Padilla 'expose' is 2 years in the making

The first editor of The Record, left, makes a deal to publish the paper in Hackensack.

Two years after the Bergen County prosecutor tapped Tomas Padilla to run the troubled Hackensack Police Department, The Record today finally "exposes" his strong ties to the convicted police chief.

The Page 1 story by Staff Writer Stephanie Akin reports the interim police chief "is a close friend and political protege of his disgraced predecessor."

Padilla also is a co-defendant in three of the lawsuits filed by subordinates against the suspended chief, Charles "Ken I Am The Law" Zisa, the Woodland Park  daily reports.

The suits allege Zisa and Padilla "tried to coerce officers to donate" to their political campaigns for the state Assembly and Freeholder Board, respectively, Akin says.

Contrast today's A-1 story with a report that ran in The Record in early May 2010, when head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado made Padilla sound like a reformer:

"Capt. Tomas Padilla, who was named the department’s acting officer in charge, signed the administrative charges against [Ken] Zisa, who earns $191,606 annually. The chief was placed on a paid leave of absence on Friday by the city manager, a day after he surrendered to authorities on an insurance-fraud charge.

 “'We did this under the authority and with the approval of the prosecutor and the advice of our labor counsel,' Padilla said Monday. '… We received copies of the criminal charges, and based on those criminal charges, under the Attorney General Guidelines, we have a duty to act, and I did.'”

"Last week, after Zisa’s arrest, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli announced that his office would begin to monitor the 107-member police department for at least six months. Under an agreement between the city and the prosecutor, Zisa was stripped of his chief’s duties, and Padilla was named the department’s acting leader.

"Residents are expected to attend Tuesday's council meeting — the first since Zisa’s arrest — to protest Padilla’s appointment, which some are saying is not the best choice because of his political background. Padilla, a Bergen County Democratic freeholder, said he plans to resign that post in June.

"Lt. Timothy Condon, of the prosecutor’s office’s special investigation section, will be in daily contact with Padilla.

"Padilla said Condon was at police headquarters on Monday morning, and issued directives. Among them is that each officer will get a copy of the agreement, and understand how the monitoring will work.

“'There are specific issues that were addressed by the prosecutor, no political contributions, disclosure of any business arrangements that officers may have with each other,' he said. 'We are in the process, through all my commanders, to make sure that each one of our officers is given a copy of the agreement, reads it, and if they have any questions they can be addressed, and fully understand it.'”

"Padilla said he expects officers to disclose by the end of next week if they have been hired to do outside work for any of their colleagues in the department."

Local news?

The entire front of the Local news section today is devoted to honoring North Jersey armed services members who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That lets Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, off the hook of trying to inspire their reporters to produce any meaningful municipal news.

Official inaction is everywhere you look

Image by redspotted via Flickr

The Record today is "mad about mushrooms."

No fix for high property tax bills. Weak government ethics laws. Uncertain funding for education and affordable housing. 


And starting in 2018 -- thanks to Governor Christie's sleight of hand -- yearly payments of $5 billion tax dollars to fund the state pension system.


And those are only the problems listed in stories on the front page and A-3 of The Record today. 


What about the lack of long-term solutions to flooding? Or persistent unemployment. Or Christie's refusal to tax millionaires. Or the sad state of mass transit in one of the most congested regions in the country?


Even the Bergen County sheriff is defying attempts to eliminate duplication in law enforcement (A-1 and L-1).


Senior moments


Editor Francis Scandale is really hanging crepe with Page 1 today. 


If you send reporters only to senior centers and nursing homes, you're going to find nothing but hard-luck seniors, such as those shown eating a free lunch in Mahwah (A-1).


Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes continue to ignore Bergen County's wealthy seniors, the ones with vacation homes and European travel plans -- just as they ignore Alzheimer's disease and the challenges facing older drivers.


