North Jersey's 'Frankenstorm' hit a year ago

An MTA crew covers subway ventilation grates in lower Manhattan on Friday in anticipation of flooding from Hurricane Sandy, which is expected to hit early next week.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Friday's screaming front-page headline -- "'Frankenstorm' sets sights on New Jersey" -- was deja vu all over again for readers of The Record.

Who could forget the poor coverage of last year's 'Frankenstorm' -- a freak snowstorm -- two days before Halloween by the Woodland Park daily's own "Frankeneditor," Francis "Frank" Scandale.

That was followed on Halloween by Publisher Stephen A. Borg's long-overdue, trick-or-treat firing of Scandale -- even though lazy head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes was directly responsible for what largely amounted to covering the 2011 storm by telephone.

The story did little to convey the extent of the damage throughout the region, the abysmal lack of preparation by utility companies and the many days residents would be without power.

Veteran staffers recalled the irony:

Not long after Scandale left Denver and took over the Hackensack newsroom in the winter of 2001, he complained loudly about the local assignment desk's poor coverage of the first snowstorm of his tenure.

You're in Jersey now

Friday's Page 1 also reminded readers that Scandale's successor, Editor Marty Gottlieb, forgets he no longer works at The New York Times.

The front-page above the fold not devoted to the storm is filled with two sensational crime stories from New York, instead of news relevant to North Jersey.

Below that, another story reports that Governor Christie's salary cap on schools superintendents has been upheld by a state appeals court (A-1 on Friday).

Now may be a good time for the lazy assignment editors, including Deputy Assignment Flunky Dan Sforza, to explore why Christie hasn't imposed the same cap on local police chiefs, many of whom make more than his $175,000 salary.

Put Bergen on A-1

A far better story for Page 1 would have been the civil suit brought on behalf of a man who was left quadriplegic after a 2006 crash on one of Bergen County's antiquated roads (Friday's Local front).

The county's congested and dangerous road system is an issue that has been largely neglected by Road Warrior John Cichowski, who got lost in the Lodi MVC office in late 2003 and hasn't been seen since.

Instead of Hackensack news, Staff Writer Stephanie Akin -- the so-called Hackensack reporter -- wrote about higher education on Friday's Local front.

Paper glorifies GOP

The Record today and Friday continues the inordinate amount of coverage being given to two Republican congressional candidates, Rep. Scott Garrett of Wantage and Shmuley Boteach, the Englewood rabbi and publicity monger who gives Jews a bad name.

Everyone agrees that campaign financing is corrupt, but Gottlieb today seems to be devoting more and more column inches to Garrett and Boteach in proportion to all the poisoned contributions they are distributing or collecting.

It's no surprise Garrett is doling out checks to like-minded radical conservatives across the country (A-1) or that Boteach got financial support from Dr. Mehmet Oz, another publicity hungry horse's ass (L-1).

Is the paper's message that voters should back candidates like these who are beholden to special interests?

Ignoring Gussen

Meanwhile, there has been scant mention of Adam Gussen, Teaneck's deputy mayor and the Democratic candidate who is opposing Garrett in the 5th Congressional District, which includes 44 towns in Bergen County.

I guess Gussen, who appears to have turned down campaign money from special interests, can't "buy" coverage in The Record.

Readers haven't forgotten the long, flattering profile of Garrett all over the cover of the new Signature section in September or that a profile of Gussen hasn't been forthcoming.

So much for equal time from Gottlieb and Signature editor Alan Finder, one of his pals from The Times.

Koreans v. Japanese

Also on Saturday, the A-1 story on desecration of a Palisades Park memorial to Korean "comfort women" has readers wondering why Sykes and Sforza ignored tensions between North Jersey's Japanese and Korean communities in the past decade.

More Catholic values

Today's paper includes a special section on today's "Clash of The Titans" -- a football game between two Cathlolic high schools.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Newark has ordered more than 1,000 reprints for distribution to parish priests enamored of the young athletes from Don Bosco and Bergen Catholic.  

Time for Ung to go

In Friday's Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung continues to lose credibility with readers by choosing an artery clogging dessert as "the most memorable [dish] of my two dinners" at Cafe 37 in Ridgewood (BL-18 and 19).

She could have praised Chef Cesar Sotomayor for the abundance of seafood he offers or that he uses naturally raised Berkshire pork in place of the low-quality meat served in many other fine-dining restaurants.

Instead, she finds fault with seafood dishes that lack "flavor," apparently unaware that a splash of fresh lemon or lime juice -- well-known salt substitutes -- is all they needed.


When is Ung going to join Scandale on the scrap heap of journalism history?

 

Tits and ass on Page 1 -- yes, really

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If you doubt Record Staff Writer John Brennan is in the pockets of Jets and Giants owners, just look at today's highly promotional, gee-whiz, Page 1 coverage of  technology at the New Meadowlands Stadium. The story isn't labeled advertising, but it reads exactly like the best public relations money can buy.

To make his case that the stadium is the "most technologically advanced ... in the world," Brennan has to attribute that boast to Giants co-owner John Mara. Still, the reporter is so inept, his lead paragraph is poorly constructed, with the attribution in the wrong place. You'd think Brennan is getting season tickets in return for gushing stories about the new venue.

