Editors won't press beloved chefs on antibiotics

A workman appeared this morning at Euclid and Prospect avenues in Hackensnack, where potholes were marked with chalk, below, apparently to designate those that will be repaired weeks after they appeared.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Another slow-news Sunday and another weird story on Page 1 of The Record today, celebrating "health-conscious American consumers" who grow or raise their own food, including eggs from hens they keep in the backyard. 

Consumers, the story claims, are "increasingly crying foul about the antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides, herbicides [and] genetic engineering" in the food they eat (A-1).

But why is the small minority who raise their own egg-laying chickens getting such big play on the front page when the paper's own food editor and food writers choose to ignore all the bad things factory farms do to food in the name of quick profits? 

Free ride

Rarely does Food Editor Esther Davidowitz or Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung ever mention all of the harmful additives in the food that restaurant chefs serve, denying concerned consumers the ability to make informed decisions.

On the paper's expense account, Ung has swooned over the "funk" from aged hunks of beef for $40, $50 or $60 without ever saying whether the animals were grass fed or raised naturally.

God forbid that during the weekly "COFFEE WITH ..." feature in Better Living (BL-2), a chef is asked about how the food he serves is raised or grown, instead of the weirdest thing a customer asked for. 

Mixed messages

And the paper's monthly survey of supermarket prices -- which runs in the Business section -- doesn't include organic or naturally raised or grown food.

Today's story on chicken-raising suburbanites might remind newsroom veterans, present and former, of the wonderfully fresh eggs copy desk supervisor Vinny Byrne brought into work for copy editors from chickens he raised at home more than a decade ago.

Euclid and Prospect avenues before the work began, above.

An employee of the private contractor, M. Ingannamorte & Son of Tenafly, said he believes only potholes on Prospect Avenue are being patched, above, meaning others on the block of Euclid between Prospect and Summit avenues are not slated for repair now.

Another disappointing Sunday

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Does any commuter doubt Hudson River toll hikes would have been lower if Governor Christie hadn't grabbed $1.8 billion in Port Authority funds for state roads?

Are voters supposed to clip out today's Page 1, side-by-side comparison of Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr. and Steve Rothman, and save it for reference just before the primary election more than five months from now?


Why is that running now? Isn't there anything else happening -- or not happening -- in Washington? Maybe that's the story that should be on the front page of this ho-hum Sunday edition.


And why does Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson give a pass to Rothman?


The Record has refrained from reporting the anger of many Democrats who feel Rothman is ducking out of a fight against an arch-conservative Republican, Scott Garret, the U.S. representative from Wantage.


And where in this long story is the biographical material comparing Pascrell, the scrappy former mayor of Paterson, to Rothman, who is from a privileged background in Englewood?


Finally, have you ever seen a more boring headline? Where was the supervisor of the news copy desk, Editor Liz Houlton, who earned the title "Queen of Errors" when she ran the features copy desk?

Two candidates

separated by style

You can slap that generic headline on any political story for years to come. It's probably on one of Houlton's save/get keys.


GOP bully speaks


More GOP bias is evident in the bully A-1 pulpit interim Editor Douglas Clancy gives to Governor Christie, who told editors he's finally going to do something about the free-spending Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.


After all, Christie is partly responsible for the huge Hudson River toll and fare hikes, as well as the recent increases on the turnpike and parkway.


Instead of raising the gas tax on his limousine-riding supporters, Christie grabbed billions in agency funds, shifting the money from the Hudson River rail tunnels he killed to state road and mass-transit projects.


Heat but no light


An A-3 story doesn't explain how higher prices for credits sold by solar-power producers would "come at the expense of ratepayers and utilities." 


And the story ignores credits sold to utilities by homeowners (and ratepayers) who have spent tens of thousands of dollars to install solar panels.


Determined to avoid writing about commuters, Road Warrior John Cichowski bases his column today on e-mails from truckers and other so-called professional drivers (L-1). He's boring us to tears recounting all these reader e-mails.


The Local news section continues to report on seemingly endless municipal reorganization meetings.


A jerk reveals herself


Can the editors explain why an unlabeled photo that appears to have been taken in Europe accompanies a column by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung (Better Living cover)?


The arrogant Ung tells readers how they can get their "money's worth in a restaurant -- without being a jerk."


If anyone is a "jerk," it's the unseasoned reviewer herself, obsessing over dessert and blindly praising the cheap beef, poultry and fish many restaurants serve to fatten their profits.


On the Opinion front, an overly long column under the headline, "Key questions remain after Iowa caucuses," fails to answer the most obvious question -- why has The Record and other media wasted so much time and space covering the Republican nomination campaign?

Is naturally raised food so ho-hum?

