Selling Page 1 for all its worth

A fire hit two restaurants in Tenafly, above.

Stories promoting companies are an almost daily feature in the Business pages of The Record of Woodland Park -- free advertising with unfiltered claims of how great these products or services are. 

On Page 1 today, you'll find another one about a store selling stuff to fans of "Glee," the TV show.

The desperate editors would probably justify this naked commercialism by saying the show is immensely popular. 

If so, why couldn't Staff Photographer Don Smith come up with a photo of a customer on A-8, the continuation page, instead of the beaming store manager? How low can you go?

And would you look at the size of that A-8 photo and others in Local -- filling space that rightly should be devoted to text -- that is, if the lazy assignment desk had any to put there. 

Another great Saturday paper from Editors Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale and Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes.

Does a non-fatal earthquake in far-off New Zealand justify a huge A-1 photo? Hurricane Earl was a bust, despite all the hype from the media, including big front-page photos in The Record this week, all designed to raise the anxiety level of readers. 

Three readers wrote letters to the editor (A-11) to defend the concrete Jersey barrier, which was called dangerous in another letter Aug. 31. 

It's bad enough the first letter writer was misinformed, but Letters Editor Chalres Saydah made it worse by slapping on an inaccurate heading, using neither quote marks nor attribution: Jersey barriers are no safety devices.

There is so little local news today, the layout editors had to run two big wire-service obits of obscure people (L-5), a big house ad for Road Worrier John Cichowski (L-6) and a photo of a deer in a Ridgewood back yard (L-2). 

You'll search in vain for any news of Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and many other towns. The last story by Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano appeared on Aug. 13.

 

 For some reason, an L-3 story today on two restaurants recovering from a fire in Tenafly fails to mention that a third eating place will be opening in the same building, 1 Highwood Ave. 

Simply Vietnamese -- slated to open in mid-September -- will replace Saigon R in Englewood. I guess the reporter did the story by phone.