Boring front pages two days in a row

Former Editor Francis Scandale put on blackface and played in the New York City subway before landing a job as vice president of print production for Digital First Media.

The Record's front page today isn't much of an improvement over Page 1 on Monday, when a whopper of an error appeared in the first paragraph of the lead story on cold-case murders.

The most dramatic story on A-1 today -- a worker who was rescued from a vat of acid -- is totally oversold by Editor Marty Gottlieb, though readers don't learn that until deep into the continuation page; the diluted acid wouldn't have killed him (A-6).

Recycled news

A rare story on recycling focuses on Fair Lawn and Clifton, but there's no explanation why Hackensack, the most populous Bergen County town, was omitted (A-1).

Although readers have had it up to here with 9/11, the editor of the Editorial Page keeps hammering away at the anticlimactic trial as a follow-up to news stories and columns that no one bothered to read (A-10).

Bridge loan

Readers are wondering why the paper is wasting so much space on 9/11, and devoting so little space to cost overruns at the World Trade Center and the higher tolls and fares we pay to cover them.

Gottlieb must be pulling down so much money as editor, he is laughing off the daily $12 Hudson River toll on the way home from Woodland Park. 

Tru-hack

The ACLU may have blocked the TRU-ID program at the Motor Vehicle Commission, but Road Warrior John Cichowski has vowed to write another 20 columns about licensing standards -- anything to avoid reporting on commuting problems (L-1).

On L-3 today, readers get a fourth straight day of coverage on the arrest of a suspect in the March 2011 murder of a Teaneck man, and another story on the trial of suspended Hackensack  Police Chief Ken Zisa. 

The other big news in Teaneck is the trapping of a coyote (L-3).

Sleeping it off

Newsroom staffers, meanwhile, have been unable to rouse head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes from a deep slumber.

On the Better Living front, a story on how to re-use beer bottles is a nice tie-in to the Page 1 story on lower recycling rates in North Jersey.

Murdering English

On Monday, the first paragraph of the lead A-1 story on two cold-case murders said:

"But two cases -- each involving an woman who was stabbed before her home was set ablaze -- are still a mystery [italics added]."

Also a mystery is how this glaring Page 1 error got through all the editors the newspaper employs to catch reporters' mistakes.

Francis Scandale

According to his LinkedIn page, former Editor Francis "Frank" Scandale -- who left in disgrace after last October's surprise snowstorm -- has gotten a job as vice president of print production at Digital First Media. 

More Linanity

In other employment news, Jeremy Lin's family have refused to release the Knicks player from delivery duties for the family restaurant on East 23rd Street in Manhattan (S-1).

Lin's height makes him ideally suited to delivering Chinese food, allowing him to hand orders through first-floor windows rather than trying to get into the building.

At least readers have the recycling bin

Image by Getty Images via @daylife
The Record goofed big time on the "expected" site of Whitney Houston's funeral in Newark.

Returning from a week in California, I climbed into a limo at John F. Kennedy International Airport at close to midnight on Monday and stared at the headline and big color photo on the front page of The Record, which the driver had placed on the back seat.


I was exhausted from the long flight, and it was enough to put me instantly to sleep.


A near-empty Bergen County 911 dispatching center made a terrible photo for the paper's premier page, and the story about the slow process of centralizing emergency response wasn't much better.


Loose change


I guess not much has changed at the Woodland Park daily, despite the arrival of a veteran New York Times editor to run the newsroom last month. 


As I separated the advertising and Sports sections from news and features, I consoled myself that at least I could recycle all this wasted newsprint.


The only real news on the front page today is rising gasoline prices, but that story is just catching up to the hikes North Jersey drivers have seen in the past couple of weeks.


In San Francisco, a station on Ocean Avenue in the Ingleside neighborhood raised a gallon of regular by 9 cents overnight, followed by a 6-cent increase the next day, bringing the price to $4.05. 


Today, at my Shell station on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, $3.59 a gallon for regular seems like a bargain. 


What will Editor Marty Gottlieb do when gasoline sails over $4 a gallon in North Jersey -- devote the entire front page to the news?


Christie apologist


Also on Page 1 today is another limp-weiner political column from Staff Writer Charles Stiles, who waits until the continuation page to explain that Governor Christie's bullshit plan to cut income taxes will mean jack to the middle class.


Stiles also seems to conveniently forget that Christie was elected on a platform that promised to cut property -- not income -- taxes.


In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, I see more Northvale, Fort Lee and Bogota news.


On L-3, the Hackensack reporter, Stephanie Akin, writes about a film festival sponsored by an African-American civics club. 


In Better Living, a story on the beginning of Lent was assigned to a reporter who apparently knows nothing about the wonders of wild-caught seafood, judging from how hard she pushes McDonald's crappy Filet-O-Fish (F-1). 

Monday's paper


I don't see any Hackensack news in Monday's newspaper. I haven't looked over all of the papers delivered since Feb. 13, so don't know whether other Hackensack stories have run recently.