They find it so much easier to write stories off Census 2010 data -- as with today's piece on social services for seniors. It's a neat package that requires a minimum of enterprise and legwork, perfect for Sykes' lazy assignment minions.


At the bottom of A-1, The Associated Press -- the news agency that practices body-count journalism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere -- reports the "world is more peaceful than ever," according to the headline.


Local news holiday


By the looks of the Local section today, municipal news took a holiday this weekend.


On L-1, Road Warrior John Cichowski responds sarcastically to readers who say his past reporting has been inaccurate or incomplete.


There is so little local news, minor fires in North Arlington and Paramus are reported on L-3 and L-7, respectively.


Another great job by Sykes and her crack assignment desk or is it cracked? 


Smoking shrooms


Better Living Staff Writer Kara Yorio's cover story on mushrooms sounds like she was smoking something and no one bothered to edit her ("Mad about mushrooms," F-1).


"In the fall, we get mushrooms in the heartier and richer dishes that keep us warm in the cooler weather.


"A quick look at menus at a few local restaurants shows us that mushroom lovers need not search very hard to meet a mushroom craving."


And, "The wide variety of mushrooms lends itself to a wide variety of mushroom dishes."


Truffles are called "expensive little guys."


To cut costs in recent years, editors at The Record have given reporting work to low-paid editorial clerks, who don't have the experience or journalism education of reporters.


Yorio is one of the most productive Better Living staffers, but her work needs polish. 

Follow the bouncing news ball

Image by Bob Jagendorf via Flickr

Is this what 400 pounds looks like?

Boy's death stuns community

This Page 1 headline refers to Michael Cabaj, who was struck and killed by a train at 4:51 p.m. Monday in Garfield.

But his death wasn't good enough for Page 1 of The Record on Tuesday -- only for the Local front -- and supposedly the community wasn't stunned until Tuesday, so the story is promoted to the front page today.

Eye on The Record can only guess at the dysfunction inside the Woodland Park newsroom, but the last two editions speak volumes about lazy, clueless assignment editors working under the dead weight of Editor Deirdre Sykes, and Editor Francis Scandale scrambling day after day to find fresh news to fill  his beloved Page 1.

Exhausting news

Scandale must have exhausted himself berating the news copy desk to craft upbeat headlines on the multi-story A-1 package reporting Governor Christie's apparently final decision not to run for the White House.

Political Stile Columnist Charles Stile got the closest to one likely reason Christie is staying in New Jersey when he wrote, "In the end, it all came down to a gut check (A-8)."

That's right. Christie and his advisers took one look at his gut, and concluded the governor isn't healthy enough for a presidential campaign, recalling how he was hospitalized for an asthma attack in July.

Michael Drewniak, Christie's press secretary and chief spin doctor, has ignored questions about the governor's weight. Late-night comedian David Letterman has guessed Christie weighs 400 pounds.


An editorial on A-10 today notes, "Increasingly , we have found ourselves supporting his [Christie's] reform agenda."


That's certainly not news, given all the favorable Christie columns spilling from Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin since the GOP bully took office in January 2010.


On the same page, readers can find another in a series of letters from crackpots such as John Criscione of Fort Lee who blame President Obama for all of society's woes.

Railroad safety

On A-9, a photo shows two NJ Transit police officers. Who know the state mass-transit agency had cops who could guard railroad tracks and help prevent needless deaths, including the three Sunday night and Monday afternoon?

You certainly wouldn't know it from the columns of the office-bound John Cichowski, who has been masquerading as the Road Warrior. He's foaming at the mouth today, blaming the victims and lecturing readers about the physics of those big, bad trains (L-1).

Who cut out Cichowski's heart? More importantly, who cut out his brain and his instincts, so he doesn't question whether NJ Transit is doing all it can to make the tracks safer with fences and guards? 

Isn't he supposed to advocate for pedestrians, not state bureaucracies trying to limit their liability?

