Burying the lede

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Readers thought Wednesday's Page 1 takeout told them everything about so-called reforms at Hackensack University Medical Center after a federal trial exposed payments to a corrupt politician. 

So what's the explanation for today's A-1 story disclosing a $7.7 million salary and severance package for John P. Ferguson -- who was forced out as president of HUMC -- and millions more for other executives and employees?  

Why was this held until today?

Ferguson is the same man who, on July 25, enlisted The Record of Woodland Park to publicize his new venture with a Page 1 story that had negligible impact on North Jersey residents.

The July story reported -- apropos of nothing -- that Ferguson was president and CEO of a company that plans to open up to 20 upscale hospitals outside the U.S. to cater to affluent travelers and residents, the first in wealthy Dubai.

Why are federal tax filings containing Ferguson's 2009 pay package coming out just now? Did Jennifer A. Borg, a former HUMC board member, have anything to do with the splashy July story or with delaying today's story about the hospital, one of the paper's big advertisers?  

Borg is vice president and general counsel of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, and big sister of Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

Praying for a good headline

The main element on A-1 has an overline and a headline that seemed designed to turn readers off, not engage them. You'd think the news copy editor would have been inspired by a terrific photo showing a woman in court praying for a favorable ruling, and then written a photo overline and headline that drew readers in.

Instead, the photo overline uses the phrase "conflict resolution," which is about as dull as you can get:

Conflict resolution is their specialty

Who is "their"? The main headline below the photo says, "Court handles cases towns can't." Exciting, isn't it?

There are more problems with this A-1 package. The photo caption shows Mark Oprihory and Mary Foley, her hands clasped in prayer, on a court bench and, nearby, George Lahood, and says the first two await a ruling "in a case against" Lahood.

But the story doesn't even mention Mark Oprihory and Mary Foley.  

Police and court news

In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, all the stories on the front are court and police news, and there is a lot more Law & Order coverage inside.

The entire section contains municipal or education stories from four towns, but no Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck news, or anything else from other major towns in North Jersey.

Drumming up business for the Borgs?

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In one of his last posts on The Record's Second Helpings blog, Food Editor Bill Pitcher appears to solicit business for a wine bar in which his bosses, Stephen and Jennifer Borg, may still have an interest.


In an item Monday, Pitcher wrote that Teresa Guidice, one of the "Real Housewives of New Jersey," was to sign copies of her book that night at Grand Cru, a wine bar in Englewood. There is no mention of whether the Borgs are still investors in the wine bar, which was once featured in the food pages with a disclosure of their role.


Grand Cru is just down the street from Solaia Restaurant, which is owned by businessman Michel Bittan. He reportedly had a relationship with one of those Russian spies who were in the news recently. 

The Record's Giovanna Fabiano was unable to get a comment from Bittan, nor does she seem intent on disclosing his holdings and influence in Englewood's struggling Palisade Avenue business district.

Failing to deliver local news

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If you are an editor at The Record of Woodland Park, you never have to explain why there is so little local news in the paper day after day -- certainly not to the Borgs, who pay little attention to the newsroom as they dream of untold riches from the sale of their former Hackensack headquarters and surrounding land.


Can't you just see North Jersey Media Group President and Publisher Stephen A. Borg waking up each morning in the $3.65 million Tenafly mansion he bought with a company mortgage? Do you think he walks down his driveway to fetch The Record or does he even get the paper delivered to his estate?


What about his big sister, Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan? She doesn't see the paper unless she goes to her office on Garret Mountain.


Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg? I doubt he goes out every morning to pick up the paper from his East Hill driveway in Englewood. Can the marginalized NJMG chairman even bend down to pick it up? Maybe he sees it in Hackensack, where he is holding down the old fort with a few reporters and the computer folks, surveying all the new, unsold Toyotas in the parking lot.


So, if you are Editor Frank Scandale (his news policy is to front page all sports stories and many sex crimes) or head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes (her news policy is to ignore Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck), it's likely you never get a call from the Borgs or anybody else about why a daily newspaper that made its reputation on covering local news is doing such a poor jobs of informing readers about what is going on in their towns.


Instead, as in today's Local section, readers get a lot of court, crime and accident news, plus one of those international custody battles that newspaper editors seem to love so much but that always read alike -- just substitute the name of the foreign country where the kids are living.


Nine candidates running for council in Teaneck, one of the most progressive and diverse communities in Bergen County? Sykes shoves it to the back of the Local section, and strips it of any information on whether the candidates are tax-weary Orthodox Jews, like the ones who tried to take over the Board of Education in the April school election.


Hackensack news? Another lawsuit filed against suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa -- this one from one of the two cops who allege he ordered them to cover up the real cause of the accident involving Zisa's  then-girlfriend. The chief's legal troubles have been reported in detail for close to a year -- to the exclusion of almost all other Hackensack news. Englewood news? Nothing.

At least on Page 1 today, to his credit, Scandale highlights more state aid cuts -- these affect legal services for battered women and others in Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties -- but the coverage of Governor Christie's budget rampage has been piecemeal. What's called for is a standing front-page element detailing the cuts and how they affect everyday life in North Jersey.

