Should fat people be making these decisions?

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Forget the mildly interesting front page. Forget the overwrought patriotism of Tara Sullivan's column on the U.S. team's World Cup victory. The story in The Record of Woodland Park that resonated with me the most today was buried on Page L-2 -- anti-hunger advocates trying to save school meals from Governor Christie's chopping block.

Chopping block is the right image. You can just imagine our huge governor tucking into thick slabs of meat dripping with butter and all the other high-cholesterol and high-calorie stuff that has made him obese (fat literally hangs from his face) -- absolutely the wrong image during an obesity epidemic whose eradication has become a national priority.

Is it a state priority? Do state programs target the problem? Do we really know anything about Christie's eating habits or health, or whether he also is concerned about the obesity epidemic? Does he have a metabolism disorder? 

Why has The Record and all of the other media remained silent on Christie's weight and its possible influence on state policies? Why is dysfunctional eating a taboo subject in the former Hackensack daily?



By the same token, why has Publisher Stephen A. Borg ignored the weight of three key editors he inherited as a possible influence in the past several years on the decision to report as little as possible about the obesity epidemic in New Jersey? Is this a conspiracy of editors in total denial about their health?


Can you imagine these three binge eaters at a projects meeting endorsing a concerted staff effort to tackle the obesity epidemic as a public service to readers? Projects Editor Tim Nostrand, Food Editor Bill Pitcher and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes would do nothing of the kind -- even though they likely could benefit from such a long-term examination.

Editor Frank Scandale is one of the most athletic people in the newsroom -- and might see the relevance and prize-winning potential of an obesity project -- but the real power there is Sykes, who castrated him a long time ago.

How else to explain why Sykes was allowed to squander nearly three years of staff time and hundreds of thousands  of dollars in salaries on what can only be called a vendetta against Michael Mordaga, former chief of detectives for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office?

Now, Christie targets the vulnerable, cutting state funding for free and reduced-price school breakfasts and lunches. Advocates for these lower-income children say the meals might be the only ones they get. (The story has only a partial listing of children who participate in Bergen and Passaic counties.) Maybe the state Health Department should be making these kind of decisions, not the governor.


A second story in Local -- on library cuts in Englewood -- notes in the last paragraph that the city is almost seven months overdue on approving a budget. Is this the first time Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano has reported that? Where are the stories on Hackensack's proposed budget and tax hike?


Another story that doesn't get much play is one on the Business front quoting marketing experts as saying BP has little chance of saving its brand after the fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico, especially in view of statements by bumbling CEO Tony Hayward. Business prints so many promotional, rah-rah  stories about companies and their products that this one is a refreshing change.
 
In Better Living, it's no-food-coverage Thursday.


A-2 today carries one of the most embarrassing corrections I've seen recently. In a chart on Page 1 on Wednesday, the Armenian population in New Jersey was off by 10,000. The actual population is 15,736, but the "1" was dropped and no one, least of all the copy editors, caught the error.

That's especially embarrassing because the wrong number appeared in a story about Turks' new-found political power, which they are using to whitewash the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians in the early 1900s.

New Jersey and the oil spill -- boring together

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I've been waiting for the story on how New Jersey scientists and residents have responded in the two months since the massive oil spill in the Gulf, so what do the editors at The Record of Woodland Park do? They plaster a long, confusing and, ultimately, boring, piece on mini subs all over Page 1 today.


This story couldn't possibly have been written for A-1. The assignment editor must have fallen asleep while editing it. Even the news copy editor drops the ball on polishing this turd. The headline says,  "Rutgers' mini subs monitor oil spill." Monitor? Watching paint dry is more exciting. An oceanographer is shown "observing" data.


You have to plow through most of it before you find out whether the New Jersey Shore is in danger from the BP spill. That should have been high up in the story. And the reporter never resolves the controversy over whether huge oil plumes exist below the surface, despite all the evidence presented by other scientists that they do.


The lead story on the front page is the murder of another teacher. Unless Governor Christie is a suspect, this doesn't belong on A-1, especially given the Morris County location and the lack of Bergen County news in the paper. 


A better, more relevant story for Page 1 is on A-4 -- the battle over beach access on the Jersey shore. This could have supplanted the mini-sub story, too. That story could have been told by an inside photo and graphic. But news judgment isn't a strong suit among such editors as Frank Scandale, Deirdre Sykes and whoever got stuck working Sunday.

