Hacks cover Hackensack

Image by Global Jet via Flickr

Schools near Teterboro Airport get federal soundproofing money. Homeowners get the shaft.

Why does The Record of Woodland Park -- formerly of Hackensack -- have hacks covering the city where it was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years? And how have the hacks kept their jobs?


When the Hackensack City Council introduced the budget, The Record ignored it. When the council passed the budget and set the tax rate, The Record was silent. When the council picked a new mayor, only the weeklies reported it.


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes is chiefly responsible for local news, along with her crew of clueless assistants. She often sidetracks municipal reporters on expensive, prolonged investigations that bear little fruit. Wrongdoing often is exposed long after it has ended.


Sykes apparently has told Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado that her mission is blanket coverage of the Police Department, where the chief has been suspended and hit with a number of lawsuits, and he, in turn, has brought some of his officers up on administrative charges.


In nearly a year and a half of covering little else, Alvarado hasn't reported whether policing has been compromised or the public's confidence in the department has been shaken. 


Sykes even has Alvarado covering the administrative hearings as if they are pronouncements from the state's highest court, including spell-binding legal maneuvering to get the chief to testify on one cop's suspended and expired driver's license (L-3).

Catching up to 2005-09

Elise Young, a hard-working member of the State House Bureau, leads the paper today with an expose on the reckless Local Finance Board, the supposed watchdog of municipal and county spending. She pored over thousands of pages relating to actions the board took in 2005-09.


Once she convinces readers that these morons have forced taxpayers to cover the increased costs of out-of-control borrowing, she tells us Governor Christie has replaced the chairman and made other reforms.

What about homeowners? 

The big story on the front of Local today reports delays in FAA aid to insulate students from the noise of of aircraft using Teterboro Airport. But the paper has long ignored noise complaints from homeowners who live under the flight paths of both Teterboro and Newark airports. 

Local food coverage

There is none in Better Living today (unless you count the ShopRite ad on the back page). The battle of the cupcake mixes promised on Twitter by Food Editor Susan Sherrill didn't materialize. Did she have the day wrong?