Woodland Park can't spare a reporter to cover Englewood

A bright spot in downtown Englewood is this art gallery, one of the few non-food businesses along Palisade Avenue, where railroad tracks separate the city's white and minority residents.

These Engle Street storefronts have been empty for months. They are less than a half-block away from bustling Palisade Avenue in Englewood.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record covers Englewood and other important towns with inexperienced reporters from one of the weekly papers owned by the Borg family's publishing empire, North Jersey Media Group.

On today's and Sunday's Local fronts, the byline of Stephanie Noda appears over stories about Englewood, but calling her "STAFF WRITER" is a stretch.

Noda and other reporters whose stories appear in The Record work for one of NJMG's many weeklies. In her case, it's Northern Valley Suburbanite.

What's wrong with that?

Paid less, get less

Noda and other weekly reporters are paid less and have less experience than staffers in The Record's Woodland Park newsroom.

And as a result, their coverage can be unsophisticated, especially in such a racially diverse community as Englewood, where school segregation persists more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education.

Clueless editors

Of course, you can also blame that on the clueless Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, the local assignment editors who issue marching orders to Noda and other weekly reporters.

I have yet to read any stories about Englewood's struggling downtown or the many real estate companies, including Bittan Group, that keep storefronts empty until they get the high rents they demand.

Victoria's Secret, Panera Bread and Ann Taylor are among the prominent corporate names that closed their businesses in Englewood. 

Borg strategy

NJMG Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg lives on Englewood's East Hill, but it's a world apart from the working-class neighborhoods on the other side of the tracks that you only read about in police news.

Mac's son, Publisher Stephen A. Borg of Tenafly, pioneered the cost-effective strategy of using weekly reporters to cover news in important towns. 

Bittan Group is said to own a great deal of property in downtown Englewood, including Solaia Restaurant on Van Brunt Street.

Bertelsen is among the landlords who appear content to keep stores empty until they can get their price.

Classy entrance to a desolate space on Engle Street.

On Monday afternoon, I came across this sign on the doorstep of an empty storefront on North Dean Street, near Palisade Avenue. It reads: "The Record Memorabilia At a Great Price."

Weekly reporters

Another reporter from an NJMG weekly, Megan Burrow, wrote a story on the Hackensack River Greenway in Teaneck that appeared in The Record on Sunday (L-1).

The byline of Marc Lightdale of Northern Valley Suburbanite appeared over a story about Harrington Park, also on Sunday's Local front.

Other weekly reporters in Sunday's thin edition of The Record  included Svetlana Shkolnikova, Debra Winters and Lindsey Kelleher, all listed as "STAFF WRITER" (L-3).

Readers of The Record deserve better.

Media fold when cops clam up

Florida officials took a full six weeks to file charges in the Trayvon Martin shooting.

Trayvon Martin is a name known around the world, but you'd probably have a hard time finding anyone outside North Jersey who knows Malik Williams.


The media hysteria over the fatal shooting of Martin, 17, of Sanford, Fla., finally led to a second-degree murder charge against George Zimmerman -- as The Record's lead Page 1 story reports today -- but the Neighborhood Watch captain was free since Feb. 26. 


Williams, 19, was shot and killed four months ago in Garfield, but no charges have been brought against the two police officers who claimed he was armed with "tools," nor have they been cleared.


The Record has covered the Williams shooting from the start, as well as protest marches and demonstrations, but only the family's lawyer went beyond the prosecutor's closed-mouth press releases to reveal the victim had two bullet holes in his back (Feb. 11, Page 1).


Rewriting handouts


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her lazy, incompetent minions did no independent reporting after the Williams shooting. They never looked for witnesses or interviewed the owner of the garage where he hid from police.


The Malik Williams and Trayvon Martin cases clearly show the media roll over and play dead when cops and prosecutors clam up and refuse to release information.


Long-time newsroom workers recall the feud between now-suspended Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa and the editors over the release of information on crime, arrests and so forth.


The editors have battled with police chiefs in almost every town The Record covers over the release of information. 


Often, the reporter is told only the chief is authorized to give out information, and, of course, he went home for the day or is off at the donut shop and unavailable for comment.


Tunnel vision


What's the point of another front-page story today -- this one on the hybrid locomotives NJ Transit purchased for use in the Hudson River rail tunnels, which were scuttled by Governor Christie in October 2010?


The locomotives pollute less than pure diesels and have the flexibility to operate on electrified rail lines. That sounds like a win-win, not a waste of money, as The Record story seems to suggest.


