Huge Walmart is coming to Hackensack

A Walmart Supercenter -- like this one in China -- is planned for land in Hackensack, where great journalism was practiced for decades. The store will sell hundreds of items, including  diapers -- appropriate considering all the shit coming from the editors running the newsroom in an office building overlooking Route 80 in Woodland Park.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is moving ahead with plans to build a huge Hackensack store on land owned by North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record.

NJMG owns about 20 acres along River Street, where its flagship daily was published for many years before President Stephen A. Borg abandoned the city.

The land will be leased to Wal-Mart, not sold, according to a usually reliable source.

The world's biggest retailer has already started to submit documents to the city for approval of the plan, the source said.

The Hackensack store will be a Walmart Supercenter, like the one in Secaucus. That store is open 24 hours. 

Main Street merchants were hurt when The Record moved hundreds of employees out of its landmark building at 150 River St.

Now, they vehemently oppose Wal-Mart's plan.

North Jersey officials say: Merge this!

Image via Wikipedia

The Record's editors are upset the Passaic County Jail will remain in Paterson -- a city the paper has portrayed as a drug-and-prostitution center.

No one -- least of all Editor Francis Scandale -- should be surprised at the failure of a shared-services plan to close the Passaic County Jail in Paterson and lay off hundreds of employees.


In the past decade, Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes have specialized in publishing stories on merger studies, merger grants and merger plans, but they've never reported any actual mergers, save for the sharing of some police-dispatching duties.


So why is the failed jail proposal the lead story on Page 1 of The Record today and what's with the outraged editorial on A-10? 


Scandale and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin are putting on a big show only because the paper has talked up the plan in several earlier stories.


Drink up


At the bottom of A-1, readers learn former Bergen Community College President G. Jeremiah Ryan -- victim of a journalism witch hunt over his purchase of "top-shelf liquor" for donors -- is already pursuing job leads.


Staff Writer Leslie Brody is at the top of her craft, noting she interviewed Ryan "in a sitting room by the kitchen of his Edgewater home." Sitting room? 


With all the talented photographers on the staff, Scandale seems unable to come up with front-page photos of general interest. Today, a rock band apparently named for World War German submarines (U-boats) is featured.


The big news on the front of Sykes' Local section is a three-vehicle crash at the Fort Lee toll booths of the George Washington Bridge -- touched off by a commuter upset that Road Warrior John Cichowski refuses to write about mass transit (L-1).


Money, money, money


Tenafly Mayor Barry Honig seems unaware that some residents, including Publisher Stephen A. Borg, stay up all night counting their money and love having a new 24-hour 7-Eleven in town (L-3).


Honig is the same Neanderthal who opposes the extension of light-rail service to the wealthy community, asserting residents' constitutional right to drive cars into the city.


Bricks and mortar


The face lift of the Sears Roebuck and Co. building at Main and Anderson streets in Hackensack appears to be complete. The new black, brown and tan color scheme replaces a drab gray exterior.


No work on the interior is planned, a Sears spokeswoman said. The building was put up in 1932. It's one of 842 full-line Sears stores.


Meanwhile, preparations continue for the demolition of The Record's landmark building at 150 River Street to make way for a Walmart. The property has been surveyed in recent weeks.


At the N.J. Naval Museum, 78 River St., a board member said he didn't know if the new property owners will allow the U.S.S. Ling submarine to remain moored in the Hackensack River.


On River Street, two large stone markers have been stripped of The Record name as well as letters spelling out "North Jersey Media Group." Only the number "150" still appears on them.


They now look like tombstones marking the death of a great journalism tradition. The paper was founded in Hackensack in 1895.


I will return


Eye on The Record will return in a few days.


Please amuse yourself reading popular posts listed at the right, especially the comments on Tom Troncone throws his own going-away party.

Young Borg's big mistakes

Image by Joel Price via Flickr

Mistake that turned

his life upside down

When I first saw this headline on Page 1 of  The Record of Woodland Park today, I thought it would be appropriate to describe mistakes made by Publisher Stephen A. Borg that turned employees' lives upside down.

After he took over from his father, he moved printing of The Record and Herald News to Rockaway Township from Hackensack, sacrificing highly profitable commercial printing and prompting the layoff of more than 50 press workers, not to mention incurring the high cost of fuel and extra wear and tear on the Mercedes delivery trucks burning up Route 80 every day.

 Then, he scattered workers in the Hackensack newsroom to the four winds, depriving editors and reporters of a shared purpose, which you can see in the lousy local news coverage and a front page that chases every sensational story just to sell papers.

