You won't find any news here

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Route 9W in Cornwall, N.Y.

What's the point of running a long Page 1 piece on conflicts between motorists and bicyclists on Route 9W, if there are no plans for more police enforcement, better signs or a real bike path?


This "status quo" story could run anytime -- and it certainly doesn't belong on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today.


Stale views


How long was this long and winding story in the can? Just think, the editors can freshen up the quotes and run it again next year or the year after when they have nothing better for A-1.


Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes specialize in this kind of static reporting, because it allows their minions and their reporters to stay indoors and use the unlimited calling plan. 


You won't find a lazier local assignment desk in the entire metropolitan area.


Calling all cars


Readers get another editorial on A-11 about service at the MVC, so I guess Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin is still looking for a Broadway or Hollywood analogy for the Port Authority's onerous toll-and-fare hike plan.


In Sykes' Local section, a 14-inch story reports Rockleigh's purchase of a used firetruck (L-2). 


This is her idea of ground-breaking local news. 

An edition of highs and lows

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Egypt's Renaissance, by sculptor Mahmoud Mokhtar (1891-1934) Cairo, Egypt.

"They made history," Mohamed Younis of Franklin Lakes said in one of today's front page stories on the largely peaceful revolution in his native Egypt that has gripped the world for nearly three weeks. 

Younis and fellow Egyptians in North Jersey finally made it to Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park in a package of stories and photos from here and the Middle East that jump to Page A-6. 

Despite wordiness, the lead paragraph on the local story by Staff Writers Erik Shilling and Nick Clunn snaps  -- and the news copy desk had the good sense to write the main headline off of it:

"Fury turned into elation for many North Jersey Egyptians on Friday as news broke that Egypt's embattled president ... had chosen to bow to the demands of hundreds of thousands of protesters and step down."

Confused local stories

Then, I turned to the head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes ' Local news section and tried to fathom what happened in two accident stories. The reporting, writing and editing is so confused readers have to read and re-read the text as they try to peace together events.

The off-lead L-1 story reports that a bus hit a 90-year-old woman in Fort Lee and attributes that to police. In the second paragraph, the county prosecutor also is quoted as saying she was hit by a bus, but in the rest of the story, it's unclear whether she fell on her own or was struck.

The involvement of the Prosecutor's Office is never explained.

At the bottom of L-1, the lead paragraph of the second accident story reports a car "rear-ended" a police cruiser, injuring a police sergeant and a suspect he was arresting and "tossing both men onto Saddle River Road." 

Finally, seven paragraphs later, readers are told the cop and suspect were outside the police cruiser when it was hit. That should have been in the lead.

The main story on L-1 -- a week without a snow or ice storm -- would have been a lot better without its juvenile first sentence: "Break out the swimsuits and fire up the grill." Grow up. At least the story explains why the near record snowfall has stopped for now.

More horse manure

Readers are undoubtedly wondering what another story on the Meadowlands Racetrack is doing among zoning, police, accident and education stories on L-3 today. 

This story and others by Staff Writer John Brennan are mere filler in the absence of legitimate municipal news from Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other major towns. Sykes' assignment desk minions seem to take every Friday off. 


Witness the three wire-service obituaries of people you've never heard of on L-6 today.

Picture a dysfunctional assignment desk

Image by Pragmagraphr via Flickr

The Record's assignment editors read a lot of competing papers to get ideas.

Editor Francis Scandale's desperation is clear today with the ho-hum photo of a small fire on a utility pole as the major Page 1 art.

With pedestrians slip-sliding all over the place, cars smacking into each other on icy roads, government-backed thugs battling protesters in Cairo -- there were so many other photo possibilities. Why this? 

Waiting for spring

Has the assignment desk run out of ideas? Are head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and minions Dan Sforza, Christina Joseph, Rich Whitby, etc. hunkering down to wait for spring?

The Page 1 story in the package with that utility pole fire is stiffly written by reporter Colleen Diskin, who reels off "life-management skills, "elastic child-care arrangements" and other jargon in telling the story of parents scrambling to handle weather-related school-opening delays, early dismissals and closings. 

Smoking out news

Kibret Markos, the reporter assigned to the busy Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, should be applauded for writing about something besides the usual trials, indictments and lawsuits -- most of which he misses while on smoking breaks outside the Main Street entrance to the building. 

Today, he leads the paper with launching of The Last Resort Exoneration Project for wrongly convicted inmates in New Jersey -- ahead of the official announcement. Why the quote marks around the project name on A-1?

Clean-out of the troubled, smelly Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners continues and The Record of Woodland Park continues to play it on A-1. A rare, fourth story on the front is another Charles Stile column on political slush funds.

Editors bite readers

Two stories that are of much wider interest than the political ones are relegated to A-3: toll hikes and computer problems affecting the unemployed and customers at motor vehicle agency offices.

Is that all Sykes had to lead her section -- a follow-up on the Fair Lawn man who got bit by his pet cobra? He was instantly forgettable. (A correction on A-2 notes the four reporters who worked on the A-1 cobra-bite article Wednesday misspelled the name of an expert they quoted.)