An editorial on A-11 criticizes Christie for proposing huge cuts in legal services for the poor, but in a column on the same page, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin takes the governor's side in  opposing a millionaires tax. I guess Doblin stlll wants to get his weekly check form the wealthy Borgs.

Doblin presumably also edits and approves editorials, including those about Christie's policies, so isn't his column a conflict? And his column usually is so poorly written and juvenile, no reader would miss it.


Local is pathetic. No Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood news, yet another story on the proposed expansion of The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood. The story rehashes the same arguments readers have seen for almost three years. The overly dramatic headline doesn't help.

(Photo: Jersey shore)

Corporate B.S. artist hogs Page 1

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BP CEO Tony Hayward said so little of substance before Congress -- and continued to throw around bullshit about the massive Gulf oil spill -- you have to wonder why his photo is all over Page 1 of  The Record of Woodland Park today.


You have to question the news judgment of the editors, who ordered huge, black type on A-1 to trumpet Hayward's apology, despite its insincerity and despite its redundancy -- coming just two days after his boss, BP's chairman, issued a heartfelt apology to the American people in the White House Rose Garden and backed up his words with a $20 billion fund for victims.


Doesn't Hayward's British reserve, captured best by TV news, drive you crazy? Why doesn't someone revoke his visa? Why doesn't Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin take a break from praising just about everything Governor Christie does and write a withering editorial about this corporate buffoon (photo above)? 


Do the editors and Publisher Stephen A. Borg see a kindred spirit in Hayward, whose corporate bullshit parallels the journalistic bullshit they've thrown at readers? Is anyone convinced by the paper's new motto, "The Trusted Local Source," as local news becomes harder to and harder to find in the thin, former Hackensack daily?  Borg ordered that marketing phrase to replace the decades-old "Friend of The People It Serves."


Why does the AP story on A-1 omit Hayward's $6 million annual salary, which he disclosed in his testimony on Capitol Hill? At least he didn't try to fool lawmakers by telling them, "I'm not in this for the money," the preposterous statement Borg made at his first meeting with the paper's employees in mid-2006.


Of course, a year and a few months later, Borg sucked out $3.65 million from North Jersey Media Group to buy a bigger mansion in Tenafly, then apparently started putting together plans for the downsizing of The Record and Herald News, including the exodus of 20- and 30-year newsroom and photo staffers and the move out of Hackensack. Yet, Borg testified before a jury in April that he's just "a salesman."


By placing the Hayward nonsense on A-1, the editors also serve to downplay Christie's plan to take away $91 million in sales taxes generated by the state's urban enterprise zones. The story, on the front of Local, clearly shows the governor, a friend of small business, draws the line when the business owners are black and Hispanic. 



Christie could raise $600 million from the millionaires tax he opposes, and tens of millions from raising the low gasoline tax. Why is he picking on minority business owners and giving a pass to the Borgs and other wealthy residents, and why aren't the paper's editorials beating up on him?


Yet another Local section contains no news of Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood (except for a Teaneck police brief).


In Better Living today, another restaurant review by Food Editor Bill Pitcher demonstrates what a minor light he is, especially when you compare him with such predecessors as Patricia Mack and Mark Howat, who died June 11. Howat, for example, wrote glowingly of dining on vegetables picked that morning and a roast from a pig raised naturally on a local farm -- and this was decades ago.

What do you get from Pitcher and Elisa Ung, the normal restaurant reviewer, who is on leave? You get little awareness of the origin and quality of the food they review, an obsession with desserts and a lot of bullshit about celebrity chefs. At least in today's review, Pitcher sampled some non-meat dishes, which is not always the case.


But he compares a locally run Italian restaurant to chain restaurants, and gives Zocco Ristorante in Hillsdale only two stars -- the same rating Ung gave Bahama Breeze, a faux-Caribbean chain restaurant on the highway in Wayne. That's the kiss of death.

More unbelievably boring Page 1 news

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The suicide of a state trooper and a $20 billion BP fund for victims earn only a few paragraphs each on Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park today, but most of the page is devoted to maybe, could-be, wannabe stories the desperate editors are trying to pass off as local news.


Do North Jersey residents really care if the borough of Teterboro is carved up? All this coverage for a trial balloon? What residents are really dying to know is why the newspaper hasn't written anything about the tremendous quality-of-life impact the small airport has on them every day?