Just another killing

Sykes' assignment desk didn't think the murder of a Teaneck woman on Tuesday afternoon was good enough for Page 1 today or it held onto the story for the front of Local because it failed again to generate much municipal news.

Also, if you're killed in Teaneck, you have to be an Orthodox Jew to make The Record's front page. The victim in this case, Shaday Betancourt, appears to have been Hispanic.

The story mentions the victim's "family," but there are no details on whether the slain woman had children, parents or was employed. As far as Sykes is concerned, she's just another homicide victim, just another body.

Page L-2 today is dominated by news about the Englewood police, and L-3 resembles a police blotter.

From hunger

What a scam Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill has going on Publisher Stephen A. Borg, whose mind certainly isn't in the kitchen.

Her life-is-good smile is back on the front of Better Living in a photo accompanying her single weekly recipe, apple-date chutney. 


That's just what I've been missing in my diet. Now, I hope I can find an hour to make it.

Besides re-writing press releases for the Second Helpings blog on NorthJersey.com, tweeting and rubbing shoulders with celebrity chefs, she doesn't appear to do much else, making her the least active food editor in memory.

Two of her recent tweets refer to her husband, photographer Ted Axelrod, who sells photos to The Record and (201) magazine.

susanlsherrill Susan Sherrill 

Another fun morning photo shoot with @Axelrodphoto - apple date chutney for my @BetterLivingNJ column. yfrog.com/kki0wiij

3 Oct 

susanlsherrill Susan Sherrill 

Roasted oysters w/ herb butter, grilled squid, ribeye steaks, champagne - night in w/ @Axelrodphoto: priceless!

1 Oct Favorite Retweet Reply

So many men with brains in their weiners

Image by maxintosh via Flickr

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, please join the growing line of men in and out of public life whose brains are in their penises.

You can read all about Weiner and his erection on A-1 and A-4 of The Record today, but doctors still haven't determined whether Publisher Stephen A. Borg and Editor Francis Scandale even have brains, let alone where they're located.

Is he bombed?

Scandale, for example, was blown away by the story on a small pipe bomb that exploded in a Fair Lawn neighborhood -- injuring no one -- so he made it the most important news of the day on Page 1 today.

He was scraping the bottom of the news barrel, it seems, judging from the huge photo that fills space on the jump page (A-7). 

The caption is ridiculously vague -- three ATF agents could be examining a dog turd for all we know. The one standing is either pointing at something or describing the size of someone's weiner to his colleagues.

Of course, the big, A-1 photo of an ATF agent looking under a pickup truck is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Also on A-1 is Governor Christie's plan to spin off NJN, the state-owned TV and radio network, with the loss of more than 100 public jobs.

Christie argues NJN should be independent of state government, although the few times I've watched its TV news program, I was bored to tears. Jim Hooker, the anchor, has the demeanor of a funeral director.

Buried news

But why did Scandale bury on L-7 the guilty plea of a Ridgewood man who was a member of Bernard Madoff's inner circle? Eric Lipkin, 37, agreed to surrender his home and forfeit $1.4 million.

Or, on A-4, there's  a terrific photo of hotel maids and other workers outside of court, jeering Dominique Strauss-Kahn, another moron whose brain is in his penis.

The young, filthy rich Lipkin and the hotel-workers photo should have been outside, in place of the  pipe-bomb explosion that hurt no one.

There's seems to be a hitch in NJ Transit's plans to sell naming rights to the No. 780 bus between Englewood and Passaic city (A-7). 

The mostly minority riders hope the decrepit, decades-old vehicle will be dubbed, "The Heartbreak Local." 

What's she smoking?

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes devotes a good deal of her Local front today to the continuing battle to control weeds on Greenwood Lake.

The bi-state lake has to be the most documented body of water in North Jersey, judging from all the coverage of this very same problem in The Record over the years.

Hey, Deirdre, it's you and your assignment editors who need to be weeded out.