Why doesn't he write about the sacrifices many Giants fan have to make to pay for exorbitant seat licenses, parking passes and $19 steak sandwiches? 


Instead, Brennan's breathless story in the Woodland Park daily is aimed at season ticket holders who like to stare at busty cheerleaders, informing these fans -- with a wink of an eye -- that for $259, they can access a "cheerleader cam ...yes, really." He's a hack -- yes, really.


Will Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale come to his senses, and stop running this promotional garbage on A-1? It's doubtful. 

The debate over teenage drivers' license tags is back on Page 1 today, but if predators will use tags to identify their victims, as opponents claim, what did these perverts do without license-plate tags in all the decades girls were snatched and killed in North Jersey?


An editorial on Page A-10 opposes making all NJ Transit train and bus riders pay for parking near stations and stops, but doesn't address why some commuters have had to pay and others have parked for free. There's also no mention of how Governor Christie's cuts have forced the transit agency to raise more revenue from its parking lots.

This editorial stance only reminds you of what a piss-poor job lazy transportation reporters Tom Davis and Karen Rouse, and Road Warrior John Cichowski are doing covering mass transit now. They should plant their asses -- not in front of their computers for hours at a time -- but in buses or trains to see how the other half lives.


In Local, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado provides readers with an update on a proposal for a 19-story, acute-care hospital, but the first paragraph must be in in error by saying it would be built "at Summit and Prospect avenues," which don't intersect (more sloppy copy editing).


Homes would be demolished, and hundreds of residents have attended hearings, but this Hackensack plan hasn't gotten anywhere near the gobs of coverage devoted to opponents of The Valley Hospital expansion in Ridgewood, though no homes or land would be taken there.

I guess head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes is pulling the strings of Alvarado and the reporters on the Ridgewood hospital-expansion controversy. 

Alvarado's last story on the Hackensack proposal appeared nearly a year ago. A brief, it reported the original height of the hospital was 24 stories.

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.)

A front page with the blahs

Image by Getty Images via @daylife








Today's front page is about as soft as you can get, except for the photos at the bottom of the page on cleanup of the magnificent Great Falls in Paterson, one of the most neglected natural attractions in the Northeast. As far as The Record of Woodland Park is concerned, life stood still. 

Maybe the recent lack of sunshine has affected the editors, including Frank "Castrato" Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes.

Do the editors talk with one another? Is Page 1 play planned or just done haphazardly by Scandale while he sits on a toilet in the men's room? The main element on A-1 today and a column on the OpEd page both go over essentially the same ground on the controversial medical marijuana law.

In the Page 1 story, the reporter seems bored with her subject, quoting one bureaucratic delay after another. Couldn't she find anyone to express outrage over the denial of relief to the terminally ill, including the poor man with the face tumors in the big photo? "We're working diligently," a state Health Department spokeswoman is quoted as saying. Give me a break.

Former Managing Editor Jim Ahearn's column (A-9) is more focused, pinning some of the delay on Governor Christie, who did a major about-face on medical marijuana.

The lead story on A-1 finally gets around to reporting new regulations to keep emergency responders safe on state highways that went into effect in June. I guess the staff was on vacation then.

In Local, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado covers a school board meeting for the first time in more than a year (L-1), and it is cut short by a disruptive former employee.

There is no other Hackensack news, or anything from Englewood or Teaneck, but there is a follow-up story on partisan politics in Englewood Cliffs, where one council Democrat resigned abruptly and another said he wouldn't run for election. The second Democrat has changed his mind.

The original Cliffs story -- in which one council member stormed out during an argument with another -- and today's lead L-1 story on voters backing Ridgefield's indicted mayor belong on the front page, in place of some of the nonsense Scandale loves. The Cliffs story reflects so well what is happening nationally, and deserves better play.

The process stories, such as the one on medical marijuana, don't really grab readers. Ahearn's column would have been enough.

I wonder why The Record didn't report an Appellate Division ruling in a dispute between two lawyers over hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees in a case that was covered extensively by the paper? One of  the lawyers is a good source for Kibret Markos, the Bergen County Courthouse reporter.

According to Cliffview Pilot.com, which reported last week's ruling on Monday, lawyer Rosemary Arnold of Fort Lee has been fighting with fellow attorney David Mazie, who took over a DWI case, brought it to trial, and won what originally was a $105 million verdict that later was pared to $25 million for young Antonia Verni’s Cliffside Park family. 

For his trouble, Mazie got more than $4.6 million, while Arnold collected only $227,500 -- even though Mazie argued that she should have gotten nothing. Arnold went in demanding half. In a published interview, Mazie said Arnold did little on the case when he was finally brought in.

But the appeals court said the lower court  judge erred in 2008 by not explaining why he cut Arnold's request so drastically, and sent back the legal-fees dispute to be heard by another judge.

Cliffview Pilot.com reported that when Arnold realized the drunk driver, Daniel Lanzaro, had only $100,000 in insurance, she brought in other defendants, including the New York Giants, National Football League, New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority and Giants Stadium, where Lanzaro had a staggering amount of beer during a game, as well as Aramark Corp., the stadium vendor that served him before he smashed head-on into the Vernis' vehicle in Hasbrouck Heights in 1999.

