Another sad day for New Jersey journalism

Will The Record's coverage of the Christie administration's politically inspired George Washington Bridge lane closures in Fort Lee, above, win the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize, the highest achievement in journalism? Prizewinners and nominated finalists will be announced April 14 at Columbia University in Manhattan.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Newspaper veterans rubbed their tired eyes today as they read of more drastic cuts in the news-gathering staff at The Star-Ledger, the onetime behemoth that once cast a shadow on The Record and every other newspaper in New Jersey. 

The Woodland Park daily is reporting that 40 more jobs will be lost in The Star-Ledger's non-unionized newsroom, cutting the staff to 116, down from a high of 350 before the first buyouts in 2008 (A-1 and A-3).

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Star-Ledger, hit by the newspaper industry's nationwide drop in readership and advertising, claims a circulation of 167,600 daily, compared to 473,000 in 1993.

Outsourcing

A total of 306 will be laid off at The Star-Ledger and other daily and weekly papers owned by Advance Publications Inc. in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and at the company's NJ.com Web site.

Advance plans to create a new company based in Woodbridge that will provide advertising, marketing and news content to The Star-Ledger, its other newspapers and its Web site.

Outsourcing news gathering is sort of like a school board outsourcing janitorial services: 

Both deal with a lot of shit. At New Jersey newspapers, that takes the form of bullshit from Chris Christie, the GOP monster who has turned out to be state's worst governor.

Second thoughts

The Star-Ledger has done a better job than most of seeing through Christie's bluster, and in February, the paper called its endorsement of his reelection "regrettable."

"...Yes, we blew this one," wrote Tom Moran, the former Record staffer who is now on The Star-Ledger's editorial board, mentioning both the Bridgegate and Sandy aid debacles.

The Record's story today is strangely silent on how the flagship North Jersey Media Group daily has weathered the downturn in the industry.

The Woodland Park daily has been hiding its circulation decline by issuing numbers that include the Herald News, which is called an "edition" of The Record.

After a major downsizing in 2008 and the abandonment of its Hackensack headquarters in 2009, many new reporters have been added, likely at much lower salaries than newsroom veterans.

But the merger of the NJMG daily papers' newsroom staffs in Woodland Park has resulted in a decline in the quality and quantity of local news; poor writing and editing, and a dramatic increase in errors. 

Page 1 profiles

Three of today's Page 1 stories read like profiles:

Virginia Rohan's column on David Letterman, who announced his retirement from late-night TV; a story on Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, called "a mystery" in the headline; and an obituary for Vincent Lamberti, a Lever Bros. researcher who is called the "father of Dove soap," a synthetic compound (A-1).

I just skimmed the headlines and first few paragraphs of the column about Letterman, who will be missed by insomniacs, drunks who live in bars and The Record's long-suffering news and copy editors, who work late into the night putting out the error-filled paper.

Ditto for the long, boring story on Guadagno, a non-entity who was chosen as a running mate by Christie because she was a woman, had a pulse and wouldn't dare challenge the governor in anything.

Christie was already henpecked by his overweight wife, who later got him to kill the Hudson River rail tunnels because the connection to the New York City subway was too far for her to walk.

But I read and enjoyed every word of the Lamberti obituary, saying to myself, Now, that is a life well-lived, something I'm sure I will never say about Letterman, Christie or Guadagno. 

Hackensack news

The Record's Local section today has a follow-up on Polifly Towing, a Hackensack company that has been using city owned land rent free, but has been paid $20,613 for towing illegally parked vehicles in the past three years (L-1).

The Record has had nothing so far on whether there is a school-board election this month.

But today's edition of the weekly Hackensack Chronicle reports the school board has presented a proposed 2014-15 operating budget that raises taxes $116 for a home assessed at $240,329.

Neither paper has reported the ups and downs of the elevator at Hackensack High School, where the cafeteria is in the basement, and classes are held on upper floors.

The elevator was out of service for more than two months, until a new part was fabricated, but it continues to break down periodically, stranding disabled students and an athlete recovering from a broken leg. 

Dog food

Is any reader eager to dine at The Dog & Cask in Rochelle Park, where a "pathetic" 5.5-ounce burger was "cooked into oblivion," the toast with charcuterie was burnt, and cod and pasta were oversalted (BL-16)?

Elisa Ung, the dessert-obsessed reviewer, even hated three of the four artery clogging treats she sampled. 

The poorly edited review describes the pub as "upscale ... with food that veers more fine dining," but a word is missing (data box on BL-16).

Leave it to Ung to find awful places to eat, then neglect to tell readers whether any of the meat served is grass-fed or raised naturally.

The Dog & Cask replaces Bistro 55, where former Food Editor Bill Pitcher was given a send-off several years ago.

If you eat at the new place now, good luck surviving the drunks in the parking lot or the ones racing by on Route 17.

A rare case of heads-up reporting

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Of all the issues The Record could report from Washington, the editors pick the obscure deaths of 13 sailors in Libya.

