Who is lying now?

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Is Governor Christie lying about what he was told by Bret Schundler, the education czar he fired Friday, or is Schundler lying about what he told the boss in the state's failed bid for a $400 million federal grant?  Don't look for a definitive answer today in The Record of Woodland Park, which reports the dispute as he said-he said and pads the stories with so much extraneous information, readers are overwhelmed.


The most incisive quote in the extensive coverage on Page 1 and inside is Schundler's: "I think the governor gets rolling and a lot of stuff gets said."  This quote appears with and without an ellipsis (...) in today's paper.

That "stuff" includes Christie on Wednesday blaming the Obama administration and federal bureaucrats before Washington fired back on Thursday by showing a video in which Schundler and his aides -- when asked -- couldn't come up with budget data to complete the state's 1,000-page application. (No one has explained why New Jersey officials couldn't use their cellphones to call the office and get the data they needed.) 

Political Columnist Charles Stile (A-1) comes closest to saying who lied, but chickens out in the end, despite overwhelming evidence in Schundler's favor. 

An editorial (A-11) rambles around before saying, "Christie's abrasive style served him poorly in this case." Pretty mild, isn't it?  

The whole affair makes our steamroller of a governor look stupid. Remember, Christie at heart is a lawyer, a group that is not held in high repute. 


You're an editor, stupid

The news copy editor who worked on the other Page 1 story -- about better batteries for the military -- wrote awful headlines that turn off readers. Then, he didn't fix a problem left in the story by the reporter and the clueless assignment editor -- the batteries are not just for the military, but will hasten the development of affordable, plug-in hybrid cars, as readers learn if they ever get to the continuation page. 

You certainly don't know that from a phrase in the second paragraph on A-1: "The next generation of military hardware and vehicles."

This is the kind of copy editing imposed by Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale, who impressed on the news copy desk time and again all he was interested in was snappy headlines that would sell newspapers, and please don't touch the text. His own columns were dreadful, filled with cliches. And many of the stories sent over by the lazy assignment desk were reported and written at the level of a high school newspaper.

Zisa breaks his silence

After working on Ken Zisa's legal problems for more than a year -- and ignoring most other news about Hackensack -- Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado finally has gotten comment from the suspended police chief. The lead story on the Local front quotes him as saying The Record's coverage has been unfair and inaccurate.

There is so little town news from head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, that to fill half of L-6 today, the desperate layout editors had to run three wire-service or Star-Ledger obituaries of people readers have never heard of.

 

(Photo: Bret Schundler when he was running for governor.)

Old news: Lead story has big flaws

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The lead paragraph of the lead story on Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park today calls a Teaneck woman's death an "apparent homicide." In the third paragraph, the prosecutor confirms it is a homicide. Why "apparent homicide"?
 
The lead paragraph says the body was discovered by firefighters "battling a blaze," but none of the photos of the house show the effects of fire. Couldn't have been much of a fire. The lead paragraph begins, "Authorities are investigating" the death. We should hope so. You don't have to say so; it doesn't advance the story one bit.
 
The time of the fire is never given ("late Tuesday," whatever that means). This certainly is of no help to anyone who drove down that street or neighbors who need help associating a pedestrian or a stranger with the crime. By omitting the time, readers won't wonder why this major crime story wasn't in the next day's paper.

The lead paragraph of a story is the most important, but this one was botched, as so many have been. Just the other day, Staff Writer John Brennan's lead on the first game at the new Meadowlands stadium was incomprehensible, besides being dull.

Whether a reporter is a good one like Staff Writer Joseph Ax, who covers Teaneck, or a bad one, like Brennan, all need eagle-eyed editors backing them up. Sadly, The Record -- an editor-driven newspaper -- has some of the biggest turkeys in journalism. 

The local assignment editors under Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes likely were the first to edit Ax's and Brennan's Page 1 stories. They blew it big time on both pieces. Then, the stories would have been seen by four more sets of eyes: a news/layout editor, a copy editor, a copy desk supervisor and the Page 1 proofreader. All were on autopilot or brain dead.

When The Record was printed in Hackensack, the first copies were rushed up to the news copy desk, where copy editors read every headline, caption, lead paragraph and more to find typos and other errors, and most of them were fixed during the press run.

After genius Publisher Stephen A. Borg moved printing to Rockaway Township in 2007 (and dumped 55 press workers in the process), the news copy desk in Hackensack and later Woodland Park no longer saw the first copies off the press. Errors big and small are now delivered to readers.


There are other problems with today's lead story, especially with the A-1 headlines giving no clue the victim was a well-known gadfly in the township. 

There are other problems with Page 1. Why a front-age story on a $40 million stimulus grant for first responders? Far better in that space would have been the state's anemic economic progress, banished to L-7. 

Unless Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale -- Borg's chief "yes man" -- didn't want to draw attention to how North Jersey Media Group contributed to the severe unemployment and to emptying storefronts  along Hackensack's Main Street, while giving the boss $3.65 million to buy a McMansion in tony Tenafly.