Have you noticed subtle typographical changes that allow more vertical room on some pages? The change is most noticeable on the editorial page, where the names of managers and editors now appear below the editorials. On the fronts, the changes seem to accommodate ads that run along the bottom of the pages.

"Castrato" fires another blank

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If Frank "Castrato" Scandale wants to devote half of the front page to the first football game at the new Meadowlands stadium, no one can dissuade The Record's high-fiving, ass-slapping, jock-itching editor, who feels more comfortable in a locker room than in a newsroom. His mantra: "Business of sports. It's not sports, it's the business of sports."


But there's other business he doesn't attend to, not the least of which is finding a reporter who is at the top of his game and worthy of front-page play. Staff Writer John Brennan isn't that reporter, as he's shown so many times in the past, and as he demonstrates today with his clunky story on long-suffering Jets fans finally coming home to a venue with the team's name on it. 


Look at this veteran reporter's pedestrian lead paragraph, where he compares the fans to tenants in a building. Instead of hooking readers, this lead sends them packing. It doesn't even make sense:

"Jets fans have never been the primary tenant in any building where they've played in their 50-year history."

It's the team -- not the fans -- who are the so-called tenants. Who does "they've played" refer to? Fans don't play, the team does. This Brennan buffoon is referred to as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in his new sports business blog. What a smear on the Pulitzer Prizes. This guy gets the Palooka Prize.
 
The rest of his story is mostly one cliche after another, including, "The rain didn't seem to dampen [a fan's] mood." Try as he might, Brennan can't capture the excitement of the event. And the A-1 photo tells readers what he withholds: This preseason game was far from a sell-out.

It's one thing to obsessively talk up your stories in the newsroom, as Brennan does, but if you're going to fall for his bullshit, as Scandale does, at least have some great backup editing. None is evident here.


Scandale was castrated by head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes -- a lifer who has survived attempts to get her out of the way -- and later by Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who made wholesale changes in editorial coverage, while repudiating Scandale's coverage of 20-year-olds. All the editor has got left is the front page, and what a mess he is making of it.

 But I guess readers should be thankful for some real news on A-1 today. New Jersey political leaders deserve praise for trying to de-politicize the debate over the Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero, but Governor Christie's steamroller hasn't reformed the state's many authorities, boards and commissions. 

The lead story in Local is Teaneck officials' proposal to combine Police and Fire Departments, with a projected savings of $250,000. Why didn't Sykes ask the Hackensack and Englewood reporters to get reaction from officials in their cities, which also have professional fire departments and are similar to Teaneck demographically?

Of course, there is no municipal news of Englewood or Hackensack today, but you'll find an expanded obituary on Gene Hacker, the camera shop owner (L-6). Road Warrior John Cichowski squanders another column today, this one on roadside litter, as he ignores his mission of writing about the woes of commuters once again.

Reporters who won't go quietly

A 1996 Ford Explorer SUV like the one involved in a horrific accident on Route 80 (photo from Wikipedia).

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

They are the editors and reporters who seem like they have been around forever, and whose contributions to the newspaper -- in quantity or quality -- are in inverse proportion to their long years of service. 

Some of them are so obscure, they escaped Publisher Stephen A. Borg's rampage through The Record newsroom after he took over in mid-2006.

Borg folded every features section except Travel, giving klutzy Jill Schensul tenure in the editor's job. 

Not far away, fair-weather columnist Ray Edel survived the culling, as did Charles Saydah, editor of letters to the editor, who hid out in a back office except when taking his midday jog, leaving his pages filled with typos and inaccurate headings.


But others are far more visible, and command much higher salaries. 

Today, the centerpiece on Page 1 of the Woodland Park paper is by Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, who racks up what is believed to be only her second byline of the year with yet another story about quirky Teterboro. Are we to believe this piece took her months to report and write?

On the Local front, Columnist Mike Kelly has another laughable column. When I was still a news copy editor, his stuff was so bad, copy editors had to be ordered to edit it and write a headline.

John Cichowski, the Road Warrior columnist, has a workload few columnists can manage. He has to turn out three commuting columns a week, and his nonsense tells you he long ago ran out of ideas and should be getting out of the office more often to ride and rate mass transit, which he seems to abhor.

Editor Frank Scandale

Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale got rid of several hard-working, productive veterans, including Columnists Miguel Perez and Lawrence Aaron, the only Hispanic and black columnists, respectively; and Elaine D'Aurizio, at the time the only woman writing a column outside Sports. 

Young Borg moved against others for no apparent reason, most notably Assistant Managing Editor/Photography Rich Gigli and Joanne Hoerr, supervisor of news clerks.


But Rimbach, Kelly and Cichowski are three do-nothing reporters who won't go quietly or otherwise, likely because they are protected by editors, including head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes. Are Sykes and Rimbach friends, and is that why the editor is pampering the least productive reporter on a staff of about 50?

Is anybody assessing the quality of Kelly's and Cichowski's columns? Today, Kelly pushes around hundreds of words about bears, but does he add anything to the debate over an issue that affects a minority of the paper's readership? 

