Readers want you to get off your asses

Image via Wikipedia

Please, Deirdre, Monsy, Giovanna, Shawn and the rest of the newsroom staff at The Record of Woodland Park, please get off your asses. If you're Publisher Stephen A. Borg, please get involved in what is going on in the newsroom again, as you were for more than a year when you took over in 2006. You're "yes men (women)" editors are ruining a once-great paper.


If you're one of the reporters who covers a town, please go there once in a while and talk with residents. You do a disservice to readers by going into the office or wherever you go and reading the paper with your morning coffee, then making a few calls to see if anything is going on.


If the only way you cover your town is by going to a meeting or rewriting a press release, report or lawsuit, you're doing a disservice to readers. Embrace the term "legwork, "and tell your clueless assignment editor you know how to cover your beat.

Hey, Monsy Alvarado, you are not reporting the end of the world. No one is interested in all the detail you provide about suits, hearings and so forth in connection with the suspension of  Police Chief Ken Zisa. If you covered other news in Hackensack (map), you wouldn't have to turn out so much Zisa copy to justify your existence. 

What is Staff Writer Jean Rimbach doing? Shawn Boburg? The rest of you know who you are.

 Hey, Deirdre Sykes, you're the head of the assignment desk. Please get off your ass and leave the newsroom once in a while, and talk to readers about what they want to see in the paper. You might be surprised what Hackensack readers want now that you've neglected them for years in favor of the lame, endless  investigations you've directed. 

Mother Hen Deirdre, you might want to start with Viriginia Franco, a Hackensack reader who asks in a letter to the editor today: "What has happened to Hackensack?" She bemoans the lack of American flags on Main Street for Memorial Day, while the city spends money on new blue-and-gold signs to help visitors and shoppers.

To paraphrase her, Deirdre, what has happened to coverage of Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years? As the mother hen, did you lay an egg?

Hey, Editor Frank Scandale, why don't you join Deirdre on these excursions? Did you ever talk to your neighbors in Glen Rock about the paper? Your presence in the office is unnecessary. You're not much inspiration to the staff, and your assignment editors suck.


Hey, Stephen Borg, we know you like to minimize your role in the newsroom, but you did shake things up when you took over in mid-2006, and revamp news coverage. You not only demanded "daily" education coverage, but you endorsed the selection of an unqualified food editor and foolishly folded the Food section -- despite the obesity epidemic. 

You also neglected to pay attention to other local news, and coverage of your core Bergen County communities is shameful. You and your big sister grew up in Englewood, but when is the last time you saw a story about the city in Local?



Today's paper

In Local, a third of L-3 is taken up by endless reporting on another suit against the Hackensack police chief, and a ruling that withholding his pay is proper. On that same page, no details are provided on the death of a driver in a crash on Route 17, but you would have learned plenty from WCBS-TV news a few hours after it happened.


Staff Writer Allison Pries' weighty contribution to local news coverage is a report on the farmers' market in Ramsey. The town will "host" one for 21 weeks, she writes.

In Better Living, Food Editor Bill Pitcher's premise for an article on al-fresco dining is flawed: No outdoor space is comfortable on a sweltering summer day. He also includes a clunker. The back yard of Hummus in Paterson can be stifling, and you'll have to contend with flies. Give me AC any day. Also, the Turkish food is not as great as he says: The signature hummus is actually bland.

Pitcher's work often is more style than substance.