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.

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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.

Hard news, soft news, no news

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It happens overnight. The front page of The Record of Woodland Park goes from hard news to soft news or no news with a command from dictatorial Editor Frank Scandale. When I worked there, the Page 1 editor would emerge from the afternoon news meeting and start listing what "Frank wants" and what "Frank doesn't want," even down to the words copy editors were to put into headlines.

Scandale, of course, is only yielding to the pressure on him to sell newspapers as local readers abandon The Record. And you thought putting out a newspaper was a group effort?

Today, an extended story on "sexting," with a large photo illustration, dominates Page 1, informing readers "a federal court may soon decide the legality of sexting" or "sending racy pictures of a young teen" over a cellphone.

Although the story reports a teacher at a Bergen County regional high school was charged with engaging a 16-year-old girl in sexting, the federal appeals court case involves a Pennsylvania school district and a ruling is expected "within the next few months." Even though that court has jurisdiction over New Jersey, the case seems destined to go to the high court, so what's the compulsion of putting this on the front page today?


What about Haiti? Old news. What about a poll on whether state residents think Governor Christie can cut property taxes? A promo on the front is enough. What about local news? There is no local news worthy of Page 1.

The bottom corner of A-1 has another story on autism, which only serves to highlight how little The Record reports on Alzheimer's disease. The editors are incompetent, lazy and desperate, and now we can see they also are discriminating.


But not discriminating enough to recognize the importance of local food news. Above the masthead on Page 1, the editors promote the syndicated Relish magazine, which is inserted into  The Record and hundreds of other newspapers, but not the local market or deli or recipes from local chefs that appear today in Better Living.

The Road Warrior column on the front of the Local section contains a major inaccuracy. The massive Toyota recall involves accelerator pedals that stick, not "unintended acceleration," also called pedal error, which is when a driver mistakenly presses down on the accelerator pedal, thinking it's the brake pedal. This has happened in vehicles where the two pedals are too close to each other.

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Two huge photos of the old Giants stadium (above left) on L-1 tell you there isn't any good local news today in the former Hackensack daily, so the editors had to fill the space with fluff. Inside, the only traffic accident pictured occurred near the paper's new headquarters in Woodland Park.

Education, development or municipal news of Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other important Bergen County towns? Not today. You have to wonder how some reporters keep their jobs. As for the editors, they're secure in the  knowledge the Borgs are too busy enriching themselves to pay much attention to what is happening to a once-great local newspaper.

Try another newspaper

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If you live in Hackensack, Teaneck or one of the other important Bergen County towns, you won't find any local news in The Record of Woodland Park today. Maybe you should start subscribing to a weekly.

Much of Page 1 is devoted to a "plume of contamination" in far off Pompton Lakes, the second day in a row the story has been on the front page.

In the Local section, police, fire, weather and Haitian relief news is all you'll see from a handful of towns. For yet another day, Hackensack residents lose out. Development news? Education news? Municipal news? Environmental news? Nada, zero, zilch.

You have Frank Scandale, Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, Dan Sforza and all the other lazy, incompetent editors to thank for that.

Ignoring local news

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The Record of Woodland Park continues today to give front-page play to the Monmouth County father whose 9-year-old son has been returned to him from Brazil, while ignoring the Hasbrouck Heights dad whose holidays were ruined, because his 9-year-old daughter remains in Spain.

The Monmouth County story is being covered by The Star-Ledger, and that may be why The Record continues running it as part of a cooperative news-gathering agreement with the Newark paper. This means less work for Record reporters and their lazy, incompetent editors, and less local news for Record readers, who have been deluged with Star-Ledger stories of questionable relevance to their lives -- many of them mere low-quality filler.

Staff Writer Elizabeth Llorente has an interesting story on Page 1 about immigrant students and what schools in Paterson and Hackensack are doing to help them.

But if you are looking for more news about Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895, the only coverage you'll find is another piece on the turmoil in the Hackensack Police Department over disciplinary charges against officers who have sued the chief. I believe this is the first byline for Monsy Alvarado since Dec. 16.

Alvarado, who is assigned to cover Hackensack, has written many stories about the police department since June, but has ignored most other news in River City. She is competing with Giovanna Fabiano and Joe Ax, the reporters assigned to two other core Bergen towns, Englewood and Teaneck, to see who can do the least work and get away with it. The last Teaneck story appeared on Dec. 17, the last Englewood piece on Dec. 20 (not counting police or fire news written by other staffers). Unfortunately, their assignment editors, including Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, expect no more of Alvarado, Fabiano, Ax and many other municipal reporters.

Frugal Staff Writer Kevin DeMarrais has a rundown on the Business front of New Year's packages in North Jersey starting at about $50 per person, but you can't rely on him to find a real bargain, such as the multi-course dinners for four, six or eight people at Lotus Cafe, a popular BYO Chinese restaurant in Hackensack, that cost about $20 per person or less, including tax and tip. Six of us (plus an infant) were served eight delicious courses there last night, including prawns, filet of sole, duck, a chicken casserole and dessert.