For years, he has merely rehashed old news, too timid to go out on a limb with his own opinions, hence all the rhetorical questions he asks in his columns. 

Cichowski's Sunday column was about keep right/pass left laws -- just another obscure debate among drivers that he grabs onto in desperation. At least we should be grateful he isn't doing another column on potholes or license-plate tags for teenage drivers. 

Teterboro on A-1


Rimbach's splashy A-1 story today portrays Teterboro as a bastion of nepotism and a tax haven for industry, but didn't we know that already from several stories that ran recently in reaction to a legislative proposal to break up the borough?  She doesn't even assess if town officials are in their  right minds for insisting on living near the incredibly noisy airport.


A far more engaging front-page piece today would have been Sachi Fujimori's well-written story on Closter farms, free vegetables for residents and an honor system for buying brown eggs (Better Living front). Charming.

Five days after the paper hailed Sheriff Jerry Speziale in Passaic County as a jet-set celebrity, a story at the bottom of A-1 today reveals a darker side to the free-spending lawman: 

Lawsuits alleging cronyism, neglect and worse at the county jail. Another mixed message from a staff that struggles to handle breaking news.

In Local, there is no Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood news, or anything from many other towns. 

On the front, a horrific Route 80 accident (story and photo) occurred near the exit for the Garret Mountain Plaza building where the paper has its newsroom. 

More savvy editors would have said whether the 1996 Ford Explorer involved in Sunday's fatality was one of those recalled for its allegedly defective Firestone tires.


Inside, Monsy Alvarado's follow-up to Saturday's head-on collision in Englewood fails to mention that the Bergen County cop's car crossed the double-yellow line, an important detail also missing from the original coverage by three reporters.

Readers are scratching their heads

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If part of Grand Avenue in Englewood is one way and another section carries two-way traffic,  readers need to know that right away, especially if you cover much of the front page with a big photo showing a collision between a bus and a cop car. Instead, with this story and others today, The Record of Woodland Park leaves many scratching their heads.

Well, you can search the A-1 caption and read the story and caption on L-1, and unless you are familiar with Englewood, it's all very confusing, as the former Hackensack daily bobbles yet another routine story, leaving readers to fill in the blanks for themselves. 

Here's what the three reporters who worked on this epic tale don't tell you. The Bergen County police officer's car crossed over the double-yellow line before the collision in front of Sonny's Pizzeria -- on the two-way stretch of Grand Avenue south of Route 4. North of Route 4, Grand Avenue is one way until Palisade Avenue, where it becomes Engle Street. 

The A-1 photo shows the police car straddling the double-yellow line and angled toward the front of the Red & Tan bus, but the story never addresses that. Was the cop on his cell phone or was there a mechanical failure in the Ford Crown Victoria, which many police departments continue to use despite safety problems and fatal crashes involving officers? Did the officer have a seizure or other health problem? Your guess is as good as mine.

Yet the story contains a lot of unnecessary information, such as interviews that reveal "it is not uncommon to see police pursue vehicles on Grand Avenue." Huh? The officer in the collision wasn't involved in a chase, his superior told the paper. And one of the reporters uses a quote on a save-get key: "It sounded like a bomb." Where are the weekend assignment editor and the news copy desk on a story this bad?


If the officer was at fault, it's the second black mark against county police, who reportedly shot at burglary suspects during a chase the other day. The county prosecutor is investigating the gunfire. But with nearly 70 police departments in the county, why do we need this county force?

Back on A-1, Staff Writer Michael Gartland continues his excellent work covering Bergen County government with an expose of the huge debt rolled up by the county Improvement Authority. But below the fold, two Business reporters bore us with a long story about a builder of multimillion dollar homes who foundered during the recession, and who owes creditors $11 million.

Does anyone feel sorry for this man, who was at the center of artificially inflating the values of homes that frustrated many first-time home buyers? And is it really fair to readers to portray greedy investors -- who gave him money to help build these monstrosities in hope of a big profit -- as victims? Why is this story on A-1?

In the A-section, Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax has a story about the township's Muslim mayor visiting the White House, but there is no Hackensack or Englewood municipal news in the paper, or news of many other towns. 

The L-1 story on "green" burials is fascinating, but it makes no mention that Orthodox Jews and other groups have been burying their dead in this fashion for eons.

 If it wasn't for Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais, the paper would have little consumer reporting. Today, on the Business front, he tackles the hidden fees that are so difficult to learn about when you're trying to compare airline fares. 

Of course, the real question is why this issue hasn't been covered extensively in the Travel section, where klutzy Editor Jill Schensul today celebrates hugely wasteful and polluting RVs.


The Borgs can rest easy tonight, knowing Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and their minions are doing such a great job.

(Photo: The infamous Ford Crown Victoria police interceptor.)

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.)

Police news becomes major news

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Putting down the phone and rising from her seat, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes can't contain her glee and tries to jump off the ground as she shouts across the newsroom: "We've got our [Local news section] front, we've got our front!" Though her talent for levitation is well-known, leaving the ground in a jump for joy continues to elude her: Her arms swing up, but nothing else follows.
 

"Tariq got a shot of a geezer on a stretcher after fleeing burglars ran their SUV into some old people's car in Maywood. We'll blow it up and use it on the front," Sykes shrieks as her laughter echoes across the Woodland Park newsroom. "We really didn't have anything else. Aren't we lucky?"

