Homeless man is editor's latest victim

The chief source of news in The Record's Local section is a bird called Syke's warbler.

That poor homeless guy, Stanley Kowalski, was evicted from his pigsty motel room only hours after The Record made him a public spectacle on Wednesday's front page.

The 82-year-old smoker with emphysema becomes the latest victim of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who previously confined herself to doing damage in the newsroom, where she is feared and hated.

And here Sykes goes again in today's lead story on the front of her beloved Local section, calling Kowalski one of the "invisible poor" in affluent Bergen County.

Just when Hackensack readers thought Staff Writer Stephanie Akin would return to covering the city after weeks of neglect, she was forced to cover Kowalski's eviction and regurgitate his history -- all told at eye-glazing length on Wednesday.

Here is a link to JerryD's comment on what the paper did to the poor schmuck:

Is The Record going to take care of him?

Sykes' rabbi

At the bottom of the Local front, Sykes gives more publicity to one of her darlings, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of Englewood, even though most readers detest the publicity monger and his bid to remove his East Hill mansion from the tax rolls.

Page 1 today is another strong front from Editor Marty Gottlieb, but why put Tara Sullivan's boring sports column on the front?

Another A-1 story links rising gun violence in Paterson to reducing the police force by 125 officers, but nowhere does the story name Governor Christie or hold his feet to the fire for drastic cuts in state aid to cities.

Nor is the overpaid, do-nothing Paterson police chief asked to explain why there were more than 60 shootings in 2008, before the layoffs.

To the rescue

Though Christie has failed to lower property taxes, Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan is freaked out by "so many freaking levels of government," including 69 chiefs of police and 74 superintendents of schools (A-1).

Let's hope she'll find ways to cut the onerous cost of home rule -- a burden Sykes and the other editors have simply ignored for decades.

Racists and rednecks ruin Page 1

The Record today reports the homeless are "invisible" in Bergen County.

Editor Marty Gottlieb blew a decent front page today by wasting space on who won the redneck-and-racist vote in the GOP presidential primaries in Alabama and Mississippi.

The three North Jersey stories on Page 1 of The Record are compelling reading, but forgive me if I don't have the patience or compassion to slog through 30 inches of text on an 82-year-old homeless man with emphysema who continues to smoke and almost blew himself to smithereens.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes apparently ordered Staff Writer Stephanie Akin to neglect her reporting on Hackensack and pull the story together, but who is the editor kidding by calling Bergen County's homeless problem "invisible"?

It's "invisible" from the Garret Mountain newsroom where Sykes and her lazy, incompetent minions spend all their time with their heads up their well-padded posteriors. 

Homeless beat

But for many years before Publisher Stephen A. Borg abandoned Hackensack, the large number of homeless who walked that city's streets almost amounted to a beat, and the problem merited the building of a large shelter between Costco Wholesale and the county jail.

Why insult Bergen County readers by pretending The Record's editors exposed homelessness?

Two local obits

Below the patch story, there is a terrific piece by Jay Levin, the local obituary writer, on a party former Rutherford Councilman and Ramsey teacher Alan "Big Al" Note threw himself before he died.

Levin has another good local obituary on the front of Local -- Helga Newmark of Hackensack, the first female Holocaust survivor ordained a rabbi (L-1).

Readers of Road Warrior John Cichowski's column today may be surprised to learn he has a 95-year-old father, who isn't named for some strange reason (L-6).

Cichowski has only shown contempt for older drivers -- who cause numerous accidents, killing and injuring others -- refusing to compile a list of classes and other programs to help them improve their driving skills.