Are the Borgs among the fat cats whose behinds are pampered in noisy business jets, as an anonymous commentator has reported? Those planes seem to scrape rooftops in Hackensack, Teaneck, Maywood and other towns, depriving residents of the enjoyment of their back yards and high-rise balconies.

If so, that might explain why editors such as Frank Scandale, Deirdre Sykes and others have avoided the noise story for so many years. Or is former Publisher Malcolm A. Borg's long-time support for an aviation museum at the airport the reason the charter jet companies get so much promotional coverage in Business?


Of course, when you have lazy transportation reporters like Tom Davis and Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, who as a transportation reporter wrote about "highways of the future," you'll never get hard-hitting reporting about the airport or anything else. What you do get is Davis' speculative, A-1 story today on the possible construction of a Hudson River rail tunnel for Amtrak "within 20 years." Twenty years!


Davis, Sforza, Road Warrior John Cichowski and other lazy staffers refuse to look at the quality of the mass transit commuters have to contend with now, such as the creaking, decades-old local buses NJ Transit still uses in Bergen and Passaic counties. It might be that the riders, largely working class blacks and Hispanics who can't afford cars, are easy to ignore for the newspaper's overwhelmingly white newsroom staff.

Eager to deny President Obama a victory, an editorial on A-22 minimizes his Oval Office address, and blames him for not stopping the BP oil leak. As bad as the gushing oil is, it's ridiculous to compare the disaster to World War II, but Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin desperately needs exaggeration to make his point.


With no substantial Hackensack or Teaneck news to work with -- and the speculative Teterboro story all over A-1 --  all the editors have for the Local front today is police and court news. There's not even a word from Monsy Alvarado, the Hackensack reporter, on the proposed city budget and tax hike.


Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano turns out a short piece on the Mackay Park ice rink -- the first story about the city since the end of May. We welcome back this bull dog of news.

In Better Living, it is no-food-news Thursday.

(Photo: President Obama in the White House Oval Office)

Hey, Monsy, you're killing us

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Where were you last night, Monsy Alvarado? Sleeping off all the hard work you've been doing to expose -- and expose, and expose -- suspended Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa? Were you at the City Council meeting, for a change, at the behest of your puppeteer, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes? Was any action taken on the proposed budget and tax hike in one of Bergen County's most important communities?


I looked at the city's Web site, which is silent on the budget and last night's meeting. I called the city clerk, who was unavailable. I leafed through The Record of Woodland Park, but the only Hackensack news I found in Local was your story on lawmakers calling for Zisa's resignation from the Board of Elections. Wow. That's major news. Every Hackensack resident is dying to know what will happen. And that effort must have exhausted you, pobrecita.


If we can't rely on you -- the Hackensack reporter at the former Hackensack daily -- to keep us informed about basic city business, how do you justify your existence? How does Mother Hen Deirdre, who likes to keep her chicks close and dictate their every move? Where is Editor Frank Scandale? Where is Mac and his greedy successor, Publisher Stephen A. Borg?

Boy, the paper must be desperate for ad revenue to wrap advertising around the front page and Sports front today. All the hard work by the news, layout and copy editors is obscured, as a pharmacy lures customers with a free 12-pack of crappy soda for a $20 purchase. What did Scandale -- the petty dictator of Page 1 -- have to say? Well, we all know he hates news copy editors, and handcuffed them when he could.


The BP catastophe is front and center on A-1, as it should be, but why such a clunky story? Why use the overly long, flawed first paragraph from McClatchy Newspapers, and this tangled syntax:

...the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, which has gushed out of control for nearly two months ...

It's the reporter who is gushing out of control.

Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski  -- sworn enemy of mass transit commuters in North Jersey -- is really under a lot of pressure to produce three columns a week, and so bereft of ideas, his inconsequential piece on  L-1 today is about his vacation in New Mexico!

I appreciate the local food news in Better Living today -- a report on the Tenafly farmers' market and a Marketplace on barbecue sauces. But readers don't get reimbursed by the newspaper for eating (and eating, and eating), as Food Editor Bill Pitcher does, so we would really like to see prices included in all food stories. We want to know before we go. We don't have money to burn like the Borgs.

(Illustration: U.S. Census map of Hackensack)

Hey, Frank, who the F cares?