Her luck is the readers' misfortune today. The Record is dominated by police news on the front page, more police news on the Local front and court, cop and crime stories throughout, in Sykes' and Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale's best imitation of a tabloid.

(Cliffview Pilot.com reported Bergen County police were shooting at the burglary suspects during the chase -- an important element of the story missing in The Record.)
 
Sykes, the Mother Hen to the local reporting staff, didn't have any Hackensack news from Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado, who filed a short story on a disgruntled real estate agent who tried to set Weichert offices on fire. She didn't have any Teaneck news from Staff Writer Joseph Ax, either. In fact, she didn't have stories from most of the towns in Bergen County.

Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano, on the other hand, is on a roll. Today, she has two more stories about Englewood (L-1 and L-5). She also had two stories Thursday (one about the Cliffs), and one story Tuesday (previewing an Englewood meeting she would cover for Thursday's paper). 

One of today's stories reports Englewood officials still feel converting an old school into a community center would be too expensive. They said the same thing about another old school a few years ago. Both buildings are in a predominantly black neighborhood. Fabiano, of course, hasn't  asked officials whether their decision would be different if the community center was on the other side of the tracks. Why should she? She's never written about the segregated elementary and middle schools, either.

At least Fabiano reported passage of Englewood's budget and the city's new tax rate -- more than Alvarado did. Hackesnack residents were hit with a tax hike twice that of Englewood's (7% v. 2.9%), but they had to read a weekly paper to find out.


The rest of Local is filled with more cop news, news about cops, a jury verdict, testimony in a blogger's third federal trial and blah, blah, blah. Very informative, as always.

After nearly seven years in the guise of the Road Warrior, Columnist John Cichowski sees his mission as crafting a nice story -- not fighting for mass-transit commuters. He expresses no outrage whatsoever over the three-year-plus delay in completing a footbridge linking light rail to ferry. He doesn't even bother calling a selfish property company for an explanation of why it didn't grant an easement. 

Page 1 today is dominated by the arrest of a baseball player, thanks to Scandale's sports obsession. The Daily News supplied the story, to the relief of The Record's staff, which started the weekend early. 

In Better Living, former Food Editor Bill Pitcher left behind a three-star review of Rosemary & Sage in far-off Riverdale, and the lead paragraph shows how meat-obsessed he is. A caption describes a dish with "organic" salmon, though that word doesn't appear in the review. There are no organic standards for fish; it's either wild or farmed.

Squelching reporters' instincts

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Under Editors Frank "Castrato" Scandale and Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, The Record of Woodland Park has become the kind of newspaper that waits for the news to arrive in neat packages, while pursuing ruinously expensive investigations that become mired in the editors' own laziness and incompetence.

Rather than ask reporters to do legwork, the clueless assignment desk sends them out to cover meetings, accidents and fires. They're never instructed to talk to residents of their town or even drive around and see what's new. Have you ever read a "Talk of The Town" from any of the 90 or so communities in the paper's circulation area?

Clerks deliver an endless stream of news releases, reports and studies that flow into the newsroom over fax machines, and these form the basis of many stories. Transportation reporters, for example, are loathe to ride and rate mass transit.

State, national and international wire service news fills the paper, but local aspects of those stories are ignored or covered routinely.

Look at today's dull front page. The sputtering economy is downplayed -- pushed down to the bottom of A-1, while high pay for special-ed CEOs leads the paper.

There's plenty of evidence the economic recovery has slowed in North Jersey, but local reporters take little notice, if they even visit the towns they are supposed to cover. Hundreds of new, unsold Toyotas have been lined up for weeks in a field behind a Hackensack dealer just a few blocks from the paper's old headquarters at 150 River St. The number of vacant storefronts or buildings continues to grow in business districts of Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other towns.

The Record has been running stories and columns about protests over planned Islamic cultural centers and mosques in Manhattan and across the country. But have Hackensack and Teaneck readers seen any stories about the growing Muslim populations in their towns? Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado was alerted about the opening of an Islamic cultural center (and possibly, a mosque) off Hudson Street in Hackensack a few years ago, but she simply ignored it.

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, a reporter did a feature about Teaneck's new Muslim mayor and its Jewish deputy mayor, in a town with a large number of African-American and Orthodox Jewish residents. Sure, there was coverage of the mayor's selection by Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax, but it was handled routinely. 

Today's front page is dominated by a photo of Muslims in a Paterson mosque observing the start of Ramadan, but the story is crammed into L-3, in a Local section without any Hackensack or Teaneck municipal news. Greenwood Lake boaters get better coverage than Hackensack.

Giovanna Fabiano, the Englewood reporter, has two stories (L-1 and L-2) -- both from council meetings she covered Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

But when Englewood restaurateur Michel Bittan made headlines worldwide for having a relationship with one of those North Jersey-based Russian spies, Fabiano couldn't even get a comment from him and didn't pursue leads on his property holdings and influence in Englewood's struggling business district. 

Page L-3 also carries a column by Mike Kelly, who rehashes Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa's bid for the police union to pay his legal fees. He pushes around hundreds of words to recap Alvarado's stories, but is there anything new here? Why did this mouse of a journalist write this column, to fill space?

