Slanted local news coverage

You'll find important news on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today -- a potential $10 billion deficit facing the incoming governor and continuing coverage of Haiti -- but what jumps out is a Page 1 promotion for the third story in recent months about Ridgewood's downtown.

I can't remember a story in the past few years about the downtowns in Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck, all of which have suffered during the recession. I hope Ridgewood is getting so much coverage because of the enterprise of reporter Evonne Coutros -- not because it is a wealthy, predominantly white community when compared to the others, which have much larger minority populations.

Hackensack's Main Street has always looked forlorn, even more so after The Record transferred hundreds of press and editorial employees to Rockaway Township and Woodland Park, finishing the moves last year. Englewood and Teaneck also have many empty or changing storefronts, and the former also struggles with major downtown traffic congestion, not to mention segregated elementary and middle schools.

Why are these three towns consistently ignored by head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes and her equally lazy, incompetent sub-editors, including Dan Sforza and Richard Whitby? Where are the Borgs, basking in the tropical sun? After all, North Jersey Media Group Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg grew up in Hackensack and his son, Publisher Stephen A. Borg, grew up in Englewood, where his father still lives in an East Hill mansion, but I guess they no longer feel any loyalty to those towns.

Can an argument be made that consistent coverage of Tenafly (where the younger Borg now lives in a $3.65 million mansion), Ridgewood and Glen Rock (home to Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Scandale, who couldn't afford Ridgewood) and other predominantly white communities is deliberate? Scandale also has done a poor job of hiring and retaining minorities. (See the flattering portrait of Tenafly in today's Real Estate section.)

Similarly, Road Warrior John Cichowski barricades himself in the office to all hours of the night, reading bitchy e-mails from drivers and writing columns about them, but refuses to ride and report on the decrepit local bus service, which is patronized mostly by blacks and Hispanics who can't afford to own cars and probably don't own computers or send him e-mails. (See a reader's complaint about mass transit on the Editorial Page today.)

Columnist Mike Kelly today tells us why Governor Corzine lost the election, but doesn't give him props for all he did to improve health care and education for disadvantaged children. (Memo to Kelly: Many people thought raising turnpike tolls to help get the state out of its financial mess was a great idea, because it would shift the burden to drivers who used the road most, so stop calling the proposal "knuckle-headed." You are the knuckle head.)

The Local section today has a second story on the front in three days about the proposed end of side-yard garbage collection in lily white Allendale, and reporter Allison Pries again blindly passes along the assertion of lazy residents that having garbage cans at the curb awaiting pick-up once a week will "lower property values."
 
On Page L-2, there is a picture of an Oakland house fire, but you have to read cliffviewpilot.com to find out the homeowner is being accused of deliberately leveling the place. On L-3, a quarter of a page is wasted on a Wayne family of slobs whose house will be cleaned up by a reality show. The episode won't be aired until May or June, so what is the compulsion to run this now, except for the lack of legitimate news about Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood?

In Better Living today, On-Leave Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung has a column on food safety in restaurants (no names are mentioned) -- while the paper continues to short-change readers every week by running a much-abbreviated list of North Jersey restaurant sanitary inspection reports. For example, you won't find any inspections listed for wealthy Wyckoff, because the news clerk who compiles the list has said that town's health inspector refuses to release the ratings.