Gee. I thought The Record reported a couple of months ago the legislative proposals to break up Teterboro were non-starters. But we continue to see front-page stories about them. 

The only Hackensack news today is a follow-up to the arrest of a former teacher's aide who disrupted one of the rare school board meetings covered by the paper. Why are 15 inches of precious space on L-3 devoted to this? Did anything happen in Englewood? Ridgewood? 


I got a laugh out of the lead paragraph in the L-1 story about a Lyndhurst homeowner who tried to pay his property tax hike with coins and dollar bills. It begins, "After receiving an unexpected hike [in] his property taxes...."


Unexpected? He lives in North Jersey, and didn't expect a hike? Everyone knows property taxes only go up. Does anyone who voted for Governor Christie really believe he can keep his pledge to lower property taxes?

(Map: Far-off Rockaway Township in Morris County, where North Jersey Media Group owns a printing plant that churns out The Record, Herald News and other publications.)

Please tell me the whole story

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Look at that Page 1 photo of a fully loaded garbage truck seemingly suspended over a stream in Glen Rock, where Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale lives. Pretty dramatic. Read the caption, then the so-called story on L-6. Have questions? The answers are nowhere to be found today in The Record of Woodland Park.

Next to that A-1 photo, a story says the state has to borrow $2.25 billion to pay bills. Gee, would revenue from a millionaires' tax Governor Christie refused to impose on the Borgs and his rich friends help cut the borrowing? What about raising the low gasoline tax? No answers here.


I get a real kick out of the front-page story today on the new Meadowlands stadium, and the incomprehensible sidebar on A-6 about parking. Did jock-itching, high-fiving, ass-slapping Scandale put this on the front page to expose how the teams are gouging fans -- from $1,000 personal seat licenses to $25 parking passes to $19 steak sandwiches? Nope. These stories seem to promote, nay celebrate, the venue.


The same reporter, John Brennan, had two more stories about the new stadium on Thursday, though they looked out of place in the Local news section. Don't expect anything hard-hitting from Brennan, who has a lucrative public-relations career ahead of him. Do you think we'll see an editorial suggesting "Rip-Off the Fans Stadium" as the new name? 


Back to the garbage truck hanging over the stream. That L-6 photo is huge -- to fill space the Local staff and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes couldn't possibly fill. That's also why there are three wire obituaries (on people no one has heard about before) filling a half-page of L-5, and Star-Ledger stories about a man in East Brunswick (L-3) and a town near Cherry Hill (L-2).


The story about the garbage truck, by veteran reporter Merry Firschein, doesn't name the stream and doesn't say how much diesel oil was spilled, whether the driver was speeding, lost his brakes or fell asleep; whether police issued a summons or summonses; or whether the state or town will be suing the truck owner to recover cleanup costs. 



Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado writes about the plans of a Hackensack restaurant to expand and reopen, while ignoring  the problems of Main Street restaurants and other food businesses, some of which have closed during the recession, made worse by the move of hundreds of North Jersey Media Group employees out of the city. 

Did she do a story on The Restaurant on Prospect Avenue because it is represented by Joseph Ferriero, the onetime Democratic power broker?  

Does anyone edit any of these stories? What about Dan Sforza and the other clueless assignment editors? What about the news-cum-layout editors? What about the news copy editors? Or do the copy editors merely resign themselves to just processing an endless stream of waste matter, knowing that any attempt to improve stories or even make them complete will be soundly rejected by Scandale, Sykes and their minions?  

(Photo: New Meadowlands stadium and train station.)

Cure for a bad newspaper?

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This is the post for Friday, July 23, 2010.

If you doubt the front page of The Record of Woodland Park is for sale to the highest bidder, just look at the ridiculous story filed by Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson today. Page 1 clearly shows the desperate editors are ready to prostitute themselves at the drop of a big name.

Those laughable, Cold War-era Russian spies were swapped more than two weeks ago, and readers promptly forgot about a story that didn't amount to anything in the first place. But here is Jackson and Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale selling out to the well-oiled Hollywood publicity machine by linking the spies to "Salt," a movie starring Angelina Jolie that, guess what, opened today. There's also a lukewarm review in Better Living. 

In view of the downsizing of The Record and Herald News and the decline of  local news, can the former Hackensack daily really afford a Washington correspondent? Couldn't Jackson be of better use in Trenton or Woodland Park? How much does he actually contribute? If today's story is any example of his worth, I say, Throw the bum out.


The Local news section is a standing joke, thanks to head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, who has so many "pals" among local reporters, productivity has plummeted.


Road Warrior John Cichowski has an L-1 column today on roadside curiosities. Gee-whiz.  Approaching his seventh anniversary as a columnist, he has become a curiosity.


