Image by terrydu via FlickrA three-paragraph promo on A-1 of The Record today reports that a 12-year-old Hackensack boy was killed by an NJ Transit train on Tuesday afternoon, and readers are referred to the "complete story" on the Local front. But the story is far from complete, in another pathetic effort by a reporter, assignment editor, news copy editor, copy desk supervisor and Loafs A Lot Deirdre Sykes, the head assignment editor.
In Sykes' defense, she might have been stuck in a toilet bowl and could not get out to the newsroom in time to edit the story and possibly question why crucial information is missing, if she even noticed it.
Unfortunately, she has a separate bathroom equipped with a custom-made crapper large enough to accommodate her big, white bottom, and her cries, whimpers and laughs couldn't be heard. Her toilet water: Eau de Mierda.
Readers have to search the story for clues as to whether Caesar Muloki was walking home from Hackensack Middle School when he was hit by the train around 3:15 in the afternoon, because Staff Writer William Lamb never says so. ( Hey, Lamb, how about more Lion in your work?)
If the boy was walking home from school, his death could have been avoided if Hackensack provided school busing; it doesn't. None of this appears in the story, either.
After I bought a home in Hackensack, I suggested to Staff Writer Colleen Diskin that she do an environmental story on the lack of school busing, the attendant pollution and parents' frayed nerves, but she dismissed the idea, saying no group was clamoring for change. She calls herself a journalist?
It's unclear why this story wasn't handled by the Hackensack reporter, Monsy Alvarado, who wrote another L-1 story today. Does Alvarado know there is no school busing in Hackensack? Did she tell Lamb, the night rewrite reporter, or clueless Tom Troncone, the night assignment editor?
Sykes has smothered Alvarado so long, the reporter apparently has a one-story-per-day limit. She didn't even manage to write a Hackensack municipal story today.
If past practice is any guide, there won't be a follow to the death of the Hackensack boy, just as no follow was ever done on the death of a 21-year-old Korean woman from Glen Rock who was killed by an NJ Transit train last month.
Oh, Desk Warrior John Cichowski wrote a column blaming the half-dozen or so victims of NJ Transit trains this summer, never questioning the adequacy of fencing and other safety measures provided by the transit agency. Today, Chick, as he is known around the office, is off in La-La Land writing about electric cars that aren't for sale yet.
On Page 1 today, readers are treated to another expose of massive pay-to-play at a Bergen County agency. But this story, written by Jeff Pillets with the help of four other reporters, amounts to little more than journalistic masturbation as orchestrated by Castrated Francis Scandale, the editor.
Municipal reporting is shoved aside for these projects, yet despite hundreds of such exposes over the years in The Record and other papers, little has changed.
The really important story on A-1 is about the dying, debt-ridden Transportation Trust Fund, which repairs roads and benefits mass transit. Governor Christie refused, after he took office, to raise the low gasoline tax to bolster the fund, and now Democrats are pressuring him to do something.
Christie knows the Borgs and his rich friends would be disproportionately hit by a higher gas tax, because virtually all of them drive gas guzzlers. Curiously, the story omits any mention of mass transit or the gasoline tax.
On A-12, an editorial urges readers to contribute to the food drive sponsored by the North Jersey Media Group Foundation, headed by prim and proper Legal Beagle Jennifer A. Borg, one of the Silver Spoons running the papers.
Can her kid brother, Greedy Stevie Borg, the publisher of The Record and Herald News, assure readers that the downsizing he ordered didn't put former employees in the same dire straights of people who will benefit from this annual drive?
Has anyone seen the byline of Susan Sherrill, the new food editor, in the Better Living section since she joined the paper a few weeks ago? All I've seen are the highly promotional press releases from restaurants and food and wine stores she rewrites for Second Helpings, a blog on northjersey.com.
Just a suggestion: Come up with a new nickname for Mister Castrato or stop accusing him of journalistic masturbation. Capish?
ReplyDeleteHe is directing journalistic masturbation by other members of the staff, and does not need a, ahem, member of his own. Capish?
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ReplyDeleteI'd like to inform all the Anonymous commentators who are sending me vicious attack messages that I am retired, not unemployed or unemployable. I am so well off that I do not have to work another day in my life -- unlike you pathetic creatures, enslaved as you are to such editors as Francis, Deirdre, Barbara, Liz, Tim, Dan, Tom, Rich, McScreamy and the rest of the morons running the Woodland Park newsroom. I'm through with working for wealthy bosses such as the Borgs, who enrich themselves at workers' expense. But that's your certain future, plus the commuting, the mortgage, the taxes and all the other crap you put up with as you claw your way to the bottom. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
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