'We cover Hackensack'

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"What does that guy mean?" head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes says to one of her minions, as her laughter starts rolling across the Woodland Park newsroom. "Of course, we cover Hackensack."

"Oh, do we cover Hackensack! Didn't I have a bunch of reporters investigating a former Hackensack detective [Michael Mordaga] for almost three years? Don't I have Monsy [Alvardo, the Hackensack reporter], Shawn [Boburg] and Jean [Rimbach} chasing another great story?

"I mean," she says, chuckling, "look at A-1 today [in The Record]. "Hackensack is all over the front page!" (Does her computer still carry the name tag: "Deirdre 'Laughs A Lot' Sykes"?)

Indeed, the big snowstorm photo on Page 1 today shows an unidentified man walking in none other than Hackensack, although the street isn't identified. For the second big storm in a row, a pedestrian in Hackensack was featured on the front of the former Hackensack daily (after the Feb. 6 storm, it was an unidentified woman walking on Main Street). But the map under today's photo omits snowfall totals in River City. Now, that's coverage.

On A-2 today, two more corrections appear -- three corrections and one clarification in three days. The paper's accuracy is questionable and damages its credibility.

Except for a lawsuit reported in Local today, there is no other Hackensack news in the paper.

Did anybody get to the end of the Food Editor Bill Pitcher's tedious, two-star review in Better Living of a bar and steakhouse in Midland Park? Who made dinner reservations there for tonight?

Color The Record white

Image by Property#1 via Flickr

Take a look at the faces that appear today in the main news and Local news sections of The Record of Woodland Park. They are overwhelmingly white, reflecting the racial makeup of the editors and news staff. (To find black and Hispanic faces, you have to turn to Better Living and Sports.)

Read the coverage of  the snowstorm, starting on Page 1, and most of the people quoted are white. Road Warrior John Cichowski interviews well-to-do whites like himself who worked from home, but no one who doesn't own a car and had to walk or rely on those creaking local buses the pompous reporter has refused to write about. (That homeless guy he has been writing about forever doesn't count.)  

Are we to believe no black kids built snowmen?

In fact, there is little in the coverage by nearly 40 news staffers and photographers about NJ Transit bus and train service.

If the past is any guide, tomorrow, in coverage of the clean-up, you likely won't find anything about pedestrians who have to walk in the street because homeowners and merchants haven't shoveled their walks, or bus riders who have to wait in the street or climb dangerous snowbanks in front of their uncleared bus stops.

The Record, reporters like Cichowski and the inept assignment editors seem to care more about the plight of people like themselves when covering a storm, while they ignore everyone who doesn't belong to the paper's "demographic." Or maybe that's the word that has come down from the wealthy Borg family's North Jersey Media Group.

Early in his tenure, Editor Frank Scandale had to order municipal reporters to go out at least once a month and  come back with a story about minorities. I guess that initiative was abandoned long ago. Of course, he also got rid of the paper's only Hispanic and only black columnists.

Even the two, expanded obituaries of prominent local folks, on L-6, are of of a white physicist and a white restaurant owner, which is coincidence, I'm sure.

There is no development, education or municipal news from Hackensack in today's paper, or from Englewood and Teaneck, the three most highly diversified towns in Bergen County.

On Page 1, the main photo is of a lone pedestrian crossing a deserted Main Street in Hackensack. It appears under the main headline: "Jersey takes a snow day." I hate the dismissive "Jersey" for "New Jersey." Do you ever see "York" in a headline? "We take a snow day" would have been far better.