Departing editor didn't ease crisis at our local daily paper

Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record in the Woodland Park newsroom. Reporter Lindy Washburn, the paper's chief medical writer, is at left in this photo by Staff  Photographer Carmine Galasso.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's news story on the retirement of Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record comes at a time of crisis -- a troubled period at the Woodland Park daily the veteran journalist did little to ease.

The Record's local news content, and the quality of editing and reporting, have declined dramatically since Publisher Stephen A. Borg ordered a major downsizing in 2008, and moved North Jersey Media Group and its flagship paper out of Hackensack in 2009.

Gottlieb, who took over the newsroom in January 2012, inherited several lazy, incompetent editors, but never cleaned house.

They include Deirdre Sykes, head of the local assignment desk; Assistant Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, Projects Editor Tim Nostrand; and Production Editor Liz Houlton, who has missed hundreds of errors, typos and bad headlines.

Gottlieb also did nothing to curb several veteran columnists, including Charles Stile, Mike Kelly, John Cichowski and Bill Ervolino, printing everything they wrote, no matter how pathetic.

Local news?

Today's Local front story on Gottlieb lists as his main accomplishments:

"Leadership of The Record's coverage of the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal," and becoming "a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting for a series examining the spread of heroin in the suburbs" (L-1 and L-6).

But his hands-on editing resulted in stories, especially those on Page 1, becoming longer and less accessible to readers.

And the front page showed a far greater emphasis on national and international news.

All of that came at the expense of covering municipal news in Bergen County, especially in Hackensack, where the Borg publishing family prospered for more than 110 years. 

Today, for example, Staff Writer Todd South is reporting on a Nov. 24 incident for the first time:

Hackensack Board of Education Attorney Richard Salkin has been charged with harassment for allegedly threatening Health Department Registrar Maria Tartaglione (L-1).

'Drop dead'

Salkin was applying for a license to marry former City Clerk Debra Heck, but was told by the registrar "she could not provide the certificate because errors had been crossed out in the license form he provided and corrected in pen," South says.

"You're a piece of shit, drop dead," Salkin allegedly shouted, Tartaglione complained, according to The Bergen Dispatch, which reported the incident on its Web site on Nov. 30. "Do you want me to bury you?"

South, with the approval of his editors, has managed to avoid reporting on the city's Board of Education; the school budget, which this year exceeds the city's own; or anything else to do with the schools.

The board approved a new contract with the Hackensack teachers union on Nov. 12, but that wasn't reported until Friday, when the Hackensack Chronicle carried the nearly month-old news.

Another screw-up

Today's local-news section again shows Sykes' and Sforza's desperation to fill space, with long wire-service obituaries on an obscure Native American activist and an even more obscure crossword puzzle champ (L-6).

Page A-2 carries Houlton's correction of a Road Warrior column last Sunday, in which Cichowski tried to drum up business for a volunteer ride service for seniors.

Unfortunately, the addled, error-prone reporter published the wrong telephone number, and none of the editors who looked at his story actually dialed the number to see if it was correct.

1971 to 2016

Gottlieb, 67, began his journalism career in 1971 as a municipal reporter covering Bergen County towns for The Record.

Then, he worked as a reporter or editor at the Daily News, The New York Times and the Village Voice before returning to the Daily News and The Times, the latter in 1995, working there until he was named editor of The Record in January 2012.

Today's story says he will leave The Record in January, four years after he arrived, basically his way of cruising into retirement.

His departure from The Times, where he was global editions editor from 2008 to 2011, has never been explained.

Why aren't 'Final Words' on Page 1?

Traffic backed up for about 2 miles on two-lane Passaic Street in Hackensack, Maywood, Rochelle Park and part of Paramus during the rush hour Friday evening. The lack of turn lanes at most intersections along the street stops motorists in their tracks.

It's fitting that "Final Words" -- The Record's most revealing and moving piece of journalism this year -- appears on the penultimate day of 2012.

But Editor Marty Gottlieb makes readers work to find the final thoughts of the four hospice patients, as reported by Jay Levin, the paper's local obituary writer (Pages A-8 and A-9).

Their photos appear on Page 1, but what's with the cold, impersonal use of only their last names under the images -- as if they are little more than suspects in a crime?

Out of focus 

The front page focuses mostly on Villa Marie Claire, the hospice in Saddle River, and Dr. Charles Vialotti, its medical director.

But this scene setter would have worked much better inside, allowing room on A-1 for the words of the terminally ill and one of the terrific photos by Carmine Galasso to grab readers' attention right away.

You can guess how this happened at The Record, an editor-driven daily newspaper where the news judgment of the reporter and photographer come last.

Sadly, most of the editors were mediocre reporters, and couldn't edit their way out of a paper bag.  

No news today

Most of the rest of the paper is filled with "YEAR IN REVIEW" articles.

For head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, reviewing the year's events is a convenient excuse for not reporting any local news today.

But why is far more space devoted to reviewing events in Paramus, Saddle Brook and other communities than in Hackensack, the most populous Bergen County town, the county seat and the paper's home for more than 110 years before the Borgs abandoned the city (L-1 to L-7)?

Fattening up

In Better Living's 2012 dining review, Staff Writer Elisa Ung says, "We are all still watching our pocketbooks."

Of course, we readers would like the paper's dessert-obsessed restaurant reviewer to watch her waistline, her cholesterol and her sugar intake, just as the majority of us are, knowing we are not going to live forever.

Flunking the prof

On the Opinion front, the "2012 box score" on Governor Christie is from Brigid Harrison, a professor of political science and law whose ponderous style puts readers to sleep.

She sums up all the middle-class pain Christie delivered in four words: "His budget slashed programs."

And she ignores Christie's battle to preserve tax breaks for millionaires -- to the detriment of everyone else -- and how he has done nothing to solve the state's twin crises of mass-transit and traffic.   

Smelly Kelly

At the bottom of the Opinion front, readers get a last look in 2012 at Staff Writer Mike Kelly's photo, complete with shit-eating grin, but are spared another column from the reporter who has been pushing around words for more than 20 years.

Kelly wrote a column last week, his first since taking a leave to recover from heart surgery. 

In Real Estate, the lead story, "What every seller should know," says nothing about the greed of banks and real estate agents or the endless repairs every homeowner faces. 

Traveling music

On the Travel front, Staff Writer Jill Schensul's kvetching is of little practical use to readers who might be looking for a reliable taxi or limousine service to the airport.

It seems weird that the travel editor of a North Jersey daily doesn't know about Air Brook, a limousine service that has always come through for me in the past 20 years.

And am I the only reader who thinks the statue of Gen. Douglas MacArthur on T-1 looks like he is saluting Hitler?

Photo filler 

On T-3, "The Record on The Road" photo feature continues to show minorities either don't travel or have absolutely no interest in appearing in the Woodland Park daily.

An entire page of reader-supplied photos also lets Schensul off the hook from providing more consumer-oriented travel journalism -- like the names of the offending taxi services she fulminates about in her column today.