Columnist bashes Hackensack, gays

The Record of Woodland Park continues to dump on Hackensack, its former home.

Here comes Chicken Kelly to tell us on Page 1 of The Record that the sky is falling in Hackensack after its once-powerful police chief was convicted of official misconduct and insurance fraud in Superior Court.

In keeping with the local-news policy under head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Mike "Chicken" Kelly doesn't lower himself and actually interview any ordinary residents of the most populous community in Bergen County.

In fact, much of Kelly's front-page column today describes the Police Department as it was years ago, when Ken "I Am The Law" Zisa -- a member of the family that ruled the city for decades -- was at the height of his power as police chief. 

Fie on Hackensack

Since The Record and North Jersey Media Group moved out of Hackensack in 2009, Sykes and the other editors have covered the county seat as if it were a foreign country.

Why is Kelly's column the first in decades to  describe the Zisas' political power and the retribution visited on disloyal employees in Zisaville? 

Can he be trusted? This is a journalist whose work cries out for editing. See how he pushes around words without any regard for facts (A-1 and A-8):

" ... the crooks that plague the City of Hackensack."

" ... a roller-coaster trial that lasted six weeks."

" ... the verdict seemed to unlock an emotional Pandora's box of accusations."

The trial was a "roller-coaster" for whom? Those "emotional" Pandora's boxes are the worst, as we all know.

More errors

Kelly says the next City Council meeting is Monday night, but my city-supplied calendar lists it on Tuesday night.

I moved to Hackensack in August 2007, and the city appears to be as safe and well-run now as it was before and after Zisa's arrest in 2010 and his conviction on Wednesday.

On two occasions, I went to police headquarters as a complainant, and have nothing but compliments for the police officers and detectives I dealt with. 

I have noticed changes on Main Street since The Record abandoned its nearby headquarters and pulled out hundreds of employees, but the Woodland Park daily has never reported them. 

Suicide linked to Zisa case

The A-1 story below Kelly's column links the suicide of a suspect in a holding cell at Hackensack police headquarters to the "tumultuous" aftermath of the Zisa conviction, but incorrectly reports the suspended chief was convicted on "criminal misconduct charges." 

Editor Marty Gottlieb publishes three more articles in a long series about Democratic opponents in the 9th Congressional District primary (A-1, A-3 and O-2). 

But readers in Fair Lawn, Hackensack, Teaneck and many other towns continue to be in the dark about the contests in the 5th Congressional District.

Gay bashing

Kelly returns with a second column on today's Opinion front, this time weighing in on the upcoming sentencing of Dharun Ravi, who was found guilty of bullying Tyler Clementi of Ridgewood.

Does anyone but Kelly doubt that's why Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge?

Why did Editor Marty Gottlieb and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin publish homophobe Kelly's  appeal for a non-custodial sentence in the bias intimidation of Clementi, who was gay?

On Thursday, Doblin's editorial said Ravi is no scapegoat -- he's a convicted felon who deserves prison and deportation to India.

Kelly so abhors homosexuals his three-page Sunday Record story in 2000 completely ignored their role in the revival of Asbury Park.

On the same exact day Kelly's story appeared, an upbeat cover story in The New York Times' New Jersey section reported that urban homosexual men and women were leading the way in reviving the run-down resort, drawn by affordable, stylish homes and gay clubs. One photo showed two women on the beach with their arms around each other.

Seeing red

Road Warrior John Cichowski -- another columnist whose replacement is long overdue -- again gives voice today to speeders and other bad drivers upset by the number of red-light and other cameras (L-1).

Gottlieb found room for Kelly's semi-fictional account of Hackensack on A-1, but banished a story on "unprecedented" poverty in New Jersey to the front of Local (L-1). 

Money to burn

The Better Living cover story today is about building an outdoor earth oven for cooking food -- an article aimed at the half-dozen readers crazy enough to try such a thing (BL-1).

In another highly relevant food piece, Staff Writer Elisa Ung's The Corner Table column promotes two caterers instead of exploring restaurant issues facing readers (BL-1). 