Leading A-1, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado and Staff Writer Nick Clunn weigh in with the seventh straight day of coverage on the Prospect Avenue parking-garage collapse, in a story that demonstrates the continuing decline of assigning, reporting, writing and copy editing at the paper.

The collapse occurred last Friday or seven days ago, not six, as she reports. She says residents removed "select belongings" from their apartments. What kind of belongings are those? 

In all seven days of coverage, readers never get any real sense of what it means to be thrown out of a luxury apartment in a heat wave, possibly without a car. Alvarado never spent any time with the evacuees or told of their experiences. Today, she reports the new Mercedes of one tenant, a trauma surgeon, was crushed, but doesn't tell readers how the woman has been getting around.

TV news says the building's landlord is paying tenants' hotel bills and other expenses, but are the tenants still required to pay rent? Your guess is as good as mine.


Local has no municipal news from Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood today. The paper didn't correct Thursday's error on when the Hackensack budget was adopted, nor has there ever been a story on the budget and tax levy. The reporter, Erik Shilling, had the wrong month.


On L-2, the caption with a photo of Paterson's new mayor doesn't explain why he held his inaugural ball in Garfield.


In Better Living, Food Editor Bill Pitcher seems to have a lot of reservations about food quality and preparation at Segovia Steakhouse in Little Ferry, yet he gives it a two-star rating. He refers to mussels he didn't eat -- because they were so foul-smelling he "couldn't get more than a few" past his nose -- as a "ration," a word better suited to describe military or prison slop.


In Starters on Page 17 of Better Living, free-lancer Amy Kuperinsky misspells the Greek word for large lima beans. They are called gigantes or giants.

 (Photo: Hollywood studios in 1922.)

News sharks will get you every time

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After picking two meaty stories for today's front page, the editors of  The Record of Woodland Park took a desperate lunge toward sensationalism by leading with shark sightings at the Jersey Shore. 

At least the paper recognized the importance of BP halting the flow of oil after 85 days, though that Page 1 story can't possibly make up for inconsistent coverage of the nation's biggest environmental disaster. And after months of beating up on teachers, Governor Christie is finally going after the inflated salaries of school superintendents. 

Let's not forget he's giving a pass to millionaires like the Borgs, who have escaped a special tax, and has refused to raise the low gasoline tax to fix roads and improve mass transit.

Today's Local section is another weak effort by head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and her assignment minions, with no Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood news.

Copy editing continues to decline. An L-1 story contains the phrase "lack of enough crosswalks." A photo caption on L-7 says a woman is filling her shopping cart, but no cart is visible.

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)

Why is this on the front page?

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Aren't we all sick and tired of the belly aching by Ridgewood residents opposed to the expansion of The Valley Hospital (photo)? This controversy is more than two years old, and there have been numerous stories about it, yet here it is again today on Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park.


Were the editors desperate to put something -- anything -- on the front page? Did they ever play similar protests over the expansion of Hackensack Medical Center on A-1? What's so special about the Ridgewood protest? Is this journalism by demographics?


The news copy editor probably thought the headline was really clever: "Hospital expansion called a health hazard." And the reporter actually quotes residents alleging years of construction will expose children to "potential hazards." One hallucinating protester refers to Ridgewood as "our little village." Can't you hear the violins?


I can think of several construction projects in Hackensack on school routes (there is no busing in the city). What about the hazards Hackensack kids walking to school are exposed to? Don't black and Hispanic kids count in the eyes of the editors?


Another headline on Page 1 appears to suggest teachers are stalking the state education czar. Was this head intended to be ominous?

Teachers track their target

Some observers would suggest it's the teachers who are the targets of state aid cuts and pension reform.

In Local, there are detailed stories on two trials in Superior Court, Paterson, but none on cases in state court in Hackensack. For another day, news of Hackensack , Teaneck or Englewood is missing, likely due to the incompetence of the assignment desk under Deirdre Sykes. But there is a long story on a murder in Butler -- outside the paper's circulation area.

For at least the fourth year, Food Editor Bill Pitcher has prepared his annual guide to grilling -- which appears today in Better Living -- and for at least the fourth time, he omitted any mention of how processed meats, such as hot dogs, and charring food have been linked to cancer. Good appetite.

Newspaper is rotting away

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Thank God for infrastructure. What would the lazy, incompetent editors of The Record of Woodland Park do for a front-page story today if it weren't for the steady stream of transportation meetings, studies, reports and contracts Staff Writer Karen Rouse uses as fodder for her coverage?

Bridges rotting away

That headline is meant to scare readers, though a lot of bridge work she discusses won't get under way until next year. What's really scary is how the former Hackensack daily is rotting away right before our eyes.

And the copy editing on her story today is atrocious. What is the "easterly" Hackensack River bridge? The graphic on A-6 says a "repainting project is under construction." How about just "under way"?

Rouse was an education reporter when she was hand-picked by Editor Frank Scandale to come to The Record from The Denver Post, his old newspaper. Unfortunately, two reporters already were covering education for The Record (never mind that their productivity is among the lowest on the staff). 