Columnist Mike Kelly must have run out of ideas, devoting an entire column to a Haworth teen who collected nearly $1,000 for cancer research (L-1).


Sunday's paper


Most of Sunday's front page was devoted to the funeral service for Whitney Houston at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark under the headline:

Houston comes home

Unfortunately, that headline duplicated a Page 1 headline that ran only five days before over what turned out to be an embarrassing error -- a story that reported the Prudential Center was expected to be the site of the funeral.

Whitney

comes home

for funeral

That headline last Tuesday from Editor Liz Houlton's dysfunctional news copy desk doesn't even tell the story, which apparently was pulled out of thin air by Staff Writer John Brennan, who beats the sports-business beat to death. 


Brennan cited "sources familiar with the arrangements" in reporting the Prudential Center had been chosen for the funeral. I guess he has unreliable sources.


The big question is why Gottlieb or any other editor takes Brennan seriously and continues to put his stories on Page 1.

Polishing turds

Image by Hoboken Condos via Flickr

Try as they might, the lazy, incompetent editors at The Record of Woodland Park can't hide their desperation when Sunday night rolls around and they have absolutely nothing worthy of Page 1. Then, they scramble to cover their asses and try to find any story with a few photographs they can dress up for its front-page debut.

Today, they grabbed a story that belongs inside Local on a subject the paper long has neglected: recycling. Not only is about recycling, but it's about Paterson and other urban centers, with apparently no relevance to Bergen County. As my dear, departed colleague Michael Thaler used to say about some stories he handled as a copy editor: "You can't polish a turd."

Besides all that, this turd is poorly reported by Staff Writer Meredith Mandell, who normally is a hard worker. But here, she neglects to discuss the financial arrangement between a private collection company and its municipal partner. Does cash-strapped Paterson get any money from the sale of all these recyclables?

The only other story on A-1 today is another gentle handling of Republican Governor Christie, who in less than a month has alienated union members, public schools and teachers, mass transit users and the middle class, while catering to the wealthy and corporations, such as the Borgs and their North Jersey Media Group, publisher of the former Hackensack daily.

I forgot to mention how Herb Jackson, the paper's Washington correspondent, described Christie in his story on A-4 yesterday as admitting "during the campaign he struggled to hold down his weight." Only during the campaign? Not for many years before that as U.S. attorney? And has he really "struggled"? What a hoot.

It's that kind of "public relations reporting" (the reporter wants to stay in the good graces of his overweight subject) that throws cold water on calls by Michelle Obama and others to make ending childhood obesity a priority. The Record's editors have long refused to launch an obesity project that could benefit readers.

For yet another day, today's paper contains no news -- not even police news -- about Hackensack, Englewood and many other important towns.

More misinformation?

Environmental reporting at The Record of Woodland Park should be recycled. Editors and reporters have ignored Hackensack's excellent program to accept such electronics as TVs and computers, and compact fluorescent bulbs containing mercury, and have written nothing about delays of two years or more facing homeowners who want to install solar panels.

Image via Wikipedia

Now, Staff Writer James Yoo reports on the front of Local today that towns in Bergen and Passaic counties no longer accept household batteries for recycling. He quotes everyone but Hackensack officials. I wasn't able to reach Hackensack's recycling director, but the city employee who answered the phone said that as far as she knew, batteries still are accepted for recycling. So who is correct?

Hackensack, after all, is where The Record was founded in 1895 and were it prospered for more than 110 years. Now, the paper not only has moved printing and virtually all of its news staff out of River City, but it has turned its back on city's residents and most of their news, along with ignoring Teaneck and Englewood as much as possible. 

For weeks at a time, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado is missing in inaction, and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes seems not to notice or care. The Borg family? Just counting the money.

Image via Wikipedia

It looks like Staff Writer Joseph Ax and Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi have been pulled out of Haiti and in the process, the incompetent editors have demoted coverage of the humanitarian crisis. In the few days they were there, Haiti again was front-page news (coat of arms is shown).

Page 1 today is filled with hard news, including Staff Writer Michael Gartland's continuing revelations about financial abuses by Bergen County school district officials. The lead story says the Xanadu shopping and entertainment complex may open after all, despite all the attempts by The Record and Staff Writer John Brennan to write its obituary.

The major element on the front reports on the state's share of the proposed federal budget, including allowing tax cuts to expire for such wealthy people as Malcolm, Stephen and Jennifer Borg of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record and Herald News. The top bracket would go to 39 percent from 35 percent. I doubt a 4% jump in taxes would crimp their lifestyle: a heady mix of mansions, vacation and city homes, a wine bar and more.

I laughed when I saw the main headline on the front of  Better Living:  "The high cost of free advertising," referring to complaints by a Ridgewood couple whose restaurant will be profiled on Chef Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" reality program (photo).

Image by jo-h via Flickr

 Of course, there is absolutely no cost to restaurateurs for the lavish, uncritical coverage by The Record and Staff Writer Elisa Ung, who would make a good addition to the advertising staff. Recall her huge spread about Bobby Flay's hamburger restaurant in Paramus, her blow-by-blow reporting about the ups and downs of the South City Restaurant Group and her two-star review of Bahama Breeze, a mediocre chain restaurant on the highway in Wayne. Or how about her failure to investigate claims by the nail-biting Flay and other chefs intent on hiding the low quality of the beef they serve?


