A front page filled with what-ifs

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A new city councilman in Englewood holds a day job at the state capitol in Albany, N.Y.

If you're trotting out an old story about higher education, why not dress it up with a misleading headline? Here's one on Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park today:

New vision for funding state colleges

But in the fifth paragraph, Staff Writers Pat Alex and Elise Young report that many of the recommendations in a 134-page report "have been made by groups impaneled by [Governor] Christie's predecessors over the past two decades."

So the "new vision" is up to 20 years old? Editor Francis Scandale must have put this room-clearer on the front page, because the former Hackensack daily lionizes former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, who headed the latest panel. 

Most of the rest of A-1 today is filled with a long story on bills by North Jersey lawmakers that didn't make it through Congress. Why not report on what they accomplished?

Ignoring the obvious

The lead story in head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section reports a 48-year-old Park Ridge woman died in an apartment fire, but the two reporters who labored over it never say whether the victim smoked. Instead, we learn she was "a lovely woman, very pleasant."

Also on L-1, a huge story from Glen Rock, where Scandale lives, reports renovation of council chambers is finally complete. This is one in a series of infrastructure stories Sykes often uses as filler when her staff is unable to produce anything more legitimate.

The "2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH" series on L-1 is sending the wrong message to readers of Local. All of the people featured so far have been statewide figures, suggesting Sykes doesn't think anyone local is worthy of note.

Commuting councilman

On L-3, Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano reports the chief of staff to the New York State Senate majority leader in Albany, N.Y., was sworn in as Englewood's newest councilman. 

The story doesn't say whether Michael Cohen's Englewood-Albany-Englewood commute is paid for by New York State taxpayers or how much quality time he'll be able to devote to his City Council duties.

There is no Hackensack news in Sykes' section today. A letter from a city resident raises an alarm about all the bonding city officials have been doing lately (A-10), though I can't recall seeing any of that reported in The Record.

See previous post on Alan Marcus lawsuit

Hacks cover Hackensack

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Schools near Teterboro Airport get federal soundproofing money. Homeowners get the shaft.

Why does The Record of Woodland Park -- formerly of Hackensack -- have hacks covering the city where it was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years? And how have the hacks kept their jobs?


When the Hackensack City Council introduced the budget, The Record ignored it. When the council passed the budget and set the tax rate, The Record was silent. When the council picked a new mayor, only the weeklies reported it.


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes is chiefly responsible for local news, along with her crew of clueless assistants. She often sidetracks municipal reporters on expensive, prolonged investigations that bear little fruit. Wrongdoing often is exposed long after it has ended.


Sykes apparently has told Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado that her mission is blanket coverage of the Police Department, where the chief has been suspended and hit with a number of lawsuits, and he, in turn, has brought some of his officers up on administrative charges.


In nearly a year and a half of covering little else, Alvarado hasn't reported whether policing has been compromised or the public's confidence in the department has been shaken. 


Sykes even has Alvarado covering the administrative hearings as if they are pronouncements from the state's highest court, including spell-binding legal maneuvering to get the chief to testify on one cop's suspended and expired driver's license (L-3).

Catching up to 2005-09

Elise Young, a hard-working member of the State House Bureau, leads the paper today with an expose on the reckless Local Finance Board, the supposed watchdog of municipal and county spending. She pored over thousands of pages relating to actions the board took in 2005-09.


Once she convinces readers that these morons have forced taxpayers to cover the increased costs of out-of-control borrowing, she tells us Governor Christie has replaced the chairman and made other reforms.

What about homeowners? 

The big story on the front of Local today reports delays in FAA aid to insulate students from the noise of of aircraft using Teterboro Airport. But the paper has long ignored noise complaints from homeowners who live under the flight paths of both Teterboro and Newark airports. 

Local food coverage

There is none in Better Living today (unless you count the ShopRite ad on the back page). The battle of the cupcake mixes promised on Twitter by Food Editor Susan Sherrill didn't materialize. Did she have the day wrong?

Does anybody care -- even a little?

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If you live in Hackensack and subscribe to The Record of Woodland Park like I do, you have to get out there and pick up your paper early. Are you thinking there is some important Hackensack news in the paper, or stories about Teaneck and Englewood? How naive can you be?

