporters are spoon-fed their assignments by the minions working for head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, but Alvarado, Jean Rimbach and Shawn Boburg apparently work directly for the jocular Sykes, who breast feeds them, from the looks of the Zisa stories they produce now and again.


It's simply irresponsible for Sykes' Local section to ignore basic news about Hackensack day after day -- from the proposed budget and tax hike to the new mayor -- in favor of all the drivel this reporting trio has come up with on Zisa. 

For example, this past Thursday's Page 1 "blockbuster" reported the chief had a security contract with a hospital that ended in December 2005. The only quote these three reporting wizards could get from Zisa was a rehash from 2007.


Where is Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale -- castrated by Sykes and Publisher Stephen A. Borg after the latter took over in mid-2006? Where are the Borgs? I guess they don't see the paper out in The Hamptons.


Today's paper continues A-1 coverage of the Prospect Avenue parking-garage collapse, revealing no one was injured. But the editors are already bored with the story, unable to come up with really dramatic photos of the collapse they could run on the front and inside, so they resort to filler on the Yankees and a plane crash in Maine.


The other A-1 story -- reporting that the impact of 2% property tax cap may not be felt for years -- is troubling. But on the Opinion front, Assemblyman Gary S. Schaer, D-Passaic, outs Governor Christie's favorable treatment of the rich as no Record editorial, column or news story has.

In fact, an editorial on the next page praises Christie for "an impressive start" in his first six months in office, making no mention of the huge tax break he gave to his millionaire supporters, many of whom bankrolled his campaign.


On the front of Local, Road Warrior John Cichowski writes about "imponderables," but doesn't mention the chief one is why he is  allowed to continue his boring, repetitive column.

(Photo: The Pulaski Skyway, linking Jersey City and Newark. Editor Frank Scandale once barred mention of of "Pulaski Skyway" on Page 1, because, he claimed, readers had never heard of it.)

Did The Record beat competitors?

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The Record of Woodland Park today was all over the parking garage collapse on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, and may have beaten competitors by reporting that "at least two people" were trapped. Other media said rescuers were trying to reach only one person.


Coverage by 11 staffers -- including Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado -- takes up almost all of Page 1 and continues to nearly two full inside pages. The other story on those pages is the suspension of state vehicle mechanical inspections to save $11 million a year.


Although the coverage of the disaster is good, the human element is missing. To Hackensack residents, the luxury high-rises along Prospect Avenue are almost a city apart. Who are the thousands of people who live here? Are they mostly New York commuters with little or no attachment to Hackensack, or interest in civic affairs?


In today's paper, you won't find anything about the people who live there, and only limited information on the lifestyle of Prospect Avenue residents, who are accustomed to doormen, concierges and so forth in return for high rents or condo and co-op fees. You'd think Alvarado, who is assigned to Hackensack, would provide such specialized knowledge, but like the other reporters on the story, this might be the first time she has spent any time on Prospect Avenue, if she even went there.


In other words, you won't find much context, typical of the paper's system of entrusting most reporting and story decisions -- not to staffers in the field, but to a group of lazy, moronic assignment editors under Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale and Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes. This continues in the office, where the assignment editors do the rewrites that any reporter worth his or her salt should be doing themselves.


Local is a thin section for another day, missing any municipal news from Englewood, Teaneck or Hackensack, but the flurry of Englewood Cliffs news continues, the second day in the row that small town is covered. Sykes and her minions are doing such a great job inspiring their reporters.

(Photo: The Church on The Green, Hackensack)

Sunday, July 4, 2010

I just flipped through The Record of Woodland Park for Sunday, July 4, when I was away. It took only about five minutes, but I didn't see any news about Hackensack's proposed budget and tax hike, the new mayor or any other subject.