After reporting thousands of house burglaries in recent years, The Record finally examines the weak laws that has one investigator "arresting the same guys over and over again."


The editors routinely miss or don't bother with the big picture, leaving readers to wonder how this case of heads-up reporting came about.


It's likely the lazy assignment desk under Editor Deirdre Sykes had nothing with do with it. So, maybe we can thank a relatively new reporter, Staff Writer Rebecca D. O'Brien, who wrote today's Page 1 story.


Or, maybe the impetus came from Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who has watched burglaries in Tenafly getting closer and closer to his McMansion -- a $3.65 million jackpot.


D.C. circus


With another strong story on A-1 -- the African-American observance of Kwanza --  why did Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson waste readers'  time with an effort to repatriate the remains of 13 sailors who died in Libya in 1806?


Jackson has sat on his hands all year as Tea Party Republicans have paralyzed  Congress. Is this how he spends his time, looking for the obscure and irrelevant to report and ignoring the big story in front of him?


On L-1, another apartment fire claims a single victim (a 62-year-old Dumont man who lived alone), and reporters forget to ask whether the victim was a smoker.


Reversing course


Better Living food writers continue to increase coverage for the home cook, bringing back a standing feature of the Food section folded by Borg after he took over as publisher in 2006.


The section was folded -- despite the obesity epidemic and the need for more, not less, reporting on food.


On F-1 today, readers will find the "Shopping Corner" -- what was called "No Cooking Tonight" when Patricia Mack was putting out the Food section.


After Mack was hounded out of her job by then-Features Editor Barbara Jager, the new food editor, Bill Pitcher, focused coverage on restaurant and chefs. 


The new food editor, Susan Leigh Sherrill, said in a speech recently that she had been told to ramp up coverage for the home cook, though she didn't say who gave the order.

Rebuilding the spirit of readers

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Readers are biting their nails as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches.

What would it take for Editor Francis Scandale of The Record to rebuild the spirit of readers?


It may be too late for him, having filled the front page day after day with the inconsequential or hitting the reader over the head with the same story month after month.


Today, here is Staff Writer Shawn Boburg with at least his third major Page 1 takeout this year on the 9/11 memorial and rebuilding of the World Trade Center site.


This may be one of the biggest construction projects in memory, but why didn't the reporter ask Port Authority Chairman David Samson why commuters should swallow higher bridge and tunnel tolls, if they're needed to help meet the $11 billion price tag? 


Readers are sick and tired of reading about rich and powerful people like Samson. Look at the stupid drop headline: "Port Authority chief committed to WTC project."


We should hope so, but this isn't supposed to be P.R. for the humongous bi-state agency.


News or views?


What other earth-shaking news is on the front page? 


Here's another process story from Road Warrior John Cichowski on fixing the MVC -- the 300th in an unending series.


Here's sports Columnist Tara Sullivan praising the U.S. women's World Cup soccer team just days after writing another column that trashed the team by comparing the women unfavorably to the '99 squad.


Obesity news


Former Food Editor Bill Pitcher may be on the run now that the Journal of the American Medical Association argues parents of extremely obese children should lose custody for not controlling their kids' weight (A-5).


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section seems filled with stories, but when you examine them, there isn't any municipal news from Teaneck or Englewood.


Brass balls


Staff Writer Melissa Hayes -- who wrote today's L-1 story on a strip mall fire --  reported on Englewood's fiscal mess on Monday, noting the police chief is being paid more than $241,000 a year, the fire chief gets $220,000,the deputy police chief receives $219,000 and even police lieutenants are paid $206,000.


Did it occur to Hayes' clueless assignment editor to ask her to write a story on why  Governor Christie has given a pass to police brass on having their salaries capped at his salary of $175,000, just like all those haughty school superintendents?

Obesity got worse in the newsroom, too

Image via Wikipedia

The Record's editors should be journalists first, despite their obsessions.

Obesity is a subject the editors of The Record have tried to avoid for decades, but it won't go away, just like all the extra pounds they haul around the newsroom.


Even after Governor Christie took office in January 2010, there appeared to be no greater awareness of the obesity epidemic -- the editors of the Woodland Park daily just continued throwing their weight around.


On Page 1 today, a story reporting nearly 62% of state residents are overweight appears at the bottom of the page, even though it belongs at the top, in place of new air-pollution rules. The headline:

Obesity problem

gets worse in N.J.

and across nation

The reporter, Mary Jo Layton, who was always in great shape, is sort of flip in her lead paragraph: "More bad news on the fat front."

Of course, the "fat front" has been as close as her supervisor, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, and Projects Editor Tim Nostrand, among other severely overweight newsroom workers.

Apparently, Sykes and Nostrand have kept a stranglehold on newsroom investigations for a decade or more -- and their uncontrolled eating hits too close to home for them to launch a project on the obesity epidemic.

At least when it comes to reporting on obesity, Editor Francis Scandale seems to be under Sykes' thumb. 


