 |
| A relative of Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza was an editor at one of Italy's first newspapers. Here, he prays for good news. |
The big front-page news today is an apparent sickout by more than 100 members of the public school staff in Englewood.
But The Record's editors don't explore the real story: the broken home-rule system of financing education.
Even the headline is inaccurate, lumping in school secretaries with teachers and professional assistants, who are called "educators."
Lazy editors
Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza both covered Englewood as reporters -- Sykes for a weekly newspaper, Sforza for The Record -- but their coverage of the city's schools in the past decade couldn't be more flawed.
Despite reaping property taxes from hundreds of big homes on the East Hill -- including the mansion of Chairman and former Publisher Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg -- and from a large industrial area, the city has allowed its public schools to limp along.
Minority schools
The elementary and middle schools are mostly black and Hispanic, and there hasn't been a story about desegregation efforts at the high school for a couple of years.
Wealthy residents on a panel advising the mayor recommended and eventually pushed through cuts in public library funding.
And a Hebrew charter school threatens to grab hundreds of thousands of dollars in public school funds to educate rich students.
$4 million deficit
Finally, do two large private-school campuses hurt the public schools by luring away most of the white students, and just how much does their tax-exempt status cost the city?
Sykes and Sforza don't think any of that is important.
Horsing around
Editor Marty Gottlieb doesn't seem to notice the holes in the Englewood coverage, preferring to devote valuable space on Page 1 today to the enormous value of a race horse's schlong.
Staff Writer John Rowe is a sports columnist who has been covering horse racing so long he appears to have been embalmed.
But his A-1 piece today doesn't answer the question in every reader's mind: Just how big is a horse's $10 million penis?
Railroading readers
The front of Sykes' Local section focuses today on pedestrians who "trespass" near railroad tracks and ignores whether NJ Transit had added any safety measures to prevent deaths and suicides (L-1).
There is so little news from Hackensack and other towns, Sykes and Sforza needed a photo of a minor minivan fire on Paterson's Eastside to fill out L-2 of the Bergen Edition.
Sforza sent out the ambulance-chasing photographer so late, the photo shows four firefighters, standing next to the vehicle and bullshiting.