It has long been obvious to everyone except Scandale and Sykes that Kelly is completely useless as a columnist, but who did Scandale fire? It was Lawrence Aaron, the paper's only black columnist. Kelly's assignment editor appears to do only a spell check.

After Wednesday's Page 1 lead for Passaic County Sheriff Jerry "Inspector Clouseau" Speziale's unexpected departure for a much higher-paying police post -- two stories and a column -- an editorial today (A-18) puts in perspective the lousy job he has been doing running the office, and urges freeholders to take action. What a mixed message.

Maxell Corp. of America moved employees into the same Garret Mountain office complex in Woodland Park where North Jersey Media Group and its two daily newspapers have their headquarters. But is that any reason to run a story about Maxell across the top of L-9 today?

Better Living's Mike Kerwick apparently couldn't find any first-place barbecue competition winners, so the section cover today has a story on three also-rans from Bergen County who have won "trophies." 

Ex-Food Editor Bill Pitcher defended


Don't miss the comments on Monday's post, Bill Pitcher gets down with readers, including an anonymous one from someone who appears to be an insider. He or she also has some disquieting words about NJMG's employee-retirement fund.


Just click on the word "comments" at the end of that post.

Take this job and shove it

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Road rage and air rage on the same front page. What a neat package The Record of Woodland Park presents today. 

But I'll bet there are subliminal messages here from the sub-editors who have to work under the suffocating leadership of Frank "Castrato" Scandale and micromanaging head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes. Take this job and shove it.

How many times did I hear an editor in the Hackensack newsroom muttering under his breath that he'd like to run down Sykes in the parking lot, as barely 10 feet or 15 feet away, she shrieked with laughter, oblivious that she might be disturbing others. Her computer carried a name tag, "Deirdre 'Laughs A Lot' Sykes," as if anyone working there needed an explanation.


Scandale lords over the front page, running sports and the so-called business of sports in place of real news. He also loved to tell the news copy desk how to write headlines, though his own column writing was pedestrian and full of cliches. He'd even ban certain words from A-1 captions or headlines.

Scandale also liked to stifle challenges to story content, accuracy or completeness from the copy desk. At one point, he even forbid copy editors from calling reporters at home with questions. Coincidentally, four corrections and a clarification appear on A-2 today.


There's real North Jersey news below the fold today as the impact of Governor Christie's education budget cuts become more apparent. Staff Writer Leslie Brody reports 80% of school districts will have fewer teachers.


The Local news section is a disappointment for another day. The Englewood and Hackensack reporters both have stories about the police on L-1 and L-3, respectively. There are no stories about Teaneck. For Giovanna Fabiano, this is her first Englewood story since July 24. I hope she had a restful vacation.

For Monsy Alvarado, this is her fourth story on Hackensack cops in five days. On Aug. 5, she wrote nearly a full column to say a lieutenant's hearing may be delayed, because of legal maneuvering, and today, her story reports that, indeed, the hearing has been put off. 

It could have been a brief, but Sykes and Alvarado love to give the finger to Hackensack readers. Next, they'll be mooning residents of the city where the paper was founded and prospered for more than 110 years, before Publisher Stephen A. Borg precipitated an identity crisis by abandoning 150 River St. headquarters.


Staff Writer Shawn Boburg's byline has started appearing again, meaning he is back covering his towns, after months of being banished to investigative hell by Sykes, along with Alvarado and Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, who averages one byline a year.

We give you The Passaic Record

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When there was more than one edition of The Record of Woodland Park, Bergen County residents might think a paper with a lot of Passaic news -- like today's -- was delivered to them by mistake. But today's Passaic-centric edition is no mistake. With the local Bergen editors off in La-La Land, this single edition is all the desperate weekend staff could come up with.

For those subscribers who still call the paper The Bergen Record, here is The Passaic Record.


The front page needs not one but two filler wire-service stories to supplement the main North Jersey element -- more on DuPont pollution in Pompton Lakes (map). One of them, a doomsday AP piece on Social Security payouts and revenue during the recession, omits any information about the system's huge reserves. No attempt was made to localize either wire story.

The Pompton Lake clean-up story appears to be of wide interest -- this lake serves as backup to reservoirs that supply drinking water to many North Jersey towns-- but the focus is on technical aspects of removing soil. My eyes glazed over. Could this story get any more boring? 

At the same time, the reporter never answers the question of whether mercury has tainted drinking water in those reservoirs.

It's bad enough North Jersey Media Group and other companies stampeded hundreds of thousands of workers into early retiement, but why is its flagship paper leading today's edition with a Social Security story that amounts to a fraud? Reserves of $2.5 trillion -- that's right, trillion -- plus payroll taxes are expected to cover full payment of benefits for 33 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The front of Local is filled with more Passaic County news -- from Wayne, Clifton, and Woodland Park. Inside, you won't find any news of Hackensack, Teaneck or the 'Woods (Englewood, Westwood, Wood-Ridge and Ridgewood), but you will find a story from Ringwood.

Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale lives in Glen Rock and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes lives in Harrington Park. You'd think they could get more Bergen County news into the paper, wouldn't you?