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The biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history isn't enough of a front-page story for Editor Frank Scandale, who is more jock than journalist. Today, The Record of Woodland Park glorifies the Russian fat-cat owner of the hapless Nets basketball team with a huge A-1 photo and story by one of its biggest hacks, Staff Writer John Brennan.


Brennan likely helped talk this story onto Page 1, as he did obsessively with all the nonsense he covered when I was still at The Record, and found a sympathetic audience in Scandale, Tim Nostrand and other desperate editors. Meanwhile, readers looking for essential information about their towns were ignored, as they are now.


Greedy BP's blunders in the Gulf are shoved down below the fold on A-1. The oil platform disaster is on the cover of Time magazine and leads the CBS Evening News every day, but Scandale's Record bounces the story onto and off of the front page without rhyme or reason. Of course, we know how flawed Scandale's  news judgment is after he relegated Tom Franklin's incredible 9/11 photo to a back page.


Yet, after taking over from Mac Daddy, Publisher Stephen A. Borg not only kept Scandale on, but promoted him to vice president. Did anyone in the news meetings Borg attended see him and Frank slap each other on the ass after placing yet another sports or business of sports story on A-1?


Meanwhile, coverage of the World Cup in Sports has been lackluster.


Local leads with a Star-Ledger story on a $2.5 million settlement for a hotel clerk, but the reporter leaves readers in the dark on how much of that will be going to the lawyer (probably a third, plus expenses). Don't look for substantial Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood news in the section.

Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado's sole contribution today is a too-long story on a ruling to withhold pay from suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa. She has yet to report details of the proposed city budget and tax hike, which are going before the City Council tonight for the second time. You can thank head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who has been pulling Monsy's strings for years.

There is also a short story on the closing of the Court Street Bridge for two years to refurbish the span, too weak for trucks over 3 tons. The project will make the Borgs' nearly 20 acres on the Hackensack River a lot more valuable, especially to a big box retailer that wants as much access as possible.

Looking at the 2003 photo with the obituary of singer Jimmy Dean on L-1 today makes me think he ate too much of the mystery meat that went into his breakfast sausage. I also realize how little impact Dean (Tenafly), Eddie Murphy (Englewood) and other celebrities who lived in North Jersey had on neighbors or their towns.


There is no local food news in Better Living today. A story from the Contra Costa Times on "shopping healthfully" completely omits any mention of avoiding food with antibiotics, growth hormones, animal byproducts, pesticides and other harmful additives.

Hey, Monsy, no one really cares

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Hey, Monsy Alvarado, in reference to your L-3 story today in The Record of Woodland Park, no one really cares that a suspended Hackensack police captain wants his pay back while he's on suspension -- except the cop himself. Report the decision when it comes, but stop neglecting all the other news in Hackensack, including details of the proposed city budget and tax hike.


Since last June, you have been writing almost exclusively about the legal troubles of Police Chief Ken Zisa and others in the Police Department -- presumably at the behest of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes. 

I guess you don't have the backbone to tell her you feel bad neglecting other news about the city where The Record was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years. Or maybe you're lazy. Can't you write more than one story a day? More than 30 days have passed on three  occasions without your byline in the paper.


I'm not singling you out. Staff Writer Jean Rimbach averages one byline a year. What's Shawn Boburg been up to? Certainly not writing stories. Productivity doesn't seem to matter to Editor Frank Scandale or Publisher Stephen A. "I'm not in this for the money" Borg.

It's who you know -- and you'd better be in the good graces of Mother Hen Deirdre or one of her minions. What a pathetically weak assignment desk -- Dan Sforza, Christina Joseph and Rich Whitby, to name just three. Just look at today's thin Local section. 


Page L-2 carries a story on Teterboro Airport scholarships -- another way the Port Authority and The Record continue to deflect attention away from what a huge impact the airport has on the quality of life in Hackensack, Maywood and other towns. Does the paper even cover Maywood?


On Page 1, the last part of the five-part youth baseball series appears, and there's an editorial on A-20 -- with no acknowledgment by the editors of how their constant A-1 glorification of sports and the business of sports translates into the abuses reported by Staff Writer Colleen Diskin. I hope her next project is childhood obesity.

At least, there's good coverage of the BP oil spill -- with a dramatic, front-page photo and inside stories. Before the Borg-ordered downsizing and the single-minded, endless investigations inspired by Sykes, that might have been a reporter from The Record in the oil-soaked Gulf.

