Avoiding the real stories

Image by Here in Van Nuys via Flickr

The Record of Woodland Park today is another exercise in avoiding real stories while pandering to sports fans and giving more precious space to a publicity hungry rabbi who gives a bad name to me and other Orthodox Jews.

The desperate, incompetent editors often have no choice, because they stopped inspiring their reporters long ago. They keep their jobs, because the Borgs -- Malcolm, Stephen and Jennifer -- ignore the paper's precipitous decline while they pursue their selfish interests, including a wine bar in Englewood and stopping the expansion of a synagogue on the East Hill street where the elder Borg lives.

The Record sent a reporter and photographer to Indianapolis to cover Sunday's football game, but apparently they could find only one Jets fan and a few former North Jersey residents. But that didn't stop the paper from devoting most of the front page to this inanity. I hope reporter John Brennan will like Indiana so much, he won't come back.

I'm with Kathleen M. DuHaime of Westwood, whose letter to the editor appears today on Page A-11. She noted Page 1 coverage of the Jets victory Jan. 18 "struck a jarring note." She added:

"While the whole world's attention is focused on the disaster in Haiti and the deaths and suffering of thousands of people, The Record, once again, chooses to give precedence to a sports event. May I suggest you 'gotta believe' that world events of this magnitude are far more important than a football game."

 Although part of an inside page is devoted to the humanitarian crisis today, The Record appears to be slowly returning to the time when U.S. media simply ignored the Haitian people.

Naive Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano continues to turn her back on that city's segregated elementary and middle schools, its downtown traffic congestion and its Jamaican community, but she found time to be exploited by a publicity hungry rabbi, no doubt encouraged by head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, who is desperate for local news. Fabiano's and Sykes' "bullshit meters" both need tune-ups. Where is Editor Frank Scandale, swimming with the fishes?

In August, Fabiano wrote seven stories about Englewood (photo) -- five of them about the rabbi's attempt to stop the Libyan leader from staying at his country's estate. Has the reporter ever asked the rabbi why -- 11 years ago -- he bought the Palisade Avenue mansion next door if he hates the Libyans so much? Not long after the news coverage, a flattering article about the rabbi's new book on Michael Jackson appeared in Better Living.

Maybe the rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, could switch mansions with the elder Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group. Then the rabbi could simply stroll down Walnut Street to the synagogue, and Borg and his wife could invite the Libyans over for dinner. That would end two "controversies" in one stroke.

In today's story, which runs on the front of the Local section with a big photo of the rabbi, the reporter seems to be trying to justify more coverage of this man's selfish quest to get rid of the Libyans by saying -- falsely -- that the East Hill estate has been "the center of controversy for decades." That's nonsense. She also gets the month wrong for the flap over Moammar Gadhafi coming to Englewood.

Sykes and Fabiano's assignment editor should be ashamed of  foisting this sham story on readers. Of course, when you have no real news from Hackensack, Englewood and many other Bergen County towns, you have to print any crap you can find.

That's something we have been seeing almost every day since The Record moved its headquarters and hundred of employees out of Hackensack last year, abandoning the city where it was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years.