That's despite him being an athletic man who came to The Record in 2001 from Colorado, listed in today's story as among the five "thinnest states."


New food editor


In 2006, then-Features Editor Barbara Jaeger hired Bill Pitcher as food editor, despite his obesity and his well-known appetite for meat and sweets.


Pitcher, in turn, hired a new restaurant reviewer, Elisa Ung, a pudgy woman who didn't hide her overriding obsession with dessert.


Although Pitcher wasn't named in the article, he undoubtedly was one of the "Fat Pack" discussed by The New York Times Dining Section -- food writers or bloggers who can't control their eating.

It never occurred to Pitcher in his four or so years as food editor to use his own attempts to lose weight as a launching pad for a series on the obesity epidemic and advice that goes beyond the latest diet or exercise fad.

In fact, he turned his daughter, once a normal 2-year-old, into a grossly overweight little girl, whom he paraded through the newsroom. 

Other A-1 news

The big, front-page photo of the arena in Pamplona is another gee-whiz image that has little to do with life in North Jersey. It's just more of Scandale's newsroom bull.

Staff Writer Stephanie Akin again demonstrates the legwork and hustle that makes her such an outstanding reporter with both an interview of Secaucus ex-Mayor Denis Elwell (A-1) and a town reaction story to his bribery conviction (L-1).

The one question she doesn't address is why do New Jersey politicians such as Elwell, who also heads a trucking company, sell their offices and their souls for such little money? 

Woops

On A-2, another embarrassing correction notes a quote from a prepared statement, also called a handout, was attributed to the wrong Democrat in an A-3 story Thursday on Christie's budget cuts. 


Boy, that's sloppy.

A story on A-9 today doesn't mention the staff of the News of the World tabloid hacked into e-mail accounts, as well as voice-mail messages. 

How is that any different from Vice President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg having IT staff hack into newsroom employees' e-mail accounts, and then disciplining workers? 

Another screw-up

On the front of Sykes' Local section, a caption refers to a sign on Route 20 in Paterson, but the photo above it shows only cars, a truck and a tire retread.

The Road Warrior column with them is another editorial eyesore -- and continues John Cichowski's boycott on the commuting problems of bus and rail riders.

In recent weeks, there seems to have been an uptick in municipal news, but the Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck reports continue to rely too heavily on police and fire news.

Bar fire

In Better Living, Ung offers readers a lukewarm review of Vesta Wood Fired Pizza and Bar in East Rutherford. Is the bar on fire, too?

That 12-inch pizza for $12; is it the most expensive in North Jersey? She doesn't say, but she did sample four desserts.

On Page 18 of Better Living, free-lancer Jeffrey Page finds one of the tens of thousands of restaurants where two people can eat dinner for $50. How is this of any service to readers?

The elephant in the newsroom

Image by afagen via Flickr

The White House vegetable garden.

Editors of The Record probably will tell you they strive to remain objective, but readers aren't the fools the paper thinks they are. 

The editors can't hide how much they like Governor Christie and his divisive budget and tax policies. And they can't hide how much they go out of their way to avoid tackling the obesity epidemic or discussing the governor's weight problem.

But now, more than a year after he took office, Christie himself is talking about his size, first in a Star-Ledger story that appeared in The Record on Feb. 20, reporting the governor is trying to lose weight, and again today in a report on his appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation" (A-2).

On the Sunday TV broadcast, Christie defended first lady Michelle Obama's efforts to encourage children to be more active and eat healthy food, an initiative some other conservatives have criticized. He said:

"I think it's a really good goal to encourage kids to eat better. I've struggled with my weight for 30 years. And it's a struggle."

Only half the story

Of course, I didn't see any mention in the story by Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson that Christie cut school breakfast programs for low-income children or that his wife, Mary Pat, is working with food pantries, not addressing the childhood obesity problem.

Some Record editors also have struggled with their weight for years or decades, but they are not about to acknowledge it or launch a project on the obesity epidemic -- the elephant in the Woodland Park newsroom, as it was for many years in the abandoned Hackensack newsroom.

At one time, three editors were obese or verging on obese -- head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Project Editor Tim Nostrand and Food Editor Bill Pitcher -- but the paper kept on printing stories or restaurant reviews promoting desserts, chocolate and other sweets.

Pitcher began free lancing for the Food section when he was a layout editor on the news desk, then left the paper for a year or so before returning as food editor in mid-2006. 

His daughter was a 2-year-old of normal weight when I met her, but a few years later, in 2006 or 2007, she appeared in the newsroom as a grossly overweight little girl.

Pitcher has left the paper, but the restaurant reviewer he hired in 2007, Elisa Ung, continues to indulge her mindless obsession with dessert in her weekly columns.

Well-reported burg

Sykes' Local section doesn't have any Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood news today, but don't miss the story on the ambulance corps in Harrington Park, the editor's hometown (L-2).