The Borgs are more concerned about image, not local news, such as the image Stephen Borg wants to create by changing the paper's slogan to "The Trusted Local Source" from "Friend  of The People It Serves." He must have come up with that fiction while enjoying an expensive wine at the Englewood wine bar in which he and his sister are investors. Recently, they claimed NJMG is proud of the "responsible journalism" it practices.


I am sure they are not fooling readers.

(Photo: The Hackensack River in Teaneck.)

Is Margulies a journalist?

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Where does Margulies get off confusing readers about the impact of Governor Christie's austere state budget? His cartoon today, in Opinion, seems to suggest the wealthy are being "screwed" by the governor? Or does he mean they will be running for their corkscrews and drink to their good fortune?

If he is saying the rich will be screwed, it's just plain inaccurate. In fact, the Borgs and other wealthy families no longer have to pay the so-called millionaire's tax, and owners of small businesses get a 4% tax cut on corporate income. If he's saying they'll be celebrating, it's an especially poor choice of image, given Stephen and Jennifer Borg's investment in an Englewood wine bar, not to mention their father's past problems with alcohol.

This cartoon doesn't say much for Margulies' journalism credentials.  

Most of the front page in The Record of Woodland Park today is devoted to the state's financial crisis: 

"Plenty of pain

to go around"

This is a reader-friendly summary of Christie's proposed cuts, but much of the rest of the Sunday paper is disappointing.

The L-1 piece on recycling electronics omits any mention of Hackensack's program to accept TVs, computers and batteries year-round, one of the few municipal efforts in North Jersey.

Where does Road Warrior John Cichowski have his head buried, so he doesn't have to write about lousy local bus service? Potholes (L-1). Inside Local, possible school cuts in Passaic city and Wayne are explored in great detail, but Hackensack schools are ignored.


In Business, what is the point of the article on luxury-car importers? The B-2 graphic also appears to be inaccurate on Ferrari sales: They went up, not down.


One of the best pieces in today's paper didn't come from a staffer. It's Jeff Tittel's O-1 piece on restoring the flood plain (he's director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey).

Hey, Mac, where are you?

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Hey, Mac, don't you see what they are doing to your newspaper? Don't you see how those lazy, incompetent editors have shifted the news focus away from Bergen County, alienating readers in Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other important towns? Don't you see how the editors let their pals go days, weeks, months and even years without a byline, causing resentment among productive members of the news staff?

Don't you see how your two spoiled brats, Stephen and Jennifer, have pushed you aside and completely taken over?

You, Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, are the chairman of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of  The Record, Herald News, weeklies and other publications, so why have you kept your office in the landmark building at 150 River St. when just about everybody else has moved to Woodland Park, Rockaway Township and other offices? What do you do all day?

I remember how full of bluster you were when, as publisher, you made your unannounced visits to the Hackensack newsroom  in the 1980s and 1990s, exchanging spirited banter with Record editors and reporters and even admonishing them about abusing the furniture.

I remember when you still had a personal chef in Hackensack and invited me to attend a lunch with Stephen Berger, then the newly appointed executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an agency I covered as the paper's transportation reporter.

You had never met Berger before, but you still drank then and you used the f-word to express your frustration with inaction on one of your pet projects -- an air museum at the Port Authority-owned Teterboro Airport. "What the f--k is going on with ....," your sentence began.

Since then, you have had big health problems and you are a shadow of the man you once were. As a reuslt, The Record is completely ruderless. Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Scandale is a failure as a leader. Head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes seems unable to inspire her local reporters, and her deputies are clueless.

The front page of The Record of Woodland Park seems to reflect the paper's precipitous decline.

Most of the page is devoted to yet another infrastructure story by transportation reporter Karen Rouse, who seems to have pieced it together from news releases, a report and a few phone calls. Scandale hand-picked Rouse from his old newspaper, but she failed miserably when given a chance as an assistant assignment editor.

She also is lazy. When the newsroom was still in Hackensack, she couldn't muster the energy to walk across River Street to the bus station and ride the decrepit No. 780 local bus, which is used almost exclusively by blacks and Hispanics who can't afford cars and which contrasts starkly with much newer NJ Transit buses for mostly white commuters to Manhattan.

The lead story on A-1 is a fascinating exploration of corrupt campaign financing based in Dumont by Staff Writer Ashley Kindergan, whose energy and unstinting leg work puts Rouse and many other reporters to shame. The story is yet another powerful argument for dismantling the home-rule system.

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On the front of Local, three of the four stories focus on Paterson, Passaic County and the Passaic River. The section has nothing but police news about Hackensack, where Mac Borg grew up, where The Record was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years.


 I never read The Record's sports columnists, but when I turned to Ian O'Connor's column on the incredible victory of the Saints in yesterday's Super Bowl, boy was I disappointed. This hack squanders his first six paragraphs on a detailed retelling of an interception and buries his lead -- that this was all about the triumph of the City of New Orleans, which was crapped on for so many years by the Bush administration after Hurricane Katrina.

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