(Photo: Gulf of Mexico oil spill)

Giving readers tabloid news

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 Hackensack readers haven't seen the details of the proposed city budget and tax hike, but the editors have seen fit to order daily coverage of the Passaic County trial of a former nanny accused of having sex with a 12-year-old boy. It's the tabloid side of The Record of Woodland Park -- the kind of sensational news these desperate editors seize on day after day in the absence of legitimate stories.


The front page today reminds me of when The Record was an afternoon paper and editors covered most of A-1 with a "patch" -- a soft-news story and photo or graphic exploring social and legal issues, and many other topics. Shocking what kids say when shielded by anonymity on a social-networking site. But no surprise when you read some of the anonymous comments on Eye on The Record.


The editors waited for a wire service story to report on Page 1 today suspicions that BP hasn't been telling the full truth about the enormity of the gushing oil well or its potential damage, and how government regulators have been hoodwinked. Still, The Record still cannot muster any editorial outrage.


Has Publisher Stephen A. Borg ordered Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin and other editorial writers to confine themselves to New Jersey topics -- as he did initially with Margulies the cartoonist?


There is no Hackensack or Englewood news in Local today. It's no-food-coverage Thursday in Better Living.

This is transportation coverage?

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Let's all thank Staff Writer Tom Davis and clueless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes for more cutting-edge transportation coverage. The editors at The Record of Woodland Park gave him a big part of Page 1 today for his non-story on training simulators used by drivers for the small PATH system.


Davis and the other transportation writers, including Road Warrior John Cichowski, have been simulating journalism for years. They've long ignored the shabby local bus service and the huge quality-of-life impact in Hackensack, Maywood and other towns from the business jets that bring fat cats to Teterboro Airport.

Davis, Cichowski and Staff Writer Karen Rouse have consistently refused to report how inferior local buses are when compared to the newer NJ Transit fleet that carries mostly white commuters to Manhattan. Of course, the local buses are patronized heavily by minorities, many of whom can't afford cars, so they may not be the paper's "demographic."


This is undoubtedly in keeping with the "responsible journalism" practiced by the Borgs' North Jersey Media Group from Woodland Park.


At least the editors found room on A-1 for another pissing match between Governor Christie and teachers, and the launching of a criminal probe against BP and the company that operated the oil platform that blew up and sank in the Gulf on April 20. But the paper and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin have virtually ignored the slow death of an ecosystem.


Local has a detailed story on cuts to the Teaneck school budget, but readers in Hackensack are still waiting for a story on the proposed city budget and tax hike from Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado. But like a pit bull that won't let go of its prey, she has another story on a hearing in the Ken Zisa saga, and that's all she wrote about Hackensack for the umpteenth day. 

The only Englewood story -- a homicide -- leaves readers in the dark on a motive three days after the crime.


Marketplace returns to Better Living today, but only one new food outlet is featured, in contrast to the two a week that ran in the past. Is this column going to run only once a month now? That saves freelance fees, but cheats readers. Maybe a better solution would be to cut Food Editor Bill Pitcher's inflated salary.

Moving tribute -- and trash

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On rare days, the editors of The Record of Woodland Park get it right -- such as today's touching Page 1, A-6 and A-7 tribute to the 19 service members from North Jersey who have died since 2003. This was a great staff effort, led by local obituary writer Jay Levin. Then, the editors turn around and insult readers' intelligence with an A-1 story on a group of inconsequential right-wingers who call themselves the Tea Party.


Are the tea baggers more important than the Gulf oil disaster? Herb Jackson, the paper's Washington correspondent, actually quotes one saying, "We're a loose affiliation of patriots." Patriots? What a joke.

Today, we learn the oil will be gushing until August. What incompetence. I suggest we revoke the visas of all these bumbling Brits at BP and ask for assistance from some of the big oil producers, such as the Saudis.

The Local section devotes most of its space today to non-profits and veterans, and there was no room for Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck news, assuming the assignment desk suffocating under Deirdre Sykes generated any. A box on failed school budgets does include Englewood and Teaneck, but there is no explanation why councils in these diverse districts enacted such severe cuts.

You wouldn't know it's Sunday

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My news sections are here, but they are so boring, you wouldn't know this is the The Record's Sunday paper -- once filled with special stories reporters slaved over.


On Page 1, there is the obligatory Memorial Day weekend story on the shore economy, but Local contains no Teaneck, Englewood or Hackensack news. 

