Showing posts with label Wayne football. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wayne football. Show all posts

Friday, December 2, 2011

More legal poop for Bergen readers

Map of New Jersey highlighting Bergen County
Image via Wikipedia
Bergen County is red with anger over
 how little local news appears in The Record.


Interim Editor Doug Clancy appears to set a new record today for court or process stories on Page 1 -- and only one of them is of any real interest to Bergen County readers.

If you live in the Pascack Valley, the legal battle over the reopening of the hospital in Westwood could be relevant, but the court hearings on those nine thugs from the Wayne Hills High School football team or bear hunting miss the target completely.


And the fourth A-1 piece is on questionable spending at the Passaic Valley Sewage Commissioners, an odd name for an agency that serves a portion of Bergen.


Going west


The front page clearly shows a greater emphasis on Passaic County news since The Record and North Jersey Media Group completely abandoned Hackenack a couple of years ago.


The fifth element out front today is a photo from Los Angeles, where a tree crushed a van. What's so unusual about that? "It was like being in a hurricane," a man is quoted as saying in the caption. Wow. 


Pooper scooper


As if there isn't enough legal poop on Page 1, you'll find more poop in the Road Warrior column on the front of Local -- the pride and joy of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes -- this time on those solar panels mounted on telephone poles.


Why this is fodder for the commuting columnist is known only to John Cichowski and his assignment editor, but you can be sure he didn't actually have to leave the office to do any reporting.


The only Hackensack news in the section today concerns a single gas station that allegedly misrepresented octane ratings (L-3), and a home invasion and robbery (L-7).


Eater beware


On the Better Living front on Thursday, a Totowa restaurant owner is quoted as saying he uses "the freshest, high-quality ingredients" and that his "veal is top-notch."


Joyce Venezia Suss, who wrote the Starters column, doesn't say whether Enrico Caruso means that the calves that were carved into veal are raised humanely --without antibiotics and growth hormones (F-1).


'Poop on a sled'


Dessert-obsessed Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung was so impressed with an Oreo-topped cheesecake at the Ivy Inn in Hasbrouck Heights she put it on the cover of Better Living today. 


And in her lukewarm, 2-star review she recommends only one food dish, fried shrimp (centerfold).


Readers who are watching their weight or cholesterol will take one look at that cheesecake slice and dismiss it as "poop on a sled." 


Related article
Enhanced by Zemanta

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Sending mixed messages on Wayne thugs

U.S. Census Bureau map of Hackensack, New Jersey
U.S. Census Bureau map of Hackensack.


For the third day in a row, Interim Editor Doug Clancy continues to devote precious Page 1 space to those nine thuggish Wayne football players -- directly contradicting an editorial blasting the Board of Education and the coach for ignoring the victims (A-11):


"In Wayne, nine criminally charged high school students took the field, their football coach took control of the Board of Education, and residents, so far, have taken it on the chin.
"All the while, the two assaulted students are forgotten...."

Putting aside the editorial's awkward language, readers also are getting the shaft, with more A-1 space devoted to Wayne football than to the deficit-reduction talks in Congress -- an issue that affects just about everyone in North Jersey.


Doesn't Clancy live in Wayne? What kind of news judgment is that?


And why did Clancy think a training exercise for police is worthy of the front page, unless he didn't have anything better from head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes?


Blinded by editor


The biggest news on the front of Sykes' Local section is the installation of solar panels on the roof of the Ice House in Hackensack -- as the assignment desk tries to chronicle every solar project in North Jersey with its own story and photo.


Of course, residents still are in the dark on the progress of the city's solar-panel installations, potential savings and whether they will help trim property taxes.


In utility pole news, a large photo on L-3 documents how a truck demolished one in Teaneck.


Selling out


Even though the space devoted to news has shrunk in recent years, Better Living continues to run stories promoting a wide variety of businesses, including today's shameless piece on Black Friday sales, complete with 13 store or mall logos (F-1).


Food writer Joyce Venezia Suss apparently doesn't know the difference between mostly organic food and a crappy McDonald's hamburger (F-1).


In a Starters column on Nanoosh, a new restaurant at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, she says of the salads, organic chickpeas and other healthy items: "The proprietors insist that it's not fast food."


Does Features Director Stephanie Rivers really expect readers to take Suss seriously? "Shush" would be more like it.




Enhanced by Zemanta