So Rouse was given the job of transportation reporter and assignment desk trainee (the hybrid job was never posted in the newsroom); she proved ill-suited for the latter. Now, she writes almost exclusively about infrastructure -- under the guidance of her knuckle-headed assignment editor.

When I was still a news copy editor in Hackensack, she resisted my suggestion she write about deplorable local bus service, saying her assignment editor wouldn't allow her the time to look into anything unless it definitely was going to produce a story. In other words, she said, she couldn't  board a decrepit No. 780 bus at the bus terminal across the street and ride it to Passaic for lunch to see how most of the riders were minorities -- contrasting their ride to the new buses used by mostly white commuters to Manhattan.

One of those white bus riders also lands on Page 1 today, though he and other bus patrons have been virtually ignored by the assignment desk and the transportation writers, including Road Warrior John Cichowski.

Most of Local today is devoted to events that were covered Sunday -- Armenians marking the 95th anniversary of a genocide; a vigil for crime victims in Paterson; a Bergen County recycling day for pack-rats too cheap to buy a home shredder for sensitive documents.

Where is the vigil for readers who have watched coverage of their towns, including Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck, wither and die? When will the editors, including Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, have to answer to the public for the decimation of local news?

I know the Borgs -- or their legal representatives -- read "Eye on The Record" carefully, because they've renewed threats to file a lawsuit against me. But I'd like Malclom, Stephen and Jennifer Borg to pay more attention to how badly the editors are handling their crucial responsibility of informing the public about what is going on in their communities. After all, that is how The Record became a great newspaper -- before Scandale, Sykes, Frank Burgos, Tim Nostrand, Jim McGarvey and their minions tore it down.

Better Living Staff Writer Sachi Fujimori, who I have praised frequently, stumbles badly today with the lead paragraph on the scheduled closing of the Peking Duck House restaurant in Closter. She writes the signature dish "helped grease the wheels of friendship between the U.S. and China" -- a jarring description given how virtually all the fat in Peking duck is removed before it is served.

Where was Food Editor Bill Pitcher or the copy editors on Feature Editor Barbara Jaeger's desk when it came to catching this awkward and inaccurate play on words?

Hiding Mac Borg's role

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Don't you find it curious that today's L-3 story on the East Hill Synagogue in Englewood (map) omits any mention of how Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg was among neighbors who opposed the congregation's expansion on his East Hill block?

Nor do I see the name of attorney Bruce Rosen, who has done a lot of legal work for The Record and who represented Mac and other opponents. (When he was a reporter at the paper in the 1980s, Rosen said Mac gave him at least one mortgage to buy a house.)

At least the lazy, incompetent editors tried to bury the synagogue story omissions. (For non-Record folk, Mac Borg is chairman of North Jersey Media Group.) I recall asking Assignment Editor Dan Sforza two or three years ago, when I was a copy editor, why a short story on this same dispute didn't include Mac's name, and he said there was "no room" to mention it. Editors today can't use the same excuse for this much longer story.

Then, on Page 1 today,  a long, tortured tale about an international custody battle seems to have been deliberately distorted to shower the father with sympathy.

When you look at the headlines and the moody photo on the front page, you can only conclude the paper wants you to like this man and hate his wife. But it's only on the jump page, you discover he has been accused of of sexually abusing his own kids, and left all of them behind to escape a criminal complaint, the woman's attorney says.

It's not "a father's nightmare." It's the readers who are having nightmares.Was this the work of the courthouse reporter trying to sell the story for the front or the devious editors?  

Three corrections appear on A-2. Way to go.

Joseph Ax has stopped acting like a foreign correspondent and gone back to reporting municipal affairs in Teaneck, where he is assigned. Today, he has two stories in Local, compared to none about Hackensack, Englewood and a lot of other Bergen County towns.

A photo of the Woodland Park police chief on L-2 incorrectly says he is behind a "podium," when he is, in fact, standing at a lectern.The caption doesn't say where the swearing-in was, but I'm sure the editors could have left their Garret Mountain newsroom and popped over for refreshments.

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Bill Pitcher cranks ups the hyperbole in a three-star review of sushi restaurant Umeya in Cresskill. (Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives in nearby Tenafly, in a house that is bigger than some Japanese villages.) Pitcher calls the raw fish "pristine, salmon tasting as clean as the water it was plucked from."

Of course, the salmon likely was farm-raised and, thus, artificially colored, and probably it contained other contaminants. Pitcher also fails to mention fish served raw must be frozen first to kill worms.

Sloppy reporting and copy editing

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Shoddy reporting and clueless copy editing and headline writing -- when will readers of The Record of Woodland Park get any relief?

The heads on the lead A-1 story -- "Killings a mystery" and "Two found dead on quiet Teaneck street" -- are redundant (killings and dead) and don't tell you the bodies were found in an SUV. Police solve few murders instantly -- so why waste the main head on that?