In Friday's Better Living section, Ung gave a lukewarm 2 stars to a Greek restaurant, Opa in Wayne.

That amounts to the kiss of death from the restaurant reviewer, who also bestowed 2 stars on a faux-Caribbean chain restaurant on Route 23 in the sprawling township.

 

Credibility gap widens

Image via Wikipedia
Images of Asbury Park.

Do the desperate editors expect long-time readers to believe anything in Staff Writer Michael Kelly's report on Atlantic City? In nearly three pages of The Record of Woodland Park today, starting on Page 1, Kelly comes close to writing an obituary of New Jersey's premiere resort.


How weird, because 10 years ago, almost to the day (Aug. 6, 2000), The Sunday Record also published a three-page Kelly story, and it sounded just like an obituary for Asbury Park, another struggling shore resort, with appropriately grim photos by the great Carmine Galasso.


Unfortunately, this story contained a glaring omission that raised questions about the reporter's credibility -- questions that have never been answered.


Times trumps Kelly


On the same exact day Kelly's Asbury Park story appeared, an upbeat cover story in The New York Times' New Jersey section reported that urban homosexual men and women were leading the way in reviving the run-down resort, drawn by affordable, stylish homes and gay clubs. One photo showed two women on the beach with their arms around each other.


The two stories were like night and day, with Kelly reporting conditions that had existed for a decade or more, and The Times breaking the story of the resort's turnaround.


The headline on The Times piece:

MOVE OVER, FIRE ISLAND, HERE COMES ASBURY PARK

The headlines on Kelly's story:

In love with a faded queen

Asbury Park's

survivors cling

to future hope

Forget the awful drop headline ("future hope"). 


In Kelly's story, there was absolutely no mention of homosexuals buying up homes and going clubbing in Asbury Park. Did the reporter's deep-seated conservatism lead him to ignore signs of revival and violate his journalistic pledge of objectivity? Did he allow his personal views of homosexuality to obscure the real story?

Kelly's language in both the Asbury Park and Atlantic City stories echo: Asbury Park is "a once-grand queen of the New Jersey shore now reduced to blighted remnants of old glory days." Of Atlantic City, he says, "This aging queen of seaside gambling and salt water taffy is gasping for life. It may already be too late."

It's too late, all right, too late for readers to salvage anything from Kelly's reporting, which was repudiated a decade ago. How The Record's editors missed the huge contradiction in his and The Times' Asbury Park stories is a puzzle, but if they did notice it, how he kept his job is the real mystery.

And it's not as if Kelly has made a great columnist, as his piece on the Opinion front today amply demonstrates. (That leering photo with his column is so unflattering, but Kelly doesn't see it.)

After pushing around hundreds of words on the release of the Pan Am Flight 103 bomber, Libya and BP, all he can mange at the end is a feeble, "Why was he set free?"  Don't readers deserve better? Don't they deserve his frank, ballsy opinions, based on his reporting and  journalistic hunches, not one rhetorical question after another?


More turkeys

What other turkeys have stories in today's paper? Well, also on Page 1, Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson tries to scare North Jersey residents into believing their taxes are going to soar when tax breaks for the rich expire. Does anyone understand his mumbo-jumbo? Is the story credible?

Isn't this the same reporter who, covering a rally of 10,000 protesters, missed a huge sign comparing President Obama's health-care reforms to the Holocaust, complete with piles of emaciated Jewish bodies? His Nov. 5, 2009, story on A-1 made no mention of the sign.

Why is Road Warrior Columnist wasting readers time by rehashing the brouhaha over Puerto Rican birth certificates at New York City's motor vehicle agencies (L-1)? What's happening to commuters in North Jersey, John? Get out of the office once in a while, will you? Try riding the bus. There are many columns waiting to be written about them. 


Take clueless Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and minion Dan Sforza with you.


For Hackensack news, Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado gives readers her umpteenth story on the Police Department, which is seeking state and national accreditation. One benefit would be reduced litigation, but if that comes to pass, the reporter would be out of job, because that's almost all she has written about in the past 11 months.


This is the third story Alvarado has written about the police in four days.