Unscripted, unhinged

In Better Living, the Associated Press coverage of the Academy Awards broadcast mentions Best Supporting Actress Melissa Leo's use of the F-word, but not what a blithering idiot she was during her acceptance speech -- one in a long lime of such speeches from actors who seem to fall apart when they don't have a script to work from.

The editors play it straight

Image via Wikipedia

The State of the Union address in January 2010.

How did Editor Francis Scandale keep a straight face when he ran a front-page story today on a salary gender gap at charities?

Didn't he and Features Director Barbara Jaeger OK a $70,000 starting salary for a new food editor in 2006 -- a man in his very early 30s who had no food editing experience? And wasn't that thousands of dollars higher than the salary of a woman who was hounded into retirement after more than 20 years as food editor of The Record and another newspaper?

Does anyone believe the disparate salaries of Bill Pitcher and Patricia Mack are the only examples of a gender gap at the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group, which has fought the unions and kept staff salaries secret at all costs over the years?

And how did Scandale keep a straight face when he totally dominated Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily with coverage of Jets fans traveling to today's Super Bowl playoff game?

Sure, the Jets deserve a part of the front page, but why assign one of the most talentless reporters on the entire staff to the story? 


Staff Writer John Brennan's breathless first paragraphs report, to paraphrase: A lot of Jets fans arrived in Pittsburgh on Saturday, but they're having a hard time finding their way around the big city. Duh. 

A correction on A-2 today says the incorrect day was given "in some editions" for President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday.

We roam the state

At the top of Local, a power broker from Cherry Hill is today's 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH, "brought to you by" Benzel-Bush Motor Car Corp. in Englewood. It's strange that the ad above the fold is "local," while the person to watch is far from it.

A story about Harrington Park appears on L-7 today, in a section without news of Teaneck, Englewood and many other larger towns. Is that because head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes lives there?

Living by bread alone

On the Better Living front, "The Corner Table" column by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung tells us what goes into the basket of bread served in good restaurants. What great reporting went into this column.

Do you think subsequent columns will tell readers whether the chicken most places serve is raised with antibiotics, whether the meat is pumped up with growth hormones and whether the farmed salmon is artificially colored?

Hunger or obesity?

An editorial on Page O-2 praises first lady Mary Pat Christie for helping to fight hunger in New Jersey, though it's apparent she's not diverting food from the governor's table (see photo of him on O-3).

And, of course, the editorial ignores why New Jersey's first couple aren't fighting obesity, too.

Black, white and red all over

Image via Wikipedia

In this 2007 photo of the New Jersey Supreme Court, standing are Associate Justices Roberto Rivera-Soto, left, and John E. Wallace, second from right. Wallace left in May.

I can't imagine a more embarrassing -- and suspect -- omission than The Record not reporting on Page 1 today that the New Jersey Supreme Court justice Governor Christie got rid of in May is African-American, and was the only black on the high court.

In fact, it's not until the next to the last paragraph on the continuation page (A-8) that Staff Writer John P. McAlpin names the associate justice who Christie refused to renominate in May, sparking  charges of racism, especially because a white woman was nominated to replace him. 

McAlpn, who is no novice, violates the basic journalism principle of supplying background in every story, including this one on Associate Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto protesting a temporary replacement for John E. Wallace. 

It's certainly relevant that Wallace, the former associate justice,  is African-American, and that critics think Christie was motivated by racism.

Are we to believe that head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' shrieks of laughter mixed with snores from the news copy desk as this flawed story was processed Friday night in the Woodland Park newsroom, and no one noticed the glaring omission? 

Fie on minorities

Where was Editor Francis Scandale, whose own record on newsroom minorities is so poor? He got rid of the paper's only black columnist, Lawrence Aaron, and its only Hispanic columnist, Miguel Perez. Were they the Wallace and Rivera-Soto of The Record?

The top-of-the-page, A-1 headline blares:

High court in turmoil

Of course, that headline perfectly describes The Record's turmoil under Scandale, Publisher Stephen A. Borg and big sister Jennifer A. Borg, vice president and general pain-in-the-neck counsel of North Jersey Media Group.

The spoiled Borg siblings have put their father, Chairman Malcolm A. Borg, out to pasture as they run the paper into the ground, while dreaming of making a killing by selling the old headquarters and all that land on River Street in Hackensack -- maybe even unloading NJMG itself. But I digress. 

Counterfeit writing

Boy, I'll bet readers didn't expect their 50 cents would buy them a primer on counterfeit money -- the biggest element on A-1 today. The clunky lead paragraph by Staff Writer Deena Yellin says "towns and cities" have "seen" a sharp rise in bogus money "passed across merchants' counters."

In Local, you'll find the non-fatal-accident-of-the-day photo on L-3, but not much municipal news, certainly nothing from Hackensack,  Englewood or lots of other major towns. You will find plenty of police and court news, though.