On days like this, the Passaic County bias is so blatant, it must have to do with more than the move of NJMG and The Record newsroom to Woodland Park, and the move of daily newspaper printing to Rockaway Township.


Just about the only Bergen thing left at the old Bergen Record is Old Man Borg slowly walking the empty hallways of the former headquarters at 150 River St., Hackensack. He's probably muttering to himself, What the f--- did my two spoiled brats do to my beloved paper?

I'd like to take a baseball bat and ...

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I guess it will take the fat end of a baseball bat shoved up Editor Frank Scandale's you-know-what before the "Castrato" stops wasting readers' time by covering Page 1 of  The Record of Woodland Park with the exploits of overpaid baseball players, such as today's big color photo of pumped-up Yankee Alex Rodriguez. 


Given the state's fiscal mess, outrageous property taxes, a broken home-rule system and numerous other concerns, you'd think there is plenty of other news worthy of A-1. But Scandale, who was castrated by Publisher Stephen A. Borg's almost total revamp of news and feature coverage, continues to lord over the front page and give priority to the interests of a minority of his North Jersey readers.


Many of the other stories in today's paper raised questions that were never answered, on A-1 or elsewhere. For example, why is no wealthy New Jersey resident among those answering Warren Buffett's call to pledge half their wealth to charity? Why didn't the Borgs respond?


I wanted to know a lot more about what looks like the meaningless death of a 21-year Glen Rock woman, who witnesses said walked head-on into a moving NJ Transit train with her head down, and why the Ramsey station didn't have better safety measures. The L-1 story says the woman raised money for a suicide-prevention group, but doesn't explore the possibility she committed suicide.


Of course, if the train fatality was played on A-1, as it deserves to be instead of baseball, then head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes wouldn't have anything to put on the front of her pathetic Local section, which has had only one Englewood story since July 15.


Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado follows Wednesday's confusing story on school board re-votes with a deadly dull piece today on legal maneuvering in the disciplinary hearing of a police lieutenant, yet writes almost an entire column to say the hearing may be postponed. She has yet to write about the city budget, tax hike or new mayor. Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax has another story about that endangered giant oak tree.


Reporters love press tours, such as the one the Port Authority gave Wednesday to publicize a 75-year-old aviation warning beacon atop a tower of the George Washington Bridge (the L-2 story doesn't say which tower). The clueless assignment desk sent Tom Davis and a photographer out, but has never nagged the transportation reporter to ride on and write about the decrepit NJ Transit buses that creak and moan along local routes.

Can you make any sense of the A-16 editorial that seems to be calling for reform of the home-rule system of municipal government? There is so much in here about raw sewage, maybe the editorial is just more timid bullshit from Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin. 


A second letter to the editor says the entrance to the new Overpeck Park is hard to find, and, like the first, the paper simply prints Paramus resident Richard Conroy's complaint today, but fails to indicate how to get there (try Challenger Boulevard in Ridgefield Park.)

On the front of Better Living, that long piece about the best lobster roll in New York City would have been more useful to readers if Food Editor Bill Pitcher or one of Feature Director Barbara Jaeger's young staffers weighed in on  North Jersey options. Hint: CIA-trained Chef Christine Nunn offers two lobster rolls, with slaw and fries, for $30 at Picnic, the Restaurant, in Fair Lawn.

Belated recognition of the victims

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Why is the story on victims of the recession pushed down to the bottom of Page 1 in The Record today, while two stories with the excitement of paint drying lead the Woodland Park daily? College degrees taking longer? Boring. Update on the stalled Xanadu project. Still in talks. How tedious.

Don't go looking for local news from the core Bergen towns of Teaneck, Englewood and Hackensack -- unless you want to read Columnist Mike Kelly's pathetic effort on a family of three displaced by the Prospect Avenue parking-garage collapse July 16. It apparently took him a couple of weeks to find the Gigantes and chronicle their "ordeal," but this drivel wasn't worth waiting for.


It's no surprise that, with all the unemployment and foreclosures, more people are calling hospitals, clinics and suicide hot lines (A-1), but why have we read so little about them in The Record? Can you remember more than a few articles in the past two years or so focusing on victims of companies like North Jersey Media Group?

Maybe that's why Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes haven't commissioned more of these stories. Readers might start to speculate about what is behind fundamental changes in their hometown newspaper -- from fewer sections to a precipitous drop in local news to sloppy copy editing. 

The paper has never fully disclosed how many veteran employees NJMG discarded after Publisher Stephen A. Borg snatched a $3.65 million company mortgage to buy an 8,000-square-foot home in Tenafly, replacing his smaller, $2 million mansion, also bought with a company mortgage. (Attorneys representing the company even withheld complete information on who was fired and who was hired in my recent age-discrimination lawsuit.)


Take a look at this Kelly column on L-1. The headline is, "Life's less free after garage collapse."  In fact, it's Kelly who has "collapsed" from the exhaustion of making something from nothing -- a pattern he has exhibited for many years.


He writes endlessly about a woman in a motorized wheelchair who once used Prospect Avenue sidewalks to reach Starbucks in Hackensack for a morning latte, but cannot go for a latte now because she is living in Route 17 hotel.  "Lisa Gigante's ordeal surely ranks among the worst." Really? This is journalism? Kelly never says why her husband can't drive her to a coffee shop.

On L-2, a proposed state police takeover of Palisades Interstate Parkway police was reported more than a month ago on Cliffview Pilot.com. A police brief on the same page -- "Special unit probes gunfire" -- omits the town.

One town gets special treatment

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With the seeming regularity of the seasons, The Record of Woodland Park takes the pulse of Ridgewood's bustling downtown (photo), while virtually ignoring the increasing number of empty storefronts on Hackensack's Main Street after the newspaper moved out of the city where it prospered for more than 110 years.


A new rewards card designed to lure shoppers to Ridgewood is explored in a long story with photos on the front of the Local news section today -- at least the fourth major story about the village's downtown in the last two years. Meanwhile, the decline of news from Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood is apparent again today, and those struggling downtowns haven't been featured in the paper in many years.


Ridgewood has gotten even more special attention, because of a well-organized group of wealthy residents opposed to expansion of The Valley Hospital. In the past two years, those stories have been numerous and repetitive. The paper never made as much fuss over several expansions of Hackensack University Medical Center, some of which required the demolition of homes. In Ridgewood, the hospital is expanding on its own land.


Hackensack's downtown is beginning to slide back to what it was like in 2005, with many empty storefronts and the homeless roaming Main Street. A new county shelter seems to have removed the homeless, but in the last six months, at least three food businesses have closed, and other storefronts remain vacant.

The Ridgewood coverage often took its cue from protesters, although the paper, eager for increased hospital ad revenue, endorsed the expansion plan. But when former Managing Editor Jim Ahearn erred in his column on the proposed height of the new hospital buildings, the corrections ran on A-2 as well as on the opinion pages -- the first time I have ever seen that.


The Record has never reported how its move out of Hackensack, along with parent company North Jersey Media Group, has changed River City, where it was founded in 1895. Hundreds of printers and other employees were scattered to the winds by Publisher Stephen A. Borg, and others were downsized -- apparently motivated by Borg's desire to make a killing on the sale of 150 River Street and nearly 20 acres of surrounding land, a windfall he has been denied so far, leaving his father Mac as a ghostly presence in the building.

Why does Ridgewood get so much attention? Is it the enterprise of Staff Writer Evonne Coutros, who is assigned to the village, compared with other local reporters, who seem to wait for direction from their clueless assignment editors? Or is it the desperate need for local news copy as the staff's overall productivity has plummeted under the coddling of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who clucks over her reporters like a Mother Hen?

Or is it a conscious decision by the editors and their absentee bosses -- the Borgs -- to cover people like themselves -- a mostly white, upscale audience found in the Ridgewoods of North Jersey and not in the Bergen towns with significant minority populations?

Also in Local, a rare story on people with Alzheimer's disease who wander away appears on L-3. For every Alzheimer's story the youth-oriented editors run, it seems, there are 10 stories on autism. Just another example of what a great job Sykes and Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale are doing. 


Today's front page is solidly New Jersey, and includes a patch story on a poor schmuck from Saddle Brook whose health insurance is so hellish, he has been trapped in a hospital for three years. But the editors must have really been desperate if they led the paper with possible privatization of roadside-service patrols on non-toll highways.

This paper is filled with hot air

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 Saturday, July 24, 2010

The over line for the pretty color photo that anchors Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park today -- HOT AIR EVERYWHERE, NOT JUST INSIDE BALLOONS -- must be an inside joke from the news copy editors on Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale. It's a clear reference to such blowhard columnists as Mike Kelly, John Cichowski, Bill Ervolino and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin.


There's a lot of political corruption news on A-1 and inside today. If ex-Democratic boss Joseph Ferriero's conviction is set aside and he is tried again, you can be sure he will continue to pay exorbitant legal fees, raising an issue that is rarely addressed by the newspaper -- access to the courts.


An editorial on A-11 today bemoans Governor Christie's budget cuts, which will deny legal services to thousands of low-income state residents. The editorial makes no mention of how much pro bono, or free, work is done by New Jersey lawyers, but it is probably not worth mentioning. Still, reporters assigned to courthouses seem intent on hiding legal fees, which can bar access to the courts for middle-class residents, too. Their stories on multimillion dollar jury awards or settlements routinely ignore how the lawyers involved can collect up to a third of that money, in addition to any fees.

In Local, a story on L-2 reports Englewood teachers have a new contract -- after two years of negotiations and protests. Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano doesn't mention if teachers will get extra pay for working in a segregated system. 


There is no Teaneck news, but L-1 carries a story by Nick Clunn on rent concessions and other arrangements for those evicted from the Prospect Avenue high-rise in Hackensack, where the parking garage collapsed. Apparently, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado must have been exhausted from having to work on the story for a solid week -- in contrast to how little she has written in the last few years -- and is getting much needed rest, probably under orders from head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes.


It's a good thing the photographers were busy Friday to provide filler for the space left empty by loafing assignment editors and reporters. Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi has not one, not two, but three traffic-accident photos with text (L-2, L-3 and L-6) -- two of them overturned vehicles, his specialty.

(Photo: Woodland Park, Colorado.)

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.)