No. I should have gotten out there early today, because it is pouring, and the dysfunctional circulation department had some poor, exploited guy with three jobs steer his SUV down my street and throw my Sunday paper onto my driveway in a single plastic bag -- open to the rain. Most of the paper was soaked and it was past 10:30, so I couldn't call for a replacement. Hey, I have the news sections. Am I really missing anything in the other sections? Mike Kelly? Ha! What a joke.

Staff Writer Elise Young deserves to have most of the front page today for another in an occasional expose on the state's screwed-up public pension system, and even a law Governor Christie signed last month won't touch lobbyists who are enrolled in lifetime health care. But one great story can't carry the paper.

The lazy, incompetent news and food editors won't budge on assigning reporters to a project on the obesity epidemic, but A-1 today has a Star-Ledger story on overweight military recruits from New Jersey.

There is so little Bergen County news of any import in Local today, readers must feel they've been slapped in the face by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes. Why is a story on two Catholic schools in East Rutherford and Wood-Ridge running today and not earlier in the week when The Record reported the closing of Paterson Catholic Regional High School?

Why is there a huge story about falling home values in Little Falls in my paper? Or a fish kill in Caldwell? Or Wayne's search for a superintendent? Or even a man shot in Paterson? Did nothing happen in Hackensack and Englewood?

Does former Publisher Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, who lives in Englewood and goes to his Hackensack office, care about the lack of local news? Does Editor Frank Scandale care about the job he's doing at the former Hackensack daily or is he still boasting about what he did at The Denver Post more than 11 years ago? Do Mac's spoiled children -- Stephen and Jennifer, who are now running the paper from Woodland Park -- care? 


Does Sykes, who lives in tiny Harrington Park, care about the lack of local Bergen news? When is the last time you saw a story about Harrington Park in the paper? Must be a great place to live with low taxes and wonderful municipal and school officials, a veritable heaven on earth for home-rule advocates.

The sad truth is they don't care. The editors are secure in the knowledge they have employment for life -- no matter what they do in the newsroom -- because none of the Borgs pay any attention to the newsroom. If you're spent time around the Borgs, you know they act as if they are American royalty.


You should have seen Mac in the Bergen County Courthouse on April 9. He and Superior Court Judge Joseph S. Conte, who presided at the jury trial of my age-discrimination lawsuit, recalled a speech Mac had given on the courthouse steps. Then Mac, dressed in a beautiful pinstripe suit with a pocket square, was off to see Judge Peter Doyne, whose father the elder Borg knew. How cozy.

Good to see on-the-ball reporting

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The lead story on the front of The Record of Woodland Park today isn't just another routine recitation of storm damage you usually find in the paper. This report says the nor'easter felled a tree that killed two Teaneck pedestrians on Saturday in an accident many people fear.

But there is real detail here: The victims appear to have been returning from synagogue services, so their orthodoxy prevented them from driving and exposed them to the dangers of such a wind-driven storm. You don't see this kind of on-the-ball reporting in the former Hackensack daily every day, hampered as it is by a clueless assignment desk under Deirdre Sykes. 

The rest of Page 1 carries another substantial take-out on the deficit-ridden state pension system by Staff Writers Elise Young and Dave Sheingold, who have been following this story for months. It seems Christie Whitman, the former Republican governor, is at the root of today's problems.

Unlike Young and Sheingold, Columnist John Cichowski is late to the debate -- this one over the sorry state of mass transit in North Jersey. On the front of Local, The Road Warrior finally has one the few columns he's written in more than six years on long-suffering bus riders, who now face 25% fare hikes and service cuts -- and he still refuses to check out such decrepit local buses as the 780 that runs from Englewood to Hackensack and Passaic city.

Cichowski's column fleshes out the lead Opinion piece by Zoe Baldwin of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. She writes that drivers should shoulder more of the state's fiscal burden -- an argument that hasn't been adopted by the paper's editorial writers, who, like Cichowski, appear to be held hostage by motorists.

If you want to throw up, try to get through Mike Kelly's column on the Opinion front about Ground Zero. Read this, for example:

"Ground Zero and all its shadowy issues have become like a ghost in a Shakespearean drama that just can't seem to find its bearings. All Ground Zero needs to become an even greater tragedy is the modern equivalent of ancient Rome's Marcus Brutus."

Help! I can't read more. I have to go to the bathroom and barf.