Bill Pitcher news

Better Living has no food news of any kind, which may be a good thing considering the irresponsible, raw-meat recipe Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill gave readers on Wednesday.

Bill Pitcher, her predecessor, is now city editor at The Leader-Herald in Gloversville, N.Y., a small daily newspaper in the Adirondacks where he also reports and writes stories. 

Pitcher, who is about 35, rejoined The Record in June 2006 and left in August. He had been handpicked by Scandale and Features Director Barbara Jaeger from a field of food editor candidates with far more experience. 

Pitcher found Food Editor Patricia Mack a really tough act to follow. 

Elevating the news conference to news

Image by katewrightson via Flickr

Did anything much happen on Wednesday besides politicians holding post-election news conferences in Washington, Trenton and Hackensack to foretell the change in the balance of power come January? Along with an exaggerated main headline in The Record of Woodland Park today, the arrest of a "seasoned burglar" in Little Ferry was good enough for Page 1.

New reality begins

in Washington

That main headline seems premature -- a couple of months early. But I guess Editor Francis Scandale needed to employ some hype to get readers interested in today's political postmortem. 


The quote of the day was buried inside: 

"Short of suicide, I don't know what I have to do to convince you people that I'm not running [for president]," Governor Christie told reporters (A-8). But should Christie have been more mindful of the recent suicides of a Rutgers student and Chef Joseph Cerniglia of Campania Restaurant in Fair Lawn, and chosen another way to make his point?


In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, there is plenty of news from towns that had elections, but Hackensack readers were left out in the cold again.


Downplaying the damage

The first Business page (L-8) doesn't do much with an appraisal of New Jersey's economy from the Rutgers Economic Advisory Service. Is the paper downplaying this report to take the heat off Christie, who announced today the state will shed another 1,200 workers in January to balance the budget?

Rutgers says the state's economy is being held back "by public sector job losses." The jobless rate will fall to 9.2% next year, but it will be nearly another decade before it returns to 5.5% (in 2020), the university said, noting that 269,000 jobs were "lost" in New Jersey during the recession.

How many jobs did President and Publisher Stephen A. Borg cut at North Jersey Media Group before and after he took out a $3.65 million company mortgage to buy a new home? Will we ever know?

Rating food writers

What happens when you send a dessert-obsessed restaurant reviewer shopping for bottled marinara sauces? You get an incomplete story on the front of Better Living today, one that leaves out one of the best sauces out there.

Elisa Ung compares five bottled sauces, all of them a mere 24 or 25 ounces, ranging in price from $2.39 to $7.99. She completely omits the great marinara sauce from Fairway Market in Paramus. It costs about $2.99 for a generous 32 ounces. 

She also ignores marinara sauce made by Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood, just like former Food Editor Bill Pitcher ignored Jerry's generosity when writing about markets that provide free samples to customers.

In the marinara-sauce and a previous cupcake-mix comparison, Ung notes, "The expensive celebrity-chef products aren't doing so well."

But the only other food coverage today is another promotional story about a celebrity chef's new book for children. Maybe I should read the long interview to help me put dinner on the table tonight.


Today's front page from the Newseum 

Is the new food editor out to lunch?

Image via Wikipedia

 

Has anyone seen a byline from Susan L. Sherill since she came on board as food editor of The Record of Woodland Park on Sept. 1 (the day her name first appeared on Page F-2 of Better Living)?


I did see a Record story on (201) magazine's Restaurant Week that carried her tag line (she was food and entertainment editor at that North Jersey Media Group publication). And she has contributed to Second Helpings, the food blog on northjersey.com, as well as sending out numerous Twitter tweets.


But now, it seems, one of her restaurant reviews appears in the October 2010 issue of (201), with photos by her husband, Ted Axelrod. The gushing evaluation of Taverna Mykonos in Elmwood Park doesn't give prices for food, and there isn't one critical word in it. Was she comped? The restaurant cited this review in an e-mail offering customers a 15% discount. Here is the first paragraph:

"Beautiful and bustling, the Greek island of Mykonos is one of Europe's -- if not the world's -- top tourist destinations. Its namesake restaurant in Elmwood Park already shares the first characteristic, and judging by our visits, will soon be as packed and popular as one of the island's famous nightclubs in high season."

Doesn't this completely blur the line between food journalism and advertising? Read it for yourself at the following link: http://www.201.net/issues/2010/10/departments/DiningReview.story
 
I ate at Taverna Mykonos and I can tell you the "irresistible bread" she describes was a large, awful, doughy, dark-and-light swirl -- a loaf  so bad I asked for simple Greek pita instead.

Was this review left over at (201), just as Bill Pitcher's reviews appeared after he left The Record  as food editor? Or is it possible that Publisher Stephen A. "Greedy Stevie" Borg just eliminated Pitcher's $71,000-a-year salary and combined the jobs at the magazine and the daily?

Though she hasn't had a byline yet, she is planning big things for Better Living's food coverage. Next week, according to one of her tweets, she'll mesmerize readers with a comparison of cupcake mixes.