Now, the landmark building is nearly empty -- with Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg making North Jersey Media Group's last stand -- and 150 River St. apparently is unsellable in a down market. Wasn't unloading the underused building and surrounding land the whole point of moving to Woodland Park?

But today's A-1 headline is not about Borg, it's about the poor, lovelorn schmuck who ducked under a rope at Newark airport and triggered a security lock-down -- in other words, much ado about nothing. Is this really front-page news? Even the judge didn't think so, giving the defendant community service and fining him $500.

Governor Christie is on A-1 again today, blasting his predecessor for making a deal that will prevent Christie from laying off unionized state workers before January. So, the governor is pissed at Jon Corzine. How many thousands are pissed at Christie, who is planning a wide range of cuts that would affect working and middle classes, while easing the tax burden on the Borgs and other wealthy families?

So what's on the front of Local? A burned body found under a Route 46 bridge in Little Ferry is the best the lazy, incompetent assignment desk under Deirdre Sykes can do today. Three of the four education stories on L-2 are from Passaic County.

With Staff Writer Joseph Ax writing about Haiti again, there is no Teaneck news. Nor will you find any stories from Hackesnsack, Englewood and a lot of other Bergen County towns.

The front of Buisness shills for the makers of 3-D TVs (photo) with lots of color, upbeat headlines and text full of quotes from executives salivating over the prospect of huge bonuses.

Are the Borgs still proud?

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It's hard to imagine how the Borg family still could be proud of The Record of Woodland Park. The former Hackensack daily has moved out of Bergen County and largely abandoned readers who could once count on it for news of their towns.

Does Malcolm A. Borg, Stephen A. Borg and Jennifer A. Borg even read the paper? They seem to have been working at cross-purposes in the last few years.

The spoiled siblings -- he's the publisher and she's vice president and general counsel -- engineered the abandonment of Hackensack, slowly moving production of their two daily papers and then a downsized staff out of the city. The elder Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, has insisted in keeping his office in the old headquarters building and seems determined to be carried out of 150 River St. feet first.

Today's front page carries only two stories -- neither of which seems worthy of Page 1 play. The DNA identification of a Cresskill woman missing 10 years leads the paper, but the story doesn't explain why it appears more than six weeks after the I.D. The rest of the page is devoted to purchase of two steel shipping containers -- just two -- for use as housing in Haiti.

Local is filled with court, crime and fire news -- what passes for local news these days -- and a story on two northern Bergen towns concerned about trains blocking emergency vehicles, as if they are the only communities with that problem.

Image via Wikipedia

You won't find any Hackensack (map) or Teaneck news, but Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano reports new Mayor Frank Huttle will form a task force to ask residents about programs they want. This in a wealthy community with separate elementary and middle schools for whites and for blacks and Hispanics, and no community center, unlike Fort Lee, which built a beautiful one several years ago.

This is Fabiano's second story about Englewood in two days. Wow. That's covering your town.

CJR to Hackensack: Drop dead!

Columbia Journalism Review, one of the nation's chief media watchdogs, has expressed no interest in how The Record of Woodland Park is trying to conceal its abandonment of  Hackensack, where it was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years.

I first proposed such a story in a mid-October e-mail to Michael Hoyt, CJR's executive editor, who responded: "Let us throw this in the hopper and consider." Hopper, it turns out, is a euphemism for shit can. Hoyt worked at The Record from 1977-80, and his wife, Mary Ellen Schoonmaker, recently retired after a long editorial career with the newspaper.

I contacted Hoyt a few days ago to propose the story again, this time also asking him to report the start up of "Eye on The Record."

In a Dec. 2 e-mail, he wrote: "We're not planning anything on The Record's move (which was a while ago) or your blog at this time. We get a lot of decent story pitches and ideas and we have to choose; this one did not jump at us, that's all." He also rejected my contention that his wife's "loyalty" to the paper played a role in his decision. (The photo shows Columbia University's journalism building just across the Hudson.)

The Record completed the move of virtually all of its editorial staff out of Hackensack earlier this year -- many, many months before the timetable set by Publisher Stephen A. Borg in a story that appeared in the Buisness section on Feb. 21, 2008. Printing of  The Record and Herald News was moved to Rockaway Township in October 2006, about four months after Borg took over. Yet, the paper's address is still listed on Page A-2 every day as 150 River St. in Hackensack, the same address where it is allegedly "published daily."

The Record, Herald News and the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group now are headquartered at 1 Garret Mountain Plaza, Woodland Park.



http://www.cjr.org/