Who ate the jelly beans?

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There is lots of soft news in The Record of Woodland Park today, but even with this, the paper struggles. A ridiculous story about a menorah filled with jelly beans is bungled, with two color photos showing no jelly beans at all.

The lazy, incompetent editors must have thought a great deal about this story, because they promote it on the front of the Local section. Here, a copy editor or a layout editor screws up, saying the Hanukkah menorah is "made of jelly beans," when it's actually supposed to be clear PVC pipe filled with 96 pounds of kosher jelly beans. The same photo on the front of the section is blown up and runs on Page L-6 with the story, but it's clear from the photo, the tubes are empty. Will the paper acknowledge the error tomorrow?

But, for the first time in years, there is a story inside the Local section about Hackensack High School by Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado. In an interview, the principal dispels "stereotypes" that "our kids and HHS [are] thought of as a 'ghetto' school, with violence and problem students."

Of course, what goes unsaid is that the former Hackensack daily -- by moving out of the city and at the same time, drastically cutting coverage of education and other issues -- is a major contributor to those stereotypes. I said in an Oct. 29 post that I had heard rumors about the high school, where my son would be going, but had read nothing in the paper about the place since I moved to Hackensack in August 2007.

The Local section also has stories about Jersey City and Pompton Lakes, but no municipal, education, development or quality of life news from Teaneck or Englewood. When is the paper going to tell us in detail what is being done to integrate elementary and middle schools in Englewood, where the Borg family lives in a big house on the East Hill?

When you take a look at Better Living today, you have to wonder why Bill Pitcher, the food editor, has  assumed such a minor role. Unlike the veteran he replaced in 2006, Pitcher writes none of the major pieces. He seems to put most of his energy into editing recipes from other newspapers and the wire services, and drives around North Jersey so he can chronicle the opening and closing of every pizza place, bagel joint and restaurant.

He leaves the restaurant reviews to Elisa Ung, an inconsistent voice for the consumer who loves to glorify chefs and enthuse over the allegedly "high quality" of their food. Sadly, she is error-prone and has an incomplete grasp of food issues, and her writing often is awkward.

On the front of Better Living today is a story about a Teaneck bakery and how busy it is during the holidays. Duh. This is a real yawner by Staff  Writer Alfa Garcia. But on Page F-3, a far more important topic, the challenge kids face in eating properly at this time of the year, is left for a wire service, and Pitcher makes no attempt to localize the story. So we read about people in California, Chicago, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- everywhere but North Jersey.

The front page is covered with Sunday accident photos, but information on injuries is scarce. This seems much ado about nothing, but it's on Page 1 simply because the editors and skeleton weekend staff couldn't come up with any real news.

'What's all this crap?'

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After nearly 18 months of just subscribing to and reading The Record and noting its sudden decline in quality, I've given up expecting anything special. So when my wife went out to the driveway and returned with a heavy plastic bag today, I muttered, "What's all this shit?"

At least the front page carried three hard-news stories, but there were lots of advertising inserts, a special advertising section and other junk to recycle. Page A-2 carried three corrections of  staff-written stories. Thursday's correction of a Wal-Mart story placed North Bergen in its correct county, Hudson.

Were all the news copy editors out to lunch? How about the slots, who supervise and check the work of the copy editors?

Is it enough to run wire service stories without editing them intelligently? The Page A-18 story today on invasive Asian carp ignores the logical question: Why aren't they caught and eaten, especially in view of all the demand on food pantries these days? Or are the Great Lakes so polluted that they render this tasty fish inedible?

On the front of the Local section, Road Warrior John Cichowski squanders yet another column, this one about Route 80 construction delays for eastbound motorists who e-mailed him.

But he is probably also responding to the bitching and moaning from colleagues in the Woodland Park newsroom who now face delays of up to an hour to reach their Bergen County homes, in keeping with the upsurge in coverage of Passaic County traffic woes after the paper abandoned  Hackensack this year. Indeed, reporter Monsy Alvarado, who is supposed to cover Hackensack,  has completely ignored the many recent street closings that have played havoc with Main Street traffic, especially when schools let out.

Also in the Local section for a change are two stories each about Hackensack and Englewood, but strangely, all four stories involve current or former municipal employees -- a favorite subject of  the local reporters, who do their best to avoid talking to residents and reporting on quality of life issues.

In Better Living, it's puzzling to see a review of Hacienda in Paterson, a restaurant  I wrote about several years ago, because four people could eat there for $50, including tax and tip. This Mexican restaurant gets only two stars and isn't the kind of place you'd expect to see so-called fine-dining reviewer Elisa Ung.