She also is planning a column, based on a recipe from a cookbook, according to another tweet. That's going to be ground-breaking food journalism.


Pitcher was a glorified recipe editor for much of the time he was at The Record, and he would ride around, looking for restaurants that had opened or closed for Second Helpings (repeated in the A La Carte column on Fridays). He was only about 30 when he got the job in mid-2006


Most of the major food stories, plus restaurant reviews and a Sunday column, were written by Elisa Ung, hired as restaurant reviewer in 2007.


Pitcher also was skilled at pulling stories off the food wire. During Ung's maternity leave, near the end of his four years as food editor, he reviewed restaurants.


Here are three tweets in which Sherrill discusses her plans (http://twitter.com/susanlsherrill):

1. Testing red velvet cupcake mixes today: Barefoot Contessa vs. Sprinkles vs. Duncan Hines - results in next Wed. Record! 8:11 AM Oct 7th via web
2. @doriegreenspan Starting column for The Record newspaper (I'm food editor) where I do a recipe from "cookbook of the week" - yours is first! 11:35 AM Sep 29th via web  
3. @doriegreenspan Your publisher just sent me a copy of your glorious new book, "around my french table" - can't wait to jump in! 11:05 AM Sep 29th via web 

Find the real news on A-3

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The Record of Woodland Park is careful not to embarrass Governor Christie, who has shown time and again he is a friend of wealthy families like the Borgs and an enemy of just about everyone else, so it makes sense the editors downplayed a story contradicting the slash-and-burn Republican. 


Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale gave Christie a nice piece of Page 1 on Thursday to condemn the inflexibility of federal bureaucrats, who denied New Jersey an education grant of up to $400 million. 


But the truth came out today on A-3. It was the governor's education chief who screwed up by not being able to provide the correct budget data at an Aug. 11 presentation, putting the state 3 points below what it needed to finish in the money. Why wasn't this on Page 1, Frank?

Doblin shoots from the hip

But that didn't stop Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin from writing a column defending Christie from Democratic attacks (A-21) -- a column written before the otherwise fastidious Doblin learned the real culprits were the state's education commissioner and his unprepared aides. Doblin's bias is clear. 


What will Doblin say now that Christie fired Bret Schundler, his education czar, for misinforming him about why the state's application failed? 



Where is the editorial demanding that NJ Transit do more to safeguard pedestrians around its railroad stations -- a position taken forcefully by Jerry DeMarco on Cliffview Pilot.com? The Fair Lawn woman killed on Thursday was the fourth person to die on the tracks in recent weeks. Here is the link to DeMarco's editorial: Blood on the tracks




New Jersey gets the short end

The A-1 story today on a deal that would rebuild the Word Trade Center and raise the Bayonne Bridge omits the long history of the Garden State being thrown scraps by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. I guess the state still has an inferiority complex in the shadow of New York, and steamroller Christie has done little to change that.

Back to the Zisa case 

Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado is back to reporting every hiccup and fart of suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa's legal problems (L-1 today). Is this all head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes allows Alvarado to write about?  Let's hope the court hearing isn't postponed or readers will have to slog through a long story saying so on Saturday. 

Hear the sizzle?

A major redesign of the weekly centerfold restaurant review in Better Living today is the triumph of sizzle over substance, and is a disservice to readers. Now, a great deal more room is devoted to photos and headlines, and far less room is devoted to the review itself.

Former Food Editor Bill Pitcher, whose reviews outlived his job, and Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, just back from maternity leave, rarely discussed the origin of the food they ate. 

It mattered little to them whether the salmon was wild-caught or artificially colored at a fish farm, or whether the beef was grass-fed or raised conventionally on antibiotics, growth hormones and feed containing bits of dead animals. But these gluttons didn't stint on describing in great detail all the wonderful, high-calorie, artery-clogging desserts they stuffed repeatedly into their gaping maws.

Now, Ung will have much less room than before for her reviews, even if she wants to address the concerns of a growing number of readers about how restaurant food is raised or grown. 

 

Identifying with a sex addict

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Do Publisher Stephen A. Borg, Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale and other male mucky mucks at The Record of Woodland Park identify with sex-addicted golfer Tiger Woods? Why, then, do they give his divorce and a Paramus tournament half of the front page today?


Front and center is sports columnist Tara Sullivan's gentle handling of Woods, starting with a lame lead paragraph. Nowhere in her story does the phrase "sex addict" appear, and none of the reporters who questioned him asked whether he is still screwing around or going for therapy or what.


It's not as if Borg and the editors are unfamiliar with addictions. Former Publisher Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg is a reformed alcoholic who was ordered by his doctor to stop smoking. The elder Borg's behavior when he was drinking was common knowledge in the newsroom, and the paper even ran a story about his DWI arrest.