The story makes no effort to put the blame on Christie for sticking NJ Transit and the Port Authority with having to honor contracts in connection with the tunnel project.


Nor has the Woodland Park daily reported that commuters will be standing in the aisles on crowded NJ Transit trains and buses into the city for a decade or more before new tunnels are built.


Let's hope officials bury Christie in the cornerstone of that project whenever it begins. 


The locomotive story doesn't belong on Page 1, especially in view of poor editing of the lead paragraph, which claims Christie killed the project "nearly  two years ago."


It was October 2010, as the story says on the continuation page (A-10). That's not "nearly two years ago."


Trees v. solar


On A-22, two letters to the editor concern Tuesday's editorial (and an earlier front-page news story) about 5 acres of trees being cleared for solar panels in Moonachie.


Did The Record run an A-1 story and editorial when acres of trees were cleared for a new Lowe's in Paramus or any housing development you can think of?


News from Zisaville


In Sykes' Local section, continuing coverage of the Zisa criminal trial in Superior Court is the only Hackensack story in the paper (L-3).


Sykes ran a Page 1 story on the start of the trial eight days before testimony actually began, and since then, she has had Staff Writer Stephanie Akin write a blow-by-blow account that is trying to draw meaning from every motion, every objection and every cross-examination.


Few assignment editors have ever covered a civil or criminal trial, but they insist that their reporters read tea leaves and try to predict the outcome long before the jury returns its verdict.


Meanwhile, Zisa's defense attorney, Patricia Prezioso,  is saddled with overwhelming evidence of her client's guilt, so she is putting the prosecution witnesses on trial to distract jurors.


Graphic is mere filler


The lead story on the front of Local today is on a Route 80 crash that killed two men.


But the graphic on L-6 doesn't really show how the Ford F-150 pickup truck is far bigger and heavier, and higher off the ground than the Honda Civic in which the victims died -- factors that contributed the severity of the collision.


An advertising section -- "Boomers Consumer Guide" -- is included in today's paper.


The stories on fitness centers fail to tell readers some Medicare supplemental insurance plans come with free membership in 24 Hour Fitness, Gold's and other gyms.


Maybe if Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg worked out at a gym every day after his spoiled brat of a son took over as publisher, he would have spent less time in front of the computer allegedly sending porn to other managers.

The 3,000th guilty verdict on home rule?

Image via Wikipedia

Why is it such a big deal that a Yankee shortstop, who is paid an obscene amount of money, might get his 3,000th hit soon?  He's not the first, is he?

With 566 municipalities, New Jersey potentially has thousands upon thousands of officials with their hands out, but this isn't news, even when another politician is convicted of corruption.


Is the verdict against ex-Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, on the front page of The Record today, the 3,000th time a town official has been convicted in the state?


Or is the story on Derek Jeter the 3,000th time Staff Writer John Brennan has talked Editor Francis Scandale into running his nonsense on Page 1?


They love home rule


Is this the 3,000th edition under Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes that fails to expose North Jersey's deeply flawed home-ruled system of government, with its ruinously expensively duplication and potential for corruption?


Is this the 3,000th time readers have found far more relevant stories inside the paper than outside? 


Paperless prescriptions? Gee-whiz. Of course, a baby-making machine like Zeesy Grossbaum would love them (A-1).


Inside news


Page A-2 carries another embarrassing correction, this one fixing a story that ran more than two weeks ago.


A state crackdown on steroid abuse among cops and firefighters should be front page news (A-3), and where is the list of the towns where "at least 248" of them work? 


Michael Drewniak, Governor Christie's spin doctor, blasts Democrats for scheduling hearings on all the mean-spirited cuts to social programs and aid to  poor cities (A-3), deliberately obscuring Christie's second veto of the millionaires tax.


Bus rationing


An editorial on A-10 cheers plans to refurbish and expand the dingy George Washington Bridge Bus Station, but bemoans the sad state of bus transportation -- a subject the paper's own reporters avoid at all costs.


On the front of Local, a poll reports the majority of drivers favor the use of red-light cameras to cut traffic deaths and raise revenue in Hackensack and other towns -- interesting in light of Road Warrior John Cichowski's negative columns about them.


Fire near Borgs


The biggest news about Englewood uncovered by the assignment desk is an arson fire at the million-dollar home of a former mayor (L-1) -- not far from the East Hill manse of Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg and the private high school attended by his spoiled son, Publisher Stephen A. Borg. 


Was the fire set by someone forced to attend the city's segregated schools while Donald Aronson was mayor from 1989-97?


Oh, and the opening of a city pool has been delayed for a week (L-6).