The sloppy, cowardly reporting on Page 1 is by Columnist Mike Kelly, who questioned the disgraced Bernard Kerik in Kerik's home office before he was sentenced yesterday, but couldn't bring himself to ask the former New York City Police commissioner if he was motivated by greed when he broke the law or thought he was above the law. Kerik and the pompous Kelly must be pals; the reporter refers to him as "Bernie" and calls the convicted felon's wife by her first name.

Even an aide or handler couldn't paint a more sympathetic portrait of Kerik than Kelly has. Is this journalism or public relations?

"I'm glad it's over," Kerik said before he was sentenced in federal court. "I want to try to remake my life." Kelly's writing gets real sloppy -- to the point where he has the White House "returning from Baghdad," and the copy editor and the copy editor's supervisor didn't catch it. (After Publisher Stephen A. Borg moved printing of The Record to Rockaway Township, copy editors in Hackensack could no longer read the first copies off the press for typos and other errors, and correct them, as they had from time immemorial.)

"After returning from Baghdad," Kelly writes, "the White House, citing Kerik's anti-terrorism record, nominated him ....."

Who is Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin trying to fool?  The lead editorial on A-20 claims that everyone -- including the "wealthy" -- will feel the effects of Governor Christie's budget-cutting, but that isn't documented. In fact, Christie refused to reinstate the so-called millionaires tax and plans to allow a corporate business surcharge to expire. Did Stephen Borg write the editorial?


The wrong-way dolphins in the Hackensack River -- a story that was all over Page 1 yesterday -- ends up inside Local today, a mere brief. Instead of development, education or municipal news of Hackensack and Englewood, readers get four verdicts or sentences in major cases. Teaneck news? Only the double murder on Page 1.

Why would anybody want to go to the Italian restaurant given two stars by Restaurant Reviewer Bill Pitcher, who recommends only three dishes? As food editor, Pitcher guided the expansion of reviews to the point where they seem promotional. Whether a restaurant is poor or outstanding, reviews feature plenty of photos and deceptive close-ups of food -- even lousy food looks good in a color photo. Squandering space means that the restaurant health inspections list is cut, depriving readers of essential information.

Stephen Borg, who lives in a $3.65 million McMansion in Tenafly, must have written this line in the review: "The dining room isn't much larger than your home dining room -- the first of 32 seats ..." Thirty-two seats in a home dining room? Where was the copy editor here? Where was George Cubanski, his supervisor, who is supposed to catch such preposterous errors?

A great front page

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The front page of The Record of Woodland Park today is one of the best I've seen recently, especially for a Saturday. The three stories are: a rare, but preventable, death at the Winter Olympics; transcontinental organ transplants involving a North Jersey man and his daughter, and the resignation of a sewerage chief making $313,000.

Only in New Jersey do you get paid that much for a public job supervising how shit flows, though some would say Record Publisher Stephen A. Borg is handsomely rewarded in his private job of supervising a similar flow of manure.

But one thing that mars the front page is an unnecessarily complicated graphic about the kidney transplants that -- instead of telling the story at a glance -- is weighed down by four paragraphs of small type.  

The Record has struggled for years to streamline the process, but its graphics continue to disappoint, largely because they are conceived by head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes and her inept minions, not the artists themselves. The reporters and assignment editors who feed words and numbers to the artists bypass the copy desk and invariably make a lot of errors, which the artists simply transfer to the graphic.

When Liz Houlton was put in charge of the news layout and copy desks, she held a number of meetings about graphics, but the initiative lost steam in a newsroom where Sykes' assignment desk insists all problems lie elsewhere. (You should see the sorry collection of shmatas Houlton and Sykes used to wear).

After that great Page 1, the Local section really disappoints, save for the weekly, colorful quotes of the week on the front. Why not run these every day? Looking for education, development or municipal news about Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck? You won't find any.

I'm really starting to worry about the health and well-being of Monsy Alvarado, the hapless reporter who is supposed to cover Hackensack, the former headquarters of The Record. I hope Sykes hasn't sidelined her again, as she did for about two years to have Alvarado work on the ridiculous "investigation" of lawman Michael Mordaga. The story published Dec. 16 was pathetic -- considering how many reporters worked on it for nearly three years -- and stands as a testament to Sykes' incompetence.

More sloppy work

A careless reporter, a sleepy news copy editor and the desk supervisor at The Record of Woodland Park combined to produce an embarrassing typo yesterday.

In a story about the Baha'i faith on L-6 in Local, the reporter, Hugh R. Morely,  misspelled it as Baja'i in the second paragaph. The copy editor, probably just awakened from a nap Sunday night, grabbed a hold of the misspelling and put it in really big letters in the main headline.

The desk supervisor completely missed it. The newspaper is so pathetic these days, no correction ran today on Page A-2.

Are the Borgs trying to deceive us?