I'm glad to see the Gulf oil spill fiasco is on A-1 for the third day in a row. That's where the story belongs. Now where is the editorial slamming BP and the government for this colossal failure?

See previous post: No news sections today

Decisive victory for home rule

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There it is on Page 1 today in The Record of Woodland Park -- a huge victory for home rule. The Christie administration is reversing its stance on merging school districts. The proposal would have eliminated 250 of the state's 600 districts at an average savings of 3 percent to 6 percent of a district's budget.


Preening Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin was too busy shopping for clothes to write an editorial taking Governor Christie to task for squandering this huge savings opportunity. But he did have enough time to craft a highly favorable column about Christie on A-23 today. With Doblin in the governor's corner, the paper compromises its objectivity and credibility. (Just a couple of months ago, Doblin was screaming bloody murder when Christie's state aid cuts boosted the editor's train fare.)


How is it that Staff Writer Pat Alex can handle this big education and home-rule story, with the assistance of one other reporter, while Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado needs much more assistance on stories about Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa? Alvarado doesn't even have a hand in today's Zisa story, but head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes needed four other reporters to get it onto the Local front. (Zisa and a detective have been suspended without pay.)


Meanwhile, Hackensack residents have to rely on the weekly Hackensack Chronicle -- not Alvarado -- for details of the city's proposed budget, which could raise taxes 7.5 percent. The weekly today reports on a City Council budget meeting 10 days ago. (The weekly paper is delivered with The Record to subscribers in Hackensack on Fridays, so why is a second copy thrown in driveways?)


The 38-day-old oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- the nation's worst ever -- finally makes it to Page 1 today, but this is clearly too big a story for The Record staff -- as was Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The paper has been relying on the wire services for all of its coverage of BP's fumbling attempts to stop the gushing oil, and Doblin's editorial page hasn't been of much help to readers. Why hasn't he condemned the company for apparently hiding the magnitude of the leak?


Where are the clueless editors? Courthouse reporters could be assigned to give readers a preview of the legal battles that lie ahead on the liability of BP and the operator of the drilling platform for negligence. You know the families of the 11 dead oil workers will be suing for hundreds of millions of dollars, as will commercial fishermen, state and federal governments, and others. Could the companies be charged with criminally negligent homicide? Is there any precedent for barring a foreign-owned company from doing business in the U.S.?

Why don't the editors get off their lardy asses instead of always following the wire services' lead?

Jersey pride and punishment

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Today's Jersey-centric front page in The Record of Woodland Park even has an authentic whiff of corruption -- another charge against suspended Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa. But what about all the other stories the Super Bowl-giddy editors are ignoring?


What about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Has this important environmental story ever been on Page 1? The inability of BP to stop the leak after more than a month has everyone feeling powerless -- including readers who never see news of their towns in the paper. 

Why doesn't The Record ever identify the company as British Petroleum or report it is a foreign company? Are drivers boycotting BP stations, as people of my generation have long boycotted Exxon stations for the Alaska spill? Is this payback for the American Revolution?

What about the Jamaican community in Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood? Aren't their views on gun violence in their homeland of legitimate concern to head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who has eaten her fair share of Jamaican rum cakes from an Englewood baker? Have those cakes made her lazy?

I appeal to Sykes, Editor Frank Scandale and others to get their heads out of their asses, and to Publisher Stephen A. Borg to tear himself away from his palatial estate in Tenafly and pay some attention to the many stories that are going unreported out of laziness, incompetence or worse. The Record is dying a slow, journalistic death.


A story on the hunt for a reputed drug lord in the island capital of Kingston -- way back on Page A-19 today -- has an incorrect headline. The Jamaican death toll stood at 48; the head says "reaches 50." And why is the wire editor wasting space on frogs closing a road in Greece (A-15)? Baffling.


Hackensack readers are so bored with coverage in the past year of the police chief's legal troubles, and Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado is such a timid reporter, she can't even get Zisa to comment on the occasions she has seen him. Pathetic. It's Alvarado, likely at Sykes' request, who has ignored just about all other Hackensack news in the past two years. 


Joseph Ax, the Teaneck reporter, has a strong story in Local (L-3) about pay-to-play and the township auditor and an Englewood budget story (all six paragraphs) is credited to Karen Sudol, the Tenafly reporter. It looks like Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano was pulled off her beat to help Alvarado with the Zisa story.


In Better Living, it is food-less Thursday.