From hunger

In Better Living, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill's major contribution every Wednesday is a single recipe from a free cookbook she promotes shamelessly.

So why is Staff Writer Mike Kerwick peddling another cookbook and book signing on F-1 today?

On F-3, how can a mac-and-cheese recipe with four tablespoons of butter and one cup of half-and-half be called "healthy," and why is nearly one-third of the page devoted to the cook?

Did they really mean to say that?

Image via Wikipedia

Township Hall in Teaneck. Are there any bodies buried there?

On the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today, Staff Writer Joseph Ax reports a Teaneck woman "was found stabbed and beaten by firefighters."

On A-11, a headline declares "Christie as a role model for governors" over an OpEd column by former Managing Editor Jim Ahearn, who is far less certain in the text.

On A-4 in Tuesday's paper, Staff Writer Michale Gartland reported "$100 million in proposed Republican cuts at a Hackensack unemployment office" ...that ..."could lead to the elimination of more than 20,000 jobs in New Jersey."

In the case of the two news stories, just moving around a few words in one sentence would have cleared up the fractured, ambiguous writing. 

But after years of hearing higher-ups on the news side scold them for editing stories aggressively, the news copy desk is on autopilot. 

Laughable errors like this show just how incompetent Editor Francis Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her sub-assignment editors are: They fail to turn out sparkling, clear writing every day. Even their lead paragraphs are flawed.

Today's front page

Page 1 today has another strong New Jersey focus in all four stories, but sloppy assignment-desk editing really stands out.

In the A-1 story about a Teaneck resident who was shot dead before his house was set on fire, Ax reports the 59-year-old victim "lived alone," but on A-6, the continuation page, readers are told he is separated from his wife. 

They're not mutually exclusive, but why wasn't his wife mentioned right away or, for that matter, his two grown daughters?

And isn't it weird how the victim's autopsy results were disclosed a couple of days after his death -- in contrast to the autopsy of Teaneck Police Officer John Abraham, who died in a high-speed crash of his police cruiser on Oct. 23, across Teaneck Road from headquarters.

Those results were never released by Teaneck Police Chief Robert Wilson and Ax never tried to get them from other sources. Was Wilson trying to hide something about Abraham's condition the night he died?

Local yokels

Police news about a mosque break-in and a story on evidence in the official misconduct trial of suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa is all Hackensack residents get today. 

But Sykes loved the story about the first pink-footed goose sighted in New Jersey, and put it on the front of her Local section, with a map and photo, and plenty of text on the jump page. 

The story doesn't answer an obvious question: What color is its poop? Yellow? Green?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Sushi made from yellow-fin tuna.

Eat your mercury

If you think that goose would make good eating, don't miss the recipe for yellow-fin tuna, from Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill, who doesn't tell readers the fish she feels "good about" has elevated levels of harmful mercury (F-1).

How many editors does it take?

Image via Wikipedia

The Record's coverage of a Cliffside Park murder could have been produced by a  journalism class at the high school, above. The story also brought reporter Monsy Alvarado out of hibernation.

How many editors does it take to get the name right of a man whose body parts were found scattered around Cliffside Park? How many editors does it take to find out if he lived alone or with another man, and whether that man was questioned by police on Monday, the day of the grisly discovery?

Today, as on so many days in the past, The Record of Woodland Park's assignment desk under Editor Deirdre Sykes demonstrates just how clueless it is.  

Eye on The Record doesn't know if Sykes or one of her minions (Dan Sforza, Rich Whitby, Christina Joseph et al.) supervised news gathering for this Page 1 story on Monday and Tuesday. But the result is the same: a first-day story that is so woefully inadequate -- a story that tells readers nothing meaningful -- it could have been produced by high school- or college-level reporters.

Misspelling the victim's name is bad enough. Are we to believe Staff Writer Matthew Van Dusen also couldn't find anyone besides the victim's employer to tell readers who this man was and what may have led to his death? 