I recall being invited to lunch in the corporate dining room with the elder Borg and Stephen Berger, who at the time was the new executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (1985-90), an agency I covered as a reporter for The Record. Mac used the F-word to ask Berger, whom he was meeting for the first time, when an aviation museum would open at Teterboro Airport.


The main headline worries if Woods will be able to rebuild his game and life. What about the lives of his ex-wife and the children whom he betrayed? Aren't the editors worried about them, too? Even if you are a rabid sports fan who loves golf, Woods' behavior is reprehensible. His story deserves to be banished to the back pages.

Blaming Obama


Now, Governor Chritie has jumped on the bandwagon of blaming the Obama administration for everything. He says unyielding federal bureaucrats, who denied New Jersey an education grant of up to $400 million, are "the kind of stuff, candidly, that drives people crazy about government...."


Emphatically no. What drives people crazy about government is that a conservative Republican like Christie comes along promising to cut property taxes, then turns around and eases the tax burden on the Borgs and other millionaires. How does he make up for it? He refuses to raise the low gasoline tax, which boosts mass transit, and cuts aid to the middle and working classes, including seniors, women and poor schoolchildren. What a fraud.


Flooding where?

In Local, it took the former Hackensack daily a couple of weeks to report what Pakistanis in North Jersey are doing to to help victims  of flooding (photo).


A day after the death of a Fair Lawn woman in a plane crash  in Nepal was all over Page 1, another Fair Lawn woman, killed by an NJ Transit train on Wednesday, is banished today to L-3, where the photo caption doesn't even give her name. I guess her life isn't worth anything to head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, because she didn't die on her birthday or wasn't headed to Mount Everest.


No Hackensack news


 Local contains no news about the core Bergen County  towns of Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood.


Reviewer returns



The Second Helpings blog on northjersey.com resumed Aug. 23, with an entry by Elisa Ung, the restaurant reviewer who has been on leave. It's ironic that the highly promotional blog carries the same name of a food-rescue group founded in Indianapolis in 1998 that today serves 50,000 meals to the hungry every month.


With Ung's return and the appoinment of a new food editor, readers can only hope food coverage improves. Since Bill Pitcher left as food editor Aug. 6, what had been poor coverage became pathetically poor.

Sit down and read awhile

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There is a lot to digest in The Record of Woodland Park today, starting on Page 1, with more than you'd ever want to know about changing the system for getting rid of poorly performing teachers, a story that takes up a good part of two more inside pages. 

Also on A-1, the litany of bad financial deals made by Governor Christie's Democratic and Republican predecessors stops short of reminding readers how Republican Tom Kean Sr. (photo) deliberately hid a huge deficit from then-incoming Gov. Jim Florio. Kean must be one of The Record's sacred cows.

Check out Page A-8, the continuation of the teacher tenure opus by Staff Writer Leslie Brody. A photo of Michael Drewniak, the far-from-brainiac spokesman for Christie, will remind newsroom staffers of their fearful leader, Editor Francis "Castrato" Scandale. A frightening resemblance.


No matter how screwed up everything is, there is always room for sports on a front page inspired by Scandale. First, the Jets lost and now the Giants lost a preseason game in the new Meadowlands stadium. The end of the world must be next. 

Page 1 today also refers readers to the obituary on A-11 for Harold Dow of CBS News, an African-American journalist who grew up in Hackensack and lived in Upper Saddle River. His photo on A-1 reminds me of what a poor job Scandale has done attracting and retaining minority journalists, including three he got rid of. 


The discriminating editors devote a big part of the Local front today to scams against the elderly -- one of the few times seniors have gotten any real editorial attention in recent years (except for the older workers shown the newsroom door during the downsizing of The Record and Herald News).

An L-1 story on a "coupon queen" doesn't discuss why supermarket shoppers rarely see such discounts on healthy food.


Despite all the micromanaging of head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, there is no Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck news of any kind today, but there is a five-paragraph, L-3 story on Fort Lee preschool accepting 3-year-olds, as if every parent there hasn't already received a letter from the school board on this subject.

The Opinion front has a meaty piece on how the governor is changing the home-rule system of government, and a forceful column from Mike Kelly on priests who sexually abuse boys, but the latter is padded with too much background information.



Let's hope the new food editor improves coverage that often amounts to inane wire-service stories, such as the one about frozen food on the front of Better Living today.


The selection of Susan Leigh Sherrill, an editor at (201) magazine, is a sure sign that Publisher Stephen A. Borg continues to be involved in major editorial decisions long after he moved his office out of the newsroom. That's a slap in the face to Scandale and Features Director Barbara Jaeger, who chose her predecessor.


I don't know whether Sherrill is a full-time employee at the North Jersey Media Group magazine or a free-lancer, or whether she will be paid the same $71,000-plus a year that Bill Pitcher received for far less experience. 


Unfortunately, the word on the street is that readers may not be well-served. A foodie I met at the Tenafly farmers' market this morning said Sherrill knows nothing about food.

New food editor is from (201) magazine

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A North Jersey Media Group veteran says she has been hired as The Record's new food editor, replacing Bill Pitcher.