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 Sloppy reporting and copy editing, and clueless graphic artists and assignment editors continue to damage the credibility of The Record of Woodland Park, as does the apparent attempt by the Borg family to hide the abandonment of Hackensack from readers.

The lazy, incompetent local news editors continue to let down readers, but a major story on how downtowns are faring is all over the front of Local and inside today, with huge photos and a map showing the towns being discussed, colored as "losers" and "gainers."

Did the Borgs notice how Maywood appears in the second paragraph, but isn't on the map? Yet the graphic artist and the copy editor who was supposed to proof the map really screwed-up: Ridgewood is labeled as Ridgefield.


Although the story discusses downtowns, a Hackensack official is quoted as saying an estimated 50 stores opened in the past year. That must be the entire city. Why didn't reporter Dina Yellin get the number for the beleaguered Main Street shopping district, hard hit when The Record moved hundreds of press, editorial and other employees out of the city?


Still, on Page A-2 every day, the Borgs insist on listing The Record's address as 150 River St. in Hackensack, and stating that the paper is published there by the family's North Jersey Media Group. Does ownership of the old headquarters or NJMG Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg keeping his office there entitle the family to continue deceiving the public? What's accomplished by not telling readers and advertisers the truth -- something they already know by how little Hackensack news appears in the paper?

And why does Yellin fail to mention Englewood's downtown? Maybe she doesn't know where it is. She is the same reporter who wrote a story on North Jersey police firing ranges and failed to include the open-air range that drives Englewood residents crazy. Was Christina R. Joseph, the assistant assignment editor who missed that in the firing-range story, also the one who read the latest story on downtowns and again overlooked the Englewood omission? Curiously, Joseph covered Englewood when she was a reporter at The Record.

Image by Here in Van Nuys via Flickr

Englewood (photos) really gets the cold shoulder in the paper today. A Star-Ledger story on arts centers, appearing on Page A-5, completely omits any mention of the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood (the Borg siblings' favorite wine bar is next door). Assuming the blind Record news copy editor didn't know there is an arts center in Englewood, what excuse does the copy editor's supervisor have?

In Better Living, The Corner Table Columnist Elisa Ung discusses kosher restaurants in Teaneck without telling readers if pricier kosher meat is better for you. She doesn't say whether it is raised with or without antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products. This reporter loves to throw around the word "quality" without ever backing it up. Thankfully, she will be on leave until summer.

Memo to Columnist Mike Kelly: Stop posing questions. Readers want you to go out on a limb and make emphatic statements based on your opinion as a veteran journalist. If you think a school official or a politician or someone else deserves condemnation, condemn them. Your job is not to sift through the facts like a mediator or an arbitrator. You are squandering your bully pulpit. (And again, Mike, please get the editors to change the picture that runs with your column, today on the Opinion front. Right now, you look like a leering child molester.)

Kelly and Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski -- too pompous to ride on and criticize decrepit local buses -- should be put on 90-days' probation. If they can't write stronger, more relevant columns, they should be busted down to reporters. Readers deserve no less.

Borgs can keep more of their money

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Record of Woodland Park carries good news today for wealthy families like the Borgs, who control North Jersey Media Group. Governor Christie opposes renewing a tax on the wealthy that expired Jan. 1.

The stories, on Page A-4, call it a "millionaires tax," although it's unclear whether it applied to people making more than $400,000 or $500,000, because both figures appear. More sloppy copy editing.

More inattentive copy editing raises questions about whether Staff Writer Joseph Ax and Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi have returned from Haiti. On Wednesday, their story appeared inside on A-6, but without a dateline, usually a sign that they had returned (the big Page 1 news that day was "sexting"). And on Thursday, no story from them appeared.

But today, they are back on the front page, where their first three dispatches appeared, with a dateline, and the text refers to events of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

In Local, Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski finds yet another excuse to avoid writing about the lousy local bus service -- well within his mission of covering commuting issues -- and more precious space on the front is wasted on the old Giants Stadium. All of this is probably an attempt by the lazy, desperate and incompetent editors to distract readers who won't find any Teaneck (photo) or Hackensack news in the paper.

Image via Wikipedia

But Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano finally appears for the first time in nearly two weeks with a story on how that city is proposing a hefty 10.5% property tax hike -- news that is sure to upset NJMG Chairman Malcolm A. 'Mac' Borg, who lives in an East Hill mansion, and all those residents who send their kids to private schools to avoid segregated elementary and middle schools.
  
Fabioano's story raises more questions than it answers. For example, does the goal of reducing police overtime by more than $500,000 mean the city department is short of officers, and is that deliberate, as it was in the past?

In Better Living,  Restaurant Reviewer Bill Pitcher finds that Legal Sea Foods in Paramus is showing its age after nine years, with service and food lapses, and a dirty bathroom. The two-star rating equates it with Bahama Breeze, the faux-Caribbean chain restaurant on the highway in Wayne.

Image by Randy Son Of Robert via Flickr

For yet another week, no Wyckoff restaurants are listed in the abbreviated health inspections report.