Even today's story doesn't answer the obvious question of whether the two men arrested in the slaying and dismemberment -- the victim's roommate and "another man" -- formed a love triangle with the victim, robbed him or what?

Sykes' name tag on her computer in Hackensack said "Laughs A Lot." It probably should have said "Laughable."

Late news -- very late

On Saturday's Arizona shootings -- which Editor Francis Scandale underplayed so badly on Sunday -- did none of the editors think to scour the victims' list for a New Jersey grandmother who was one of six people slain, instead of getting the story a day late? North Jersey snowbirds have flocked to warmer climates for decades. Do the assignment editors even know that?

Governor Christie's State of the State speech Tuesday is the lead A-1 story today. It's where Christie pats himself on the back for the state's "changed direction," without hardly any mention of all the financial pain he has visited on the middle and working classes, all the cuts in mass transit, education and other programs; and all the breaks he gave to millionaires.

The final element on A-1 today is on the third winter storm. At least we don't have to wade through more mindless neighing by Staff Writer John Brennan, whose horseshit on the future of racing led the paper Tuesday.

Mercedes-Benz news page

Another six-column Benzel-Busch auto dealer ad is splashed across the middle of L-1, the front page of a section that once was Sykes' pride and joy.

Columnist John Cichowski writes again about the new crosswalk law, and seems to be firmly in the corner of all those impatient, angry and time-challenged drivers who have made pedestrians an endangered species in North Jersey.

The only mass transit news I could find today is a brief on L-2 about a woman who sat on a needle on an NJ Transit bus in Englewood.

Police, fire and court stories dominate Local again. There is no Hackensack or Teaneck news today. 

Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado hasn't written anything about the city for three weeks now, but she helped Van Dusen play catch-up today on the dismemberment story -- likely because her Spanish-speaking ability was needed on a story in which the victim, relatives and suspects are Hispanic.

Food deprivation

In Better Living, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill tells readers that to make up for holiday excesses, she is giving up wine with dinner during the week and eating "minimal sweets."

Sherrill also has put readers of the food pages on a crash diet, producing even less than her predecessor, Bill Pitcher, if you can imagine that. Pitcher was paid $71,000 a year. 

Sherrill's salary is unknown. She works for both (201) magazine and The Record, publications of the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group. Her husband, photographer Ted Axelrod, also rides on the NJMG gravy train.

This one is for wrapping fish

Image by Nationaal Archief via Flickr

The Sunday paper leads with a crime story -- a Seton Hall student from Virginia is slain at a party in East Orange. Gripping news for Bergen County readers of The Record of Woodland Park.

The dominant A-1 story is about North Jersey's ridiculous home prices, still artificially high despite the recession, and for that we can thank the greedy real estate industry, whose advertising  helps keep the paper afloat. 

The third front-page story is about a Navy veteran whose slaying hasn't been solved. Why is this cold case on Page 1?


The Local section is another Deirdre Sykes' joke on readers. The big L-1 story has the headline, "Towns weigh change" -- a guaranteed room-clearer -- and the subhead uses the word "service" twice -- a major no-no.

Desk Warrior John "Limp Chick" Cichowski continues to roam far from his mission of writing about commuters, with a story on the driving record of a moron from a reality TV show. You won't find any Hackensack or Englewood news in the section.


Could there be anything more promotional than Elisa Ung's F-6 column on a single pizzeria in Allendale? Does she really expect us to believe the owner is "America's Best Pizza Maker," as an industry magazine proclaims? What a sell-out.

Three letters to the editor in Opinion today objected to the A-1 story Sept. 18 about an obscure Jewish practice of killing chickens for Yom Kippur. Let's hope the editors kill any more story ideas from Staff Writer Deena Yellin, if they involve Orthodox Jews.

Who isn't bored with the full page of photos in Travel showing readers holding up the section while on vacation? This is one page less in a thin, six-page section that the self-styled klutz of a travel editor has to fill with useful information for travelers. 

