This front page caters to few readers

Image by joseph a via Flickr












If you are Korean-American with a limited or no ability to speak English, or you give a hoot about Passaic County politics, today's front page appeals to you. However, the vast majority of readers are left wondering what Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale might have been smoking over the weekend.


And what did head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes eat over the weekend that clearly disagreed with her? Maybe she was just pissed that the strongest story her assignment minions could come up with to lead today's Local front is the hiring of an assistant principal in Haworth's tiny school district.

Local journalists say F.U.

I hope Publisher Stephen A. Borg is taking note of what a great job Scandale and Sykes are doing with The Record of Woodland Park -- as day after day they give the finger to readers hungry for municipal news of Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other important towns.

Talk to the neighbors

I recall the staff meeting where Scandle promised to finally get around to talking to his neighbors on Monmouth Road in Glen Rock on what they would like to see in the newspaper. I guess he never talked with them. He likely feared that if he introduced himself as editor of The Record, they would laugh in his face.

News for Korean-Americans

It looks like the photography staff produced no better picture than of a golfer who won a tournament in Paramus and his family, but maybe all the space it takes up on A-1 is by design, not out of desperation. 
 
Koreans are big golfers themselves and that image would have led them to the story at the bottom of the page about Holy Name Hospital's special program for these North Jersey  immigrants, with everyone from drivers to doctors who speak their language. (The article may find a few more readers, if the staff translates it for patients.)

Passaic County politics

The lead Page 1 story, about Jerry Speziale's $1 million campaign fund, is a waste of space. The least the tin-badge lawman can do is give the money to the county to ease the tax rate after his years of overspending and padded payrolls as Passaic County sheriff.

Laughing off laziness

On Page L-3 in Local, a story on Labor Day travelers is dumped at the bottom of the page. There's nothing in the story about whether Staff Writer Karen Rouse or the paper's other transportation writers will for the first time actually ride a bus or train to evaluate service this coming weekend. 


Two huge wire-service obits of obscure people came in handy to fill more than half of L-5 -- another embarrassment Sykes dismisses with one of her belly-shaking laughs.

A couple of late hits 

I was moved by the personal accounts in the Paterson shootings story that was all over the front on Sunday, but wonder why the paper didn't put more of the blame on the city's Police Department for not protecting residents.

On Sunday's Better Living front, a bullfighter who lives in Verona justifies killing the animals with the preposterous claim that it is more humane than raising and slaughtering cattle for food.

It's pretty obvious the gullible reporter has never seen a bullfight, where the bull is brutally punished by the picadors, who drive lances into their muscles, and where the bull, in turn, drives its horns into the padded flanks of the sedated horse, causing serious internal bleeding that eventually leads to death.

Why is this bizarre profile in the paper in the first place? A bullfighter (bullshitter) lives in North Jersey? Gee-whiz. Big deal. Next time, Features Director Barbara Jaeger, assign a writer who doesn't have his head up his A-hole or do some intelligent editing before the story is published.

(Photo: Passaic County Courthouse in Paterson.)