Susan Leigh Sherrill of Montclair, (201) magazine's food and entertainment editor, told other writers on Friday she is the daily newspaper's new food editor, according to the online edition of The Paramus Post.

"We had a nice chat with Susan and were pleased to learn that she had just been promoted to food editor of The Record," Mel Fabrikant reported on the weekly's site.  

Sherrill opened Village Green Café and Caterers in 1989 in Ridgewood. In 2000, she sold the restaurant and embarked upon a second career in community newspapers, becoming editor of NJMG's The Ridgewood News in the fall of 2001.  She later joined (201) magazine as food editor. 

The magazine -- a celebration of wealth in North Jersey -- is Record Publisher Stephen A. Borg's favorite NJMG publication.  As for its journalism, it is about as hard-hitting as a wet noodle, and seems to be simply a glossy vehicle for advertising from luxury car makers, upscale restaurants and others who cater to the rich and powerful, people very much like Borg himself.


Sherrill hasn't been listed yet on Page 2 of the Better Living features section in The Record of Woodland Park.

Her work and her photo appear online in an NJMG blog called Table Talk: 
 
http://blogs.northjersey.com/blogs/tabletalk/  

Scattershot approach to news

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How many stories are followed up by the newshounds at The Record of Woodland Park? And how many stories are dropped after one day?

It's bewildering to see what Editors Francis "Castrato" Scandale and Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes think is worthy of a follow and which stories appear for a single day, then disappear, despite all the unanswered questions from poor reporting and even poorer writing.

The front page today has a heart-warming story about a dog surviving a horrific Route 80 accident Sunday -- and being found and reunited with the victim's family -- but does this really belong on A-1? Even the original story, involving the death of a human, wasn't on the front page.

And there has been no follow on whether the 1996 Ford Explorer involved had been recalled for safety problems, so I guess readers are supposed to believe the driver lost control on a curve simply because it was raining.

When a 23-year-old Glen Rock woman was killed by a train recently, there was no follow, not even any comment from the family, and no attempt to find out if it was an accident or suicide.

The Route 80 dog story jumps to the animal news page, A-6, where we learn a bull ran amok in Spain and rampaged through the stands. Unfortunately, no one was killed, so the bull's revenge was incomplete and he not only died for his troubles, but will be eaten by grateful Spaniards. When are the food pages going to run a recipe for rabo de toro (tail of the bull)?

Today's weird Page 1 leads with the indictment of a baseball player on perjury charges -- who cares, except him and Scandale? -- while the middle of the page is taken up by photos of minor incidents at airports in Dallas and San Francisco that wouldn't be front-page news even if they happened at Newark Liberty International. 

But Scandale and Sykes are desperately trying to sell the paper, and distract readers in Hackensack and other important towns that are withering on the news vine.


For example, the Hackensack and Englewood reporters never asked officials if a plan to combine Teaneck's Police and Fire Departments would work in their cities, which also have professional firefighters and are similar demographically. It would save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Thursday, on Page A-8, a sharp wire editor ran a "FACT CHECK" on the controversy over building a mosque "roughly a half-dozen normal Lower Manhattan blocks" from Ground Zero (not the two blocks you hear repeated on TV news), but the newspaper hasn't interviewed Muslims living in Teaneck and Hackensack, despite the peaceful establishment of mosques in both towns.

By the way, the FACT CHECK by the Associated Press reported that opponents lied or distorted information about the backers of the mosque in Lower Manhattan, where Muslims are already praying in the building that would be replaced by an Islamic cultural center. Two other mosques are five and 12 blocks from Ground Zero.

A great Page 1 story is Governor Christie making New Jersey a potential leader in offshore wind power (L-3), if for no other reason than to show Christie isn't just looking out for the Borgs and other millionaires. Another potential A-1 story is the resurgence of layoffs (L-7). 

Or maybe the lazy editors and their pampered staff can finally get off their rumps and profile some of the long-term unemployed, such as those people shown the door by greedy Publisher Stephen A. Borg in 2007 and 2008. Those profiles would make better A-1 stories than a dog rescue.


In Better Living, you'll find another restaurant review by Bill Pitcher, the food editor who left the paper but who repeats on readers like a bad meal. He calls the tacos Mexicanos at Chapala Grill in Bergenfield "the real deal," but doesn't know an authentic taco is garnished with cilantro and onion, not cilantro and diced tomato.


The weekly Hackensack Chronicle, another North Jersey Media Group rag, is doing a better job of covering Hackensack than the daily's Sykes and Monsy Alvarado, the reporter nominally assigned to the city. 


Today, the lead story is about residents of 310 Prospect Ave., which shared a garage with 300 Prospect, the luxury building that was evacuated July 16 after the garage collapsed. One of those quoted is David Blomquist.

Is this the same Blomquist who once worked at The Record as a reporter and pollster?

(Photo: Green aracari at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Wash.)