Since Sandy, coverage shifts to the shore

Another rough ride on Louis Street near Fairmount Avenue in Hackensack has many residents wondering why city officials are giving a 30-year tax break to a wealthy apartment developer, especially in view of hundreds of millions of dollars in property that yields no taxes to pay for road paving, city owned hybrid cars, better food in the high school and other sorely needed improvements.

Hey, Editor Marty Gottlieb, remember North Jersey?

More than four months after Superstorm Sandy, The Record today leads Page 1 with two more stories about the mess -- in a shift of coverage that has left many towns in Bergen and Passaic counties feeling neglected.

Yes. We want front-page, blow-by-blow coverage of  a lucrative clean-up contract awarded to AshBritt, a Florida-based disaster recovery firm with close ties to Haley Barbour, one of Governor Christie's key allies.

And yes. Most North Jerseyans love the shore, but few can actually afford to own a home there, so how about putting stories about homeowners bracing for another storm or having to elevate homes inside the paper.

Hospital expansions

Ridgewood residents girding for new hearings on the expansion of The Valley Hospital are lucky they don't live in Hackensack, which has been changed fundamentally by the expansion of the non-profit Hackensack University Medical Center (A-1).

The Record's coverage of  the growing medical center pales in comparison to the endless stories about the Ridgewood hospital, and the Borg siblings may have something to do with that.

Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg was an HUMC board member for many years, and may have discouraged negative coverage.

Meanwhile, Publisher and President Stephen A. Borg, who is on the President's Council at the Ridgewood hospital, may be encouraging blanket coverage. 

Little comfort 

Protestations over dedication of a stone to women sexually enslaved by the Japanese armed forces -- and even claims that it never happened -- remind many of the annual denial of the Armenian holocaust by the Turks (A-1).

Production Editor Liz Houlton's copy desk made a mess of this story, which never uses the word "Korean" or "Koreans" on Page 1, even though many of the so-called comfort women were Korean.

The headline also is botched in an irresponsible way that insults the victims: 

They were not "Japan's comfort women," as the headline says, but women from Korea, China and other Asian countries invaded by the Japanese.

Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado also refers to e-mails as "electronic missives." Give me a break. 

Houlton should be fired immediately, and her six-figure salary distributed as bonuses to the staff.

Hackensack news 

On the front of Local, Staff Writer Hannan Adely reports on the possibility of higher parking fees on Main Street and higher parking fines -- in her fourth story about the city in as many days  (L-1).

Residents would like to see some of the extra revenue from parking fees and fines -- along with revenue from red-light cameras and stricter enforcement of traffic laws -- dedicated to property tax relief.

John, Sandy and errors

As if readers aren't already sick and tired of Sandy coverage, Road Warrior John Cichowski revisits the gasoline shortage brought on by the Oct. 29 storm (L-1).

In Wednesday's column, the tired Cichowski confused miles and minutes in his incredibly boring column about a small minority of commuters who travel at least 90 miles and spend at least 50 minutes getting to work:

"He doesn't complain about the time (90 minutes) or the distance (52 minutes) required to reach Manhattan," Cichowski wrote, and the error was completely missed by his assignment editor and the copy desk (Wednesday's L-2).

For the complete text of a concerned reader's e-mail to management, click on the following link to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

John Cichowski: Can you find the error?

Lays an egg

In Better Living, I'm glad to see a review of a restaurant that serves "mostly organic" food, but surely The Record can do better than the Red Hen Bistro, which is open only two days a week (BL-14)?

And isn't this at least the second review of the small Wood-Ridge BYO, which was run by a different chef in 2011? 

See previous post, 

A rare peep from a North Jersey racist

Reading between the lines

Image via Wikipedia

Why devote the top of Page 1 in The Record of Woodland Park today, an entire inside page, and a rambling, question-filled, who cares Mike Kelly column on the Opinion front to the week-old arrests of two would-be terrorists from North Jersey? One of the stories was written by two Star-Ledger staffers. What did Record staffers write and why isn't it in the paper?

I'll bet many more readers are interested in seeing front-page coverage of the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf, even though it isn't a local local story. (And in knowing what is going through Kelly's head when he turns out such drivel. Memo to Mike: Readers want your opinions based on solid reporting, not a bunch of rhetorical questions.)


The bigger story on the front page is the future of New Jersey Network, the Jersey-oriented TV station the state sorely needs in the absence of any real coverage by New York and Philadelphia stations. Governor Christie is so intent on preserving the wealth of the Borgs and his other rich friends -- and not raising the low gasoline tax to help mass transit -- he's cutting aid to NJN, too.


The Local section is a joke, especially for a Sunday paper. The big L-1 photo shows readers all the newspaper is good for -- building a miniature swing.

There's no Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood news, but head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes felt it was essential to cover some Harrington Park kids doing good in Newark (L-3). Did you know Mother Hen Deirdre lives in tiny Harrington Park? Great news judgment.

The obituary on Mark Howat, longtime Record writer and editor (L-6), delicately avoids anything negative about the man, even though his activities were well-known in the Hackensack newsroom.


In Opinion, a letter to the editor today questions the motives of The Record in endorsing the expansion of The Valley Hospital, and asks how much advertising revenue North Jersey Media Group publications receive from the Ridgewood hospital and its affiliates. Hey, Publisher Stephen A. Borg, it's your turn to be candid in this situation. What will you do? Can you tear yourself away from counting your money?


In Business today, Columnist Kevin DeMarrais writes about the proliferation of online complaint sites, without mentioning their rise coincides with the decline of consumer-oriented reporting in Business, Travel and other sections of The Record and other newspapers.


In Better Living, another profile of a local who hit the big time helps distract readers from the lack of local food news today.