The restaurant health inspections column again is incomplete. The paper seems unconcerned that some towns, including Wyckoff, are apparently withholding fines and ratings.

The Record of Woodland Park, 12/10/09

Does anyone know why the paper insists on running a column by Christie Whitman after it has been shown time and again how dishonestly the former governor deals with her own serious missteps in office. A letter to the editor today notes: "It was her own administration that played shell games and helped put us and our grandchildren into the deep debt we're in now."

Except for police news and a sentencing, you'll find no coverage of development, education or quality of life in Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck, the three most diverse communities in Bergen County.

This paper will take 5 minutes to read

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The front page of  The Record of Woodland Park screams no news today, with most of  it devoted to shopping and the misfortunes of golfer Tiger Woods.

In the Local section, there is no education, municipal or crime news from Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood or from many other Bergen County towns readers live in, but you'll find four stories about Clifton.

 My neighbor in Hackensack said it all when I told her I was blogging about The Record, which was founded here in 1895 and prospered for more than 110 years before moving to Woodland Park this year: "That's such a crappy paper."

Back to journalism as usual

The Record today returned to journalism as usual in its local news coverage of Hackensack. For residents who saw a brief story about a food drive by the Police Department yesterday -- breaking a35-day news dry spell -- the only Hackensack news today is an eight-paragraph story and photo of  an apartment fire. 

That's not the kind of news me and tens of thousands of other residents want from the former Hackensack daily.  

Monsy Alvarado, the Hackensack reporter, has a byline today on a story about alleged thefts by an ex-fire chief in Lodi. The headline says "up to $75,000," but the story says "believed to be under $75,000."

I haven't seen anything in The Record about the new homeless shelter next to the county jail in Hackensack. The building appears to be complete and when I drove by there yesterday, I saw four or five people who might be homeless lounging on sun-splashed benches and what looked like a loading dock. Yellow, plastic tape blocked a driveway to the parking lot, which was empty, though a few weeks ago, it was full.

On another local story, which is promoted on Page 1 and played on the Local section front, I don't recall seeing a story about the murder of a soldier from Teaneck on Nov. 6. The husband, from Englewood, apparently committed suicide. This story reports on the soldier's funeral today.

On Page L-2, "daily education coverage" today includes a look at the Ringwood school system. In the more than two years and three months I have lived in Hackensack, I can't recall any stories about the school system my 12-year-old son attends.


There are also stories from Pequannock, Wanaque and Woodland Park, the new home of The Record and the Borg family's privately held North Jersey Media Group.

Taking Bergen out of The Bergen Record

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The Record today is another edition with too much Passaic County news for this Hackensack resident, especially from a paper that is still known in many circles as The Bergen Record.

The biggest element on Page 1 reports that on Dec. 1, Passaic County officials will become the first in New Jersey to use a $3 surcharge on mortgage, deed and foreclosure actions to provide housing for the homeless. I still have not seen a story in the former Hackensack daily about the completion of a new homeless shelter only a few blocks from the paper's old headquarters.

In the Local section, there is more Passaic County news: five stories on Pages L-1, L-2 and L-3. A story about a jewelry heist in Englewood leads the section, but never explains why the store was closed around 12:30 in the afternoon on Wednesday. Did the owner go to lunch? That would be an expensive lunch. For Hackensack news, we have the opening of a health center for the indigent by the medical writer, Lindy Washburn.

Better Living continues the boycott of food news on Thursdays, despite the paper's pledge to provide such coverage "every day."

My critics say I complain too much and do not give The Record "props when deserved." The problem is that even when the paper does something right, it could have been done so much better. It seems that the incompetent editors are totally submissive to Publisher Stephen A. Borg, whose "good-enough" philosophy has dumbed down the paper and destroyed its reputation as an aggressive local news and advertising presence.

It is poorly researched, poorly written and poorly edited, and many reporters can't even seem to spell people's names correctly or get the correct name, as can be seen by the correction on A-2 today.

And how can anyone minimize the virtual abandonment of Hackensack -- where The Record was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years -- by moving printing of the paper and most of the editorial staff to other counties? Hackensack is now out of sight and out of mind.

The wealthy Borgs apparently have never informed readers or advertisers about the moves and continue to perpetuate a myth by stating on Page A-2 every day that The Record is "published daily by [the Borg family's] North Jersey Media Group at 150 River St., Hackensack, N.J." By the way, NJMG is listed as the 8th-largest family business in the state -- with 1,231 employees -- by NJBIZ.com.

We can only  imagine the economic impact on struggling Main Street merchants after hundreds of press people, reporters, editors and so forth decamped, so the Borgs can try to make a killing on selling the landmark River Street building and its many surrounding acres.

In place of local news coverage, we're given Stephen Borg's marketing slogans, such as the one under the masthead every day: "The trusted local source."  Indeed, The Record in so many ways has repudiated its former slogan: "Friend of the people it serves."