I am still waiting for a reality program called "Newsroom Nightmares," which would expose The Record and other newspapers for cutting staffs and benefits, and turning their backs on local news, while their owners continue to prosper.

 

Are we in trouble yet?

Image via Wikipedia

The state's huge financial problems are back on the front page as The Record of Woodland Park continues its now-you-see-it, now-you-don't coverage of  the  "mountain of debt"  in New Jersey -- third highest in the nation.

The onetime Hackensack daily's lazy, incompetent editors finally acknowledge former Gov. Chirstie Whitman's "borrowing spree" after running a column by her a while back that blamed everyone but herself for the mess the state is in. And, on Page A-12, the focus is taken off politicians and put on taxpayers, who  are criticized  for approving bonds to preserve open space. This reflects the Borg family's long-held goal of  covering  North Jersey with shopping centers and keeping the ones in Paramus open on Sundays to boost the paper's advertising revenue.

You won't find any development, education or municipal news about Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895, but the front of the Local section today has the juicy details about a municipal court appearance by a bimbo complainant from Wayne.

Inside, you'll find the second story in less than a month about establishment of a "green team" in Englewood that will apparently duplicate the work of the city's Environmental Commission, but no mention about whether this will lead to recycling of  TV sets, computers and other electronic devices, something Hackensack has been doing with little fanfare for more than a year.

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung gives two out of four stars to Cafe Amici in Ho-Ho-Kus, but such a rating is meaningless after she gave the same number of stars to Bahama Breeze, a chain restaurant that serves fake Caribbean dishes in Wayne. And while she continues to obsess over the quality of desserts, missing for another week are any health inspections of Wyckoff restaurants.

She describes a "giant" cupcake as "impeccable," "dense and moist with a thick cream cheese," then adds, innocently, "We're guessing it wasn't low-fat." Indeed. Readers likely are guessing that she isn't "low-fat," either.

Rewriting a news release for Page 1

Image by slimmer_jimmer via Flickr

The front page of The Record today is filled with news for a change -- from a spike in pedestrian deaths in car-loving New Jersey to the governor-elect mulling a 'state of emergency' to hospitals restricting visitors because of the flu scare.

But if you read the most prominent story carefully -- pedestrian deaths jump 33% -- you will realize it is based not on the reporter's enterprise but on a news release from a group in Washington that probably arrived via fax -- a neat little package that the paper loves. All Staff Writer Karen Rouse had to do to land on Page 1 was make a few phone calls to officials and interview one -- just one -- pedestrian. Today is the second day in a row that traffic safety has been splashed across the front page. Yesterday's story, also by Rouse, was based on a safety grant the state won.

The photos for the pedestrian story, of Teaneck's Cedar Lane, are good, but the speed of cars and trucks on Hackensack Avenue and River Street in Hackensack make them far more hazardous to cross. From a driver's point of view, Main Street in Hackensack is a nightmare, because of pedestrians darting out from between cars on the one-way thoroughfare. Oh, wait. The former Hackensack daily moved most of its reporters and photographers to offices in Woodland Park more than a year ago.

The story also fails to mention how speeding enforcement can make streets more pedestrian-friendly. On Cedar Lane, a police speed trap is far away from one block where drivers race and pedestrians run for their lives -- from the CVS parking lot to the Blockbuster store and food businesses on the opposite side of the street.

I recall that until it received a news release or wire service story based on another report a few years ago, The Record didn't realize that an unusually large number of pedestrians who are killed are senior citizens. That's because the paper's lazy editors treat incidents such as pedestrian deaths and the elderly ramming their cars into buildings, other cars and people as so much "police news," failing to see a pattern.

These same editors don't encourage reporters to get out into their communities, talk to people and observe as a way of finding stories. Instead, reporters are told to devote all their time to neat, little journalistic packages, including news releases, reports, hearings, meetings, proposed ordinances and protests.

When I was a news copy editor at The Record, I recall vividly how two reporters rejected my story ideas -- not because they were bad ideas or couldn't be done without legwork -- but because no group was "clamoring for change," as one of the staffers put it. I've always felt it should be the newspaper that sets the public agenda, not the other way around.

You'll find a story based on one of those neat packages on the front of the Local section -- the first story about Englewood in 12 days (but you won't find any stories about Teaneck or Hackensack, the paper's home for more than 110 years). This is huge news. Englewood is forming a 'green team' to boost recycling.

Of course, the newspaper has ignored how Hackesnsack moved into the forefront of recycling among North Jersey communities more than a year ago when it began accepting  TV sets, computers and other electronics; light bulbs and batteries -- in addition to the usual curbside pickup of newspapers, junk mail, plastic bottles and cans.

And I don't see anything in the L-1 story about Englewood beginning to accept television sets, computers, light bulbs and batteries.