Leaving readers in the dark

Image via Wikipedia

Staff Writer Joseph Ax, on assignment for The Record in Haiti, seems to be fascinated with the pre-dawn darkness or maybe he is just trying to show the lazy, desperate and incompetent editors back home in Woodland Park that he is working hard amid all the cutbacks at the paper.

For the third day in a row, he begins his dispatch with something that happened before the sun rose on the humanitarian crisis there (the first day, it was volunteers gathering for breakfast in the lobby of a Dominican hotel). It's hard to tell if his dispatches are getting any editing on the assignment desk or the news copy desk.

This could be a case of head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes holding the story past deadline, then sending it over with some excuse so the news copy editors don't have time to question or edit it. Unlike the shrieking Sykes, they're expected to make deadline, so they just have time to slap headlines on it, write photo captions and spell-check the file.

Unable to come up with news of Hackensack (map), Teaneck, Englewood or other important Bergen County towns, editors have to run large and small photos on the front of Local about a Haitian relief drive by Dominicans in Paterson, sending readers to L-6 to read  a detailed story. This follows numerous stories about such efforts by Haitians, doctors, pastors and other North Jerseyans after the Jan. 12 quake, in an apparent bid to chronicle the sending of every T-shirt to the stricken nation.

More drivel by Columnist Mike Kelly also appears on the front of the section. This is "one of those small North Jersey stories that could easily go unnoticed," he writes, "amid the hustle and bustle that passes for life" -- just like Kelly's pushing around words passes for journalism. This so-called story should have gone unnoticed because it's been done a million times. Is this the best local story the veteran journalist can come up with? Where is his assignment editor, staring down the shirt of an attractive, young female reporter?

Dead time at The Record

I flew through today's thin edition of  The Record of Woodland Park, which is filled with stories I saw on the TV news last night. Most of the front page is devoted to a story under the headline, "Dead time on campus," that was probably in a can for several weeks and hauled out by desperate, incompetent editors with no real news to offer.

As my dear, departed news copy desk colleague, Michael Thaler, used to say frequently, "You can't polish a turd."

The Local section leads with council reorganizations, including the swearing in of an official in Rutherford who looks like he is in his 20s and won by one vote. Good luck, residents. Inside, we learn a politically connected lawyer, Frank Huttle, will be sworn in as mayor of Englewood, replacing Michael Wildes, a relentless self-promoter. Good luck to you, too, Englewood residents. Will Huttle use his office to help integrate the city's elementary and middle schools?

News of Hackensack, Teaneck, Ridgewood and a host of other towns? Try a weekly.

Writing and editing of the newspaper continues to deteriorate. From Staff Writer Marlene Naanes, a busy police reporter, we have: "At least 10 drunken driving arrests marred North Jersey roads ...." That is really the wrong word.

Where was the editor?

When you read a ridiculous Page 1 story like the anti-mass transit piece today, you have to ask, Where was the editor?

Of course, I'm referring to the reporter's assignment editor, who is in on a story from the time it is conceptualized to the final editing before it goes over to the news copy desk for damage control and headlines with "mustard" on them, as Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Scandale is fond of saying. (I always wondered why he didn't ask for headlines with salsa [photo] on them? He's such a dull, uninspiring guy.)

Tom Davis' editor is Dan Sforza, a former reporter whose own mediocre job on the transportation beat is responsible for the low quality of reporting and writing we have seen from Davis for years. Just look at the lead paragraph of today's story:

Each community is known for its picturesque downtown and walkable streets that draw people away from the noise, crime and traffic of larger cities.

What planet is Davis and Sforza writing about? Englewood is supposed to provide relief from "noise, crime and traffic?" How much time has the reporter spent there? Has he heard the gunshots from the open-air police firing range? Did he miss the noisy, polluting freight trains that rumble through town frequently, causing traffic mayhem? Doesn't he read all the crime news in the paper day after day that portray North Jersey as a hotbed of criminal activity? What does this lead paragraph have to do with the reality of the suburbs we live in? And what does it have to do with a proposed light-rail system?

Unfortunately, the copy desks at The Record has been handcuffed for years. The news and feature copy editors are encouraged to write snappy headlines, so much so some of them have to resort to writing misleading heads, such as "The dog ate my turkey" and the one in the Business section the other day about New Jersey companies "taking flight." But they are discouraged from challenging poor writing and reporting, and in general, warned against changing copy without approval from the editor who screwed it up in the first place. The copy editors' supervisors long ago dropped quality concerns, and just shovel the shit as fast as they can.

Look at the sub-headline on the light-rail story:

Critics say light rail will bring
host of troubles to their towns

Yet, the story never says the "host of troubles" are the same problems the towns have grappled with for decades from the freight railroad running through the middle of their communities or that the light rail will actually improve the environment with much less noise and zero emissions.

You have to wonder at the motives of Davis and Sforza for such a distorted picture.

