Now the filler is on the front

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Now, the desperate editors of The Record of Woodland Park can't come up with enough news worthy of the front page, so today they use a big element of filler on the U.S. Senate Democrats' to-do list. Though there are New Jersey references in the piece, don't readers really need one on the state Legislature?


The only other story worthy of Page 1 is by Staff Writer Lindy Washburn, who reveals that AIDS patients are another group being screwed by Governor Christie's austere budget. How did this fall through the reportorial cracks?


What is the sentencing of Otis Mann doing on A-1, and why does the reporter call him a tribesman and refer to tribe members? I don't believe the Ramapough Mountain People have been recognized by the U.S. as a legitimate Native American tribe. Workers being laid off by the Turnpike Authority? Why is this on what all in all is a pretty lousy front page?


On the front of Local, the story of a giant oak tree facing the ax in Teaneck is written by an Ax, which leads me to ask whether head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and her assignment minions shouldn't be the ones facing the ax? They always seem to have their reporters -- including Monsy Alvarado, Shawn Boburg and Jean Rimbach -- barking up the wrong tree.


I urge them to turn over a new leaf and branch out to coverage of Hackensack. Remember Hackensack, Deirdre? It's where The Record was founded in 1895, where it prospered for more than 110 years and, famously, where you fell on your well-padded derriere trying to cross a snowbank, leading to a long period of convalescence.


The lead story on the Local front -- "First aid officer charged in crash" -- appeared Monday on Jerry DeMarco's Cliffview Pilot.


Page L-2 has a piece on Paterson's new mayor, but I have yet to see one on Hackesnack's new mayor, nor is there any other Hackensack news in the paper today. 


Tuesday, July 6, 2010


There was no Hackensack news in last Tuesday's paper either, but there was a Tenafly budget story, reporting a $7.6% tax hike on residents, including Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who lives in a $3.65 million McMansion he bought with a company mortgage several months before layoffs began.


In Better Living, a story by free-lancer Abigail Leichman carried the headline: "A MOTHER-DAUGHTER DUMPLING DYNASTY," and the third paragraph describes fried, baked or boiled "dumplings" called kubbeh or kibbeh.


I grew up eating kibbeh made by my Sephardic Jewish mother, who was born in Syria, and to call the fried version -- made with bulgur -- a dumpling is simply wrong. We referred to them as torpedos (see photo on Page F-6).


Unfortunately for Leichman and anyone else who writes about food for The Record, the features copy desk is notorious for all the errors it misses or creates, especially in food stories. This was the case when I wrote for the section from 1999-2006 and self-described foodie Liz Houlton ran the copy desk and, sadly, still is the case now, when the young food writers make numerous, uncorrected errors.