Image via Wikipedia

 

Food Editor Bill Pitcher has been doing restaurant reviews in the absence of Elisa Ung. But in today's appraisal of Ho-Ho-Kus Inn & Tavern, he doesn't seem to give the place any points for serving naturally raised chicken, pork and beef, and wild fish.

The $1.5 million renovation, food and service draw only two and a half stars from Pitcher -- only a half star more than Ung gave Bahama Breeze, one of those awful, faux-Caribbean chain restaurants, on Route 23 in Wayne. That rating by Ung in The Record of Woodland Park has been haunting her and Pitcher, and diluting the ratings of other restaurants.

Restaurants that serve naturally raised food aren't so common in North Jersey that they should be treated like every other place.

Trickle-down Christie bares his fangs

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Governor Christie's harsh budget plan shares the front page with flooding in The Record of Woodland Park today. We have more to worry about from the governor's concessions to wealthy small-business owners and rich families like the Borgs than we do from Mother Nature.

The headline on Staff Writer Charles Stile's Page 1 column calls us "guinea pigs" in the Republican's trickle-down experiment, which recalls the disastrous outcome of Ronald Reagan's similar sleight-of-hand decades ago. (Photo: President Ronald Reagan.)


On A-4, the story on Christie's proposal to end Bergen County's Sunday shopping ban makes no mention of The Record's financial and editorial support the last time shopping centers tried to repeal blue laws.


The A-18 editorial seems to have been edited by Publisher Stephen A. Borg and doesn't condemn the governor for refusing to raise the gasoline tax and reinstate the "millionaire's tax" during this unprecedented fiscal crisis.

Coverage of the weekend nor'easter, especially in Local, seems adequate today, but there is little here on how the region's routine was severely disrupted, even for those who escaped flooded basements, power outages or trees crashing down on their homes.

In Business, Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais has more on shrinking packages at supermarkets. Don't you wonder why there is so little coverage of food shopping in the food pages?

Although Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung is on leave, she continues to be the voice of wealthy restaurant owners. Couldn't all that space in Better Living today on how restaurants use menus to market meals be better devoted to helping restaurant goers during the recession?

More misinformation?

Environmental reporting at The Record of Woodland Park should be recycled. Editors and reporters have ignored Hackensack's excellent program to accept such electronics as TVs and computers, and compact fluorescent bulbs containing mercury, and have written nothing about delays of two years or more facing homeowners who want to install solar panels.

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Now, Staff Writer James Yoo reports on the front of Local today that towns in Bergen and Passaic counties no longer accept household batteries for recycling. He quotes everyone but Hackensack officials. I wasn't able to reach Hackensack's recycling director, but the city employee who answered the phone said that as far as she knew, batteries still are accepted for recycling. So who is correct?

Hackensack, after all, is where The Record was founded in 1895 and were it prospered for more than 110 years. Now, the paper not only has moved printing and virtually all of its news staff out of River City, but it has turned its back on city's residents and most of their news, along with ignoring Teaneck and Englewood as much as possible. 

For weeks at a time, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado is missing in inaction, and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes seems not to notice or care. The Borg family? Just counting the money.

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It looks like Staff Writer Joseph Ax and Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi have been pulled out of Haiti and in the process, the incompetent editors have demoted coverage of the humanitarian crisis. In the few days they were there, Haiti again was front-page news (coat of arms is shown).

Page 1 today is filled with hard news, including Staff Writer Michael Gartland's continuing revelations about financial abuses by Bergen County school district officials. The lead story says the Xanadu shopping and entertainment complex may open after all, despite all the attempts by The Record and Staff Writer John Brennan to write its obituary.

The major element on the front reports on the state's share of the proposed federal budget, including allowing tax cuts to expire for such wealthy people as Malcolm, Stephen and Jennifer Borg of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record and Herald News. The top bracket would go to 39 percent from 35 percent. I doubt a 4% jump in taxes would crimp their lifestyle: a heady mix of mansions, vacation and city homes, a wine bar and more.

I laughed when I saw the main headline on the front of  Better Living:  "The high cost of free advertising," referring to complaints by a Ridgewood couple whose restaurant will be profiled on Chef Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" reality program (photo).

Image by jo-h via Flickr

 Of course, there is absolutely no cost to restaurateurs for the lavish, uncritical coverage by The Record and Staff Writer Elisa Ung, who would make a good addition to the advertising staff. Recall her huge spread about Bobby Flay's hamburger restaurant in Paramus, her blow-by-blow reporting about the ups and downs of the South City Restaurant Group and her two-star review of Bahama Breeze, a mediocre chain restaurant on the highway in Wayne. Or how about her failure to investigate claims by the nail-biting Flay and other chefs intent on hiding the low quality of the beef they serve?


I am still waiting for a reality program called "Newsroom Nightmares," which would expose The Record and other newspapers for cutting staffs and benefits, and turning their backs on local news, while their owners continue to prosper.