"The dividing line" main head over the story could just as well refer to the line between good and bad journalism, and we know which side The Record, Davis and Sforza are on.

See previous post:  
Anti-mass transit tirade, 12/19/09

Where are the people?

Cover of The Talk of the Town

Day after day, the voices of residents are missing from The Record of Woodland Park. The paper is one of the few in recent decades that never adopted a time-tested journalistic form, used by other papers big and small, called "The Talk of the Town."

Sure, you'll see gadflies quoted or residents at a protest or public hearing on a quality-of-life issue that some crummy town has allowed to fester for decades, such as the closed Pompton Lakes munitions plant all over the front page yesterday. But where are the voices of the rest of us?

We read endless stories about infrastructure, such as the road repair "expose" on Page 1 today, while the voices of the poor schmucks who have to ride NJ Transit's decrepit local buses are ignored. A school official quits and it leads the Local section or a renovated borough hall is finished and the story is lavish and illustrated (both on L-1 today). But what are the people in the coffee shop saying?

Look at the three Teaneck stories that ran today and yesterday. A public hearing finally is being held on a synagogue that has held services for about two years. Two years? The other stories, which ran today, are about insurance against lawsuits and a grant to hire firefighters -- more in the mind-numbing stream of bureaucratic coverage.

If every new municipal reporter at The Record did a "Talk of the Town" -- interviewing residents at the Starbucks, supermarket and elsewhere -- they would get an instant education. They'd learn about quality of life issues and something about how well or how poorly their town is being run. It would be useful for these columns to appear at least once a year for each town. Of course, that's a lot harder than strolling over to the fax machine in the Woodland Park newsroom to fetch a press release.

I wonder what residents of Englewood have to say about the nightmarish downtown traffic -- aggravated by police foot-dragging on installing turn lanes at congested intersections. I wonder what the residents who live across the street from an open-air police firing range have to say about hearing gunshots and shotgun blasts as early as 8 a.m.?

A Record reporter named Dena Yellin did a round-up of police firing ranges some time ago, but omitted the Englewood range. This is the kind of "regional" story that has largely replaced coverage of individual towns.

Christina Joseph, who assigned the story to her, sent it along to the news copy desk without noticing the omission, even though Joseph had covered Englewood as a reporter before she was promoted. The anonymous news copy editor apparently knew nothing about  Englewood, so the story ran as is -- another slap in the face to people who live there. Isn't that pathetic? Especially from a paper that once prided itself on local coverage.

If you are going to do a "Talk of the Town," it will require good, old-fashioned legwork. For a reporter, there is no substitute for going and seeing for yourself. Reject the advice of your lazy, incompetent editor to do stories by phone.

I'm sure residents of the high-rises in Hackensack have a lot to say about the business jets screaming overhead on the way to Teterboro Airport. Some are so frightened by how close these fat cats' planes come, they don't use their terraces in good weather. Would a higher approach altitude for these jets give high-rise dwellers and their neighbors relief from the noise? Does Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado care? Does her editor care?  Does The Record care?

Who ate the jelly beans?

Image by skpy via Flickr

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.

The thinnest of papers

Image by birdphone via Flickr

One thing that jumped out at me after looking over today's thin paper is continued -- even redundant -- coverage of everywhere except Hackensack, Teaneck and Engelwood, the three most diverse towns in The Record of Woodland Park's circulation area.

Do readers really need a second, detailed sob story about wealthy Ridgewood's downtown (photo) on the front of the Local section? What about Cedar Lane merchants and Palisade Avenue merchants and the businesses on Main Street in Hackensack -- the last hit particularly hard by the absence of hundreds of newspaper employees scattered to the wind by the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group?

At least this Ridgewood story tells how greedy officials raised parking meter rates -- a crucial detail left out of the previous story, as we learned from outraged letters to the editor. Was this story intended to correct the earlier story, which I believe ran several months ago, without making the omission more obvious?

On Page 1, I read over a puzzling sentence a couple of times before I realized the news copy editor and the desk supervisor just passed it over on autopilot. In the guilty plea of a hedge fund manager, Staff Writer Andrew Tangel wrote the defendant "didn't face the roughly 40 people in court." Duh. Of course, anyone who has attended a court hearing knows the defendant faces the judge -- not the audience -- but in a sense still comes face-to-face with his accusers. What was the point of saying he didn't "face" the FBI agent, attorneys and investors? It only confuses readers. To add insult to injury, a fact box with a photo of the moron is topped with the words, "Day in court," a phrase usually associated with hard-pressed plaintiffs, not greedy, thieving financiers.

A story promoted on the front page under the headline, "Health care bill could raise costs," reveals that 33 million uninsured Americans would finally be covered. Wouldn't that add to our health-care expenses? The story makes it sound controversial, instead of just common sense.

The Business, Editorial and Better Living pages are throwaways today.


See earlier post: "A modest proposal"