Mixed signals

Is there an infrastructure story The Record of Woodland Park doesn't love to splash across the front page? The one about cell towers today is so upbeat and so lavishly illustrated I almost forgot that most of them have long been considered ugly and possibly dangerous in terms of their impact on nearby residents' health.

I almost forgot, that is, until I saw the editorial on Page A-13 today about a cell tower that some Little Falls residents are calling a monstrosity. So how did cell towers suddenly become a prudent and financially sound addition to the municipal landscape or as the headline says, "Towns see beauty in cell towers"? I guess news side was scrambling for a Page 1 story today and had nothing else but this weak effort from Staff Writer Allison Pries. But the people who write the editorials and the residents of Little Falls did their own thing. How embarrassing, especially since Pries' story (deliberately?) omits any mention of Little Falls.


Another embarrassment also appears on Page 1 today, the lead brief about a student assaulted at the middle school in Englewood, with the "full story" appearing on the front of the Local section. Is this the only way the segregated middle and elementary schools in that city can get any attention from the former Hackensack daily? Has the paper's lazy and incompetent editors ever assigned a reporter to detail what efforts are being made to integrate those schools?

Don't look for any real news today from Teaneck, Englewood or Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895 and prospered for more than 110 years until the Borg family, in a bid to preserve their personal wealth, moved printing of the paper and its reduced staff out of River City.

In Better Living, the puzzling phrase "Progressive Dining" is back on a food story about Rutherford's Park Avenue. Newspapers call this a "bug," but it was missing from the last story in this "occasional series" by Staff Writer Elisa Ung. She has never explained what is "progressive" about gorging herself at five or six places in one evening.