Take a good look at those photos. All of the people appear to be white or Asian, which largely reflects the racial make-up of The Record newsroom, although Publisher Greedy Stevie Borg long ago gave the heave-ho to most of the older workers.

(Top photo: The Record's local news assignment desk.)

Note to readers

Don't miss the previous post: "Tales from the old Hackensack newsroom," and don't forget to click on "comments" for Jerry DeMarco's recollections of working side-by-side with head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes (aka Mama Crass).

Superficiality is the new norm

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It's hard to understand how today's story on the second day of the snowstorm -- based on reporting of 15 or more staffers -- can be missing so much detail. It's hard to fathom, that is, until you take into account Deirdre Sykes' lazy, incompetent local news assignment desk, which has hobbled The Record of Woodland Park for too many years.

A Hackensack man died after he went into cardiac arrest shoveling snow, but the Page 1 story is missing both his name and his age. There is not a single interview of a bus rider among the thousands affected by the suspension of NJ Transit service or of a flier grounded by canceled flights. Hackensack snowfall totals are again missing from the front-page map.

Jon Corzine (photo) gets some belated credit for what he did as governor in the other A-1 story on the slowing in the growth of property tax bills. The average bill in Tenafly in 2009 -- $17,411 -- is reported as the highest in North Jersey, but you can be sure Publisher Stephen A. Borg is paying a lot more than that on his $3.65 million mansion.

For a decade or more, the haughty Sykes and her assignment minions have not understood the need to cover towns, even when the reporters assigned to them are doing enterprise stories, spend six months on a fellowship or cover such disasters as the Haiti earthquake.

So today, on the front of Local, Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano has a long, interesting story on African-Americans for Black History Month, but she has yet to analyze the election of a new mayor and report whether voters chose change or the status quo.

On L-2, you'll find not one but two education stories about Montvale. You rarely see an education story about Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck, three core towns in Bergen County.

On the front of Better Living, you'll find more superficial reporting by Food Editor Bill Pitcher, whose "Food Smart" piece on eggs omits anything about cage-free, vegetarian feed or other issues consumers should weigh. He recommends the chicken eggs at Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff, but doesn't tell readers they can find duck eggs there as well.

Leaving readers in the dark

Image via Wikipedia

Staff Writer Joseph Ax, on assignment for The Record in Haiti, seems to be fascinated with the pre-dawn darkness or maybe he is just trying to show the lazy, desperate and incompetent editors back home in Woodland Park that he is working hard amid all the cutbacks at the paper.

For the third day in a row, he begins his dispatch with something that happened before the sun rose on the humanitarian crisis there (the first day, it was volunteers gathering for breakfast in the lobby of a Dominican hotel). It's hard to tell if his dispatches are getting any editing on the assignment desk or the news copy desk.

This could be a case of head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes holding the story past deadline, then sending it over with some excuse so the news copy editors don't have time to question or edit it. Unlike the shrieking Sykes, they're expected to make deadline, so they just have time to slap headlines on it, write photo captions and spell-check the file.

Unable to come up with news of Hackensack (map), Teaneck, Englewood or other important Bergen County towns, editors have to run large and small photos on the front of Local about a Haitian relief drive by Dominicans in Paterson, sending readers to L-6 to read  a detailed story. This follows numerous stories about such efforts by Haitians, doctors, pastors and other North Jerseyans after the Jan. 12 quake, in an apparent bid to chronicle the sending of every T-shirt to the stricken nation.

More drivel by Columnist Mike Kelly also appears on the front of the section. This is "one of those small North Jersey stories that could easily go unnoticed," he writes, "amid the hustle and bustle that passes for life" -- just like Kelly's pushing around words passes for journalism. This so-called story should have gone unnoticed because it's been done a million times. Is this the best local story the veteran journalist can come up with? Where is his assignment editor, staring down the shirt of an attractive, young female reporter?