Image via WikipediaContinuing its apparent boycott on news of Hackensack and many other important Bergen County towns, The Record of Woodland Park may be telling us to wait until next year. I guess the lazy, incompetent editors didn't make a New Year's resolution to do a better job of covering local news.
For the third day in a row, most of the front page today is devoted to the Jets football team and airhead reporter John Brennan, who squanders his trip to Indianapolis by turning in some of the most lackluster copy I've ever seen. The bottom of the front page goes to the poor schmucks who live in polluted Pompton Lakes (map), where DuPont, and town and state officials have been screwing around for more than 20 years on cleaning up groundwater contamination. Isn't home rule a great system?
You'll find lots of "filler" stories today, the kind the desperate editors have to run in the absence of real news, like the story on A-4 about three-wheel motorcycles in Los Angeles. The crisis in Haiti stays inside today, but do readers really need three stories on North Jersey doctors, a pastor and a nurse who went there?
There is good news for consumers in the Business pages, for a change, word that Governor Corzine signed a law before he left office allowing sellers' real estate agents to give rebates to buyers. I'm still waiting for a story on real estate agents who represent buyers and get paid by sellers.
Have you ever heard of anyone being jailed for not going to a deposition -- confidential testimony given under oath in a civil lawsuit before a trial? Of course not, but in a Page 1 promo and in the Local section, reporter Ashley Kindergan quotes a plaintiff saying he wants the Bergenfield mayor jailed. This is a non-story.
You have to wonder why head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes and the editor who supervise Kindergan, one of the best reporters on the local news staff, pushed this turkey for the front of the section. And what do you make of Columnist Jersey Mike Kelly's latest, pathetic effort?
Image via WikipediaYes. Hackensack residents feel good about next year.
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I'll tell you what I make of Mike Kelly's latest pathetic effort. It's beyond sick, trashing a little old lady on behalf of Rochelle Park's government, which has a reputation of squashing gadflies with an iron fist.
ReplyDeleteWhat's even sicker is the lack of moderation on the Record's web site, with no way to "report" apparently unmoderated comments. The third comment on Kelly's column is from a reader who wishes the 84 year old subject of the column would fall down and break her hip.
The Web site is a sick joke.
ReplyDeleteThe third comment? What about the rest of them. Kelly has made this woman a laughing stock. One hysterical reader seems to suggest she deserves to be killed, mentioning the alleged death panels in health-care reform [when no such panels were proposed].
ReplyDeleteI know. There were only three comments on the web site when I commented! But at least a couple of readers set the record straight later on. I strongly suspect that the original comments were posted by members of the town government itself. If she had a lawyer, she'd probably have a great case against both the Record and the town.
ReplyDelete