Are the Borgs trying to deceive us?

Image by Here in Van Nuys via Flickr

 












 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.

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?