Minnesota? Texas? Florida? Montreal?

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Has a new reporter been assigned to cover Teaneck?

At the afternoon news meeting Tuesday, Editor Francis Scandale asked to see the first few paragraphs of the local reaction story to the Rep. Anthony Weiner sexting and photo-eroticism scandal.

Editor Deirdre Sykes, who runs the assignment desk, replied, What scandal?

So, on Page 1 of The Record today, an Associated Press story reports Weiner confession reaction from Minnesota, Texas and other states -- even Canada -- but nothing from Montvale, Teaneck, Clifton or anyplace else in North Jersey.

Here's the explanation: With an eye on the heat index, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza sent out a memo to all the local reporters to stay inside because of Tuesday's near-90 degree temperatures.

Staff Writer Jean Rimbach and other reporters replied, asking Sforza how his advice on Tuesday was any different than his usual, do-nothing recommendation.

Global harming

Editors, reporters and headline writers did their best to control the damage from today's lead Page 1 story on Governor Christie ordering another major cut in state environmental goals.

The headlines don't even come close to telling the story, and the upbeat lead paragraph doesn't hint at the storm clouds on the horizon.

More jock itch

A photo of professional football players practicing at Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell? Front-page news or more desperation from Scandale, whose brain is in his jock strap?

Remembering Teaneck

A Teaneck story at the bottom of L-1 today carries the byline of Staff Writer Andrea Alexander. Is she the replacement for Joseph Ax, whose last story about the township appeared on May 4?

Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado wrote six stories about the city between May 21 and June 3, but missed a contentious Board of Education meeting Tuesday night, when more than 100 angry parents showed up.

Where was Alvarado? Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes assigned her to cover the hugely important primary elections on Tuesday.

Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano left the paper, so the last non-police story about the city appeared on May 9. 

Taking a break

Eye on The Record will return in several days. 

Please send me your assessment of the paper, editors, columnists, reporters and the Borg family. I'll try to publish all of them.

Or you could read the most popular posts, listed at the right, and the comments they elicited. That's always entertaining.

It's a democracy everywhere but here

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Leonia is virtually ignored by The Record's Local section.

Isn't it rich?

The off-lead story in The Record of Woodland Park today says Ramsey might ban free speech "on school property when children are present" (A-1).

Free speech has been banned in the newsroom for ages, and editors reminded reporters, "This isn't a democracy."

In recent years, Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg has rushed into court to defend the paper's First Amendment rights, then turned around and disciplined whistle-blowers and other employees who spoke their minds. 

Page A-2 today has four embarrassing corrections, including one that fixes a Page 1 story from May 17. 

Politically obsessed

On the front of Local, why does Columnist Charles Stile portray the attempt to restore $7.4 million to Planned Parenthood clinics as a battle between Democrats and Republicans?

Isn't he enough of a journalist and columnist to declare Governor Christie "insensitive to women," without reference to politics?

Now that Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax left the paper, township resident and local-obit reporter Jay Levin is picking up the slack with a story on the community vegetable garden (L-1). 

Who is picking up the slack in Englewood, Englewood Cliffs and Leonia now that Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano has left?

See previous post on AOL Patch

'Grateful' editors seek news handouts

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AOL offices in Palo Alto, Calif.

 

Giovanna Fabiano, who did such an awful job covering Englewood, Englewood Cliffs and Leonia for The Record, is the latest staffer to jump ship for the online local-news site called Patch.

 

Fabiano follows in the footsteps of former reporter Tom Davis and the gorilla steps of former Night Editor Tom Troncone in joining the AOL-financed effort. 

 

Troncone was dubbed the night editor for the numerous times he would say, "Good night."

 

You have to wonder why they would leave the Woodland Park daily for this ify news operation -- unless they just got sick and tired of working for, with or under Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes, and their clueless sub-editors.

 

Now, they've got their hands out looking for tips. I found this on the Ridgewood Patch site:

"Send us a news tip

"Enter your tip here and it will be sent straight to James Kleimann, Tom Troncone, Giovanna Fabiano, and Laura Bertocci, Ridgewood Patch's (incredibly grateful) editors."

Patch editors work from home. Can't you just see Troncone getting fat on beer and preservative-laden bratwurst?

Judging from how many stories she ignored or missed in Englewood, Fabiano must have spent the last few years working from home while on The Record's payroll.

Actually, the Woodland Park daily is good training for Patch aspirants. The assignment editors under Sykes honed the art of sitting back and waiting for the news to come to them.

Was Bin Laden behind Xanadu debacle?

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Jennifer A. Borg and The Borg Queen may have been separated at birth.

According to The Record's front page today, the U.S. military had a better chance of finding and killing Osama bin Laden a week ago (55-45) than developer Triple Five has to succeed with American Dream Meadowlands (50-50), the revived Xanadu retail-entertainment complex.

But clueless Staff Writer John Brennan makes readers wait until the eighth paragraph -- on A-6, the jump page -- before delivering on the headline and quoting a single "expert." All the text on the front is tedious background. 

Brennan even quotes one of Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg's closest friends, Jon F. Hanson, an adviser to Governor Christie, who is trying to destroy the middle-class way of life in New Jersey.

Hanson shares ownership of a private jet with Borg.

Money in the bank

The greatly expanded American Dream project will be a huge hit -- an instant tourist attraction -- and the owners will be laughing all the way to the bank with their profits and hundreds of millions in tax breaks from Christie, who didn't even ask them to pay for road and mass-transit improvements to handle the expected crush of visitors. 

Before Xanadu went south, Bin Laden had planned to retire to North Jersey and open a travel agency for al-Qaida members in the huge shopping center.

Attacking Paterson

Two months after protesters took to the streets in Syria, it finally dawned on Editor Francis Scandale that Paterson -- which he's portrayed as a center of drugs and prostitution -- has a large, prosperous Syrian-American community. 

The result is a long overdue, local reaction story as the off-lead on A-1 today.

At the bottom of A-1, Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano finally gets around to writing about the segregated public schools in Englewood, a community she has supposedly covered for about three years. 

We love cars

The fourth element on Page 1 today shows the Woodland Park daily writes about mass transit only when a train or bus breaks down or crashes (A-1 and A-3).

Two major stories on the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section are glorified construction updates, and there's a third infrastructure story on L-6.

Taking care of business

Publisher Stephen A. Borg and his big sister, Vice President Jennifer A. Borg, likely ordered the story on the Court Street Bridge project in Hackensack (L-1), because completion of the span will greatly increase the value of the old headquarters at 150 River St. and all that Borg-owned land near it. 

Hackensack and Teaneck municipal news ? Check back tomorrow, next week or next month.

Selfish editor makes front page his own

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The Supreme Court convenes in the Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex, Trenton. Did Governor Christie dump the only black justice because he anticipated a battle over his deep education cuts?

Is it just a coincidence the so-called New Jersey stories on the front page today involve Glen Rock, where Editor Francis Scandale lives, and Colorado, where he lived before coming to The Record of Woodland Park?

Is the sixth story about Glen Rock's sister-city relationship with Onomachi, Japan, really Page 1 news? Readers still haven't seen any photos of the Japanese city.

Dissing Japan

Staff Writer Evonne Coutros looks down her Grecian nose at the Japanese, quoting their e-mails and making sure to include all their broken English.

The jailhouse interview with a Colorado man acquitted of murdering his father shows how easily the inmate O.J.'d both Scandale and veteran courthouse reporter Kibret Markos, making them look like fools for wasting A-1 space on his claim the killer is still out there.

Legal strategy

With a battle brewing before the Supreme Court on Governor Christie's unconstitutional cuts in state education aid, Columnist Charles Stile should be investigating whether the Republic bully got rid of the high court's only black justice to better his chances of prevailing.

Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano's byline appears on an Englewood story for the first time in 12 days. 

Although she has ignored vacant downtown storefronts, the Jamaican community and the city's segregated schools, she made sure to cover a two-year battle over a private-school athletic field in Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg's East Hill neighborhood (L-3).

Publisher Stephen A. Borg attended the school, Dwight-Englewood, at a time when most of the students at the public Dwight Morrow High School were black and Hispanic.

Editor has head up his you-know-what

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The Record made sure to emphasize today that some Japanese aren't fluent in English.

Nearly a week after the devastating earthquake and tsunami, Editor Frank Scandale has discovered the town he's called home for more than a decade has a sister city "just 22 miles southwest" of the stricken nuclear plant, as readers learn today on the front page of The Record.

On an international story as big as the Japanese disasters, it's the job of every newspaper to localize the news. Besides a few interviews with Japanese residents of North Jersey and a story on a fund-raising bake sale in Tenafly, there has been woefully little of that in the Woodland Park daily in the past six days.

Reporters apparently can't find a map to Newark airport, so they haven't interviewed any Japanese residents flying home to locate missing loved ones, or they've been told by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes they won't be reimbursed for the trip to the big Japanese supermarket in Edgewater.

Confusing the reader

Today's Page 1 layout was so confusing, I found myself turning to A-12, the continuation page, only to find the story about Glen Rock and Onomachi began on A-1, below the fold and nearly six inches under a photo, caption and refer. 

And was it really necessary to reprint e-mails from Japan, complete with broken English? The reporter, Staff Writer Evonne Coutros, looks down her nose at the Japanese victims: "Fears and pleas for help pour from the messages, written in spotty English [my italics]." 

I mean, "fears"? Shouldn't that be "Fear and pleas for help..."? And I believe this error, this "spotty English," was made by a journalist who should know better.

Her clueless assignment editor probably instructed her to stress the errors in the e-mails from Japan so readers won't confuse them with all the mistakes, dropped words, bad grammar, poor writing and clunky headlines and captions that appear in the paper every day.

Two embarrassing corrections on A-2 today follow two even longer corrections on A-2 in Wednesday's paper. Today, the paper notes a story misidentified the mayor of tiny Northvale.

Coming out of a hole

An editorial on A-22 today calls for more shared services and declares the home-rule system of government is too expensive to maintain -- decades after every North Jersey homeowner realized the very same thing.

Eleven days after her last story about Englewood, Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano reports on L-3 today the city budget contains no tax hike.

Hackensack readers are still waiting for a story about their city budget and tax rate. Would someone please check the emergency rooms for Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado.

Scooped by a weekly

Alvarado got beaten again today by the weekly Hackensack Chronicle, which reported on northjersey.com that more police officers have filed lawsuits against higher-ups -- the 12th such suit since June 2009.

Readers of the Web site could have done without the juvenile and flawed comparison of the turmoil in Hackensack with the stabbing of Julius Caesar on the ides of March in 44 B.C.

Free advertising

Starters, described as "a first look at recently opened restaurants," really lays it on thick on the front of Better Living today, where a photo shows a lamb shank, presumably filled with harmful antibiotics and growth hormones (F-1).

Instead of being asked to discuss the quality of the meat she serves,  the owner of a Westwood restaurant is quoted as saying her hummus is "outrageous" -- a preposterous claim given all the great chickpea dip available in North Jersey.

Wednesday's edition

I was incredulous to read a Page 1 interview with the new chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey all the way to the end and not find a single mention of mass transit. 

That morning, a 20-mile trip by car during the rush hour took nearly an hour.

Staff Writer Shawn Boburg apparently has taken over the Port Authority beat from Tom Davis, who left the paper months ago. Boburg's career was sidetracked for nearly three years when he was assigned to the disastrous investigation of lawman Michael Mordaga.

Still, is this the kind of reporter who should be covering a transportation agency in a region choked by traffic congestion and where officials have never expressed any real commitment to mass transit?

Even the headline on the interview with Port Authority Chairman David Samson appears to be in error. If he is the "chief" of the agency, as the headline says, what is the executive director?

Life imitates blog

After satirizing the plight of a layout editor grateful that he was given a Charles Stile column for the front of Local on Tuesday -- instead of the Road Warrior's "15th column" on roof snow -- the very next day, John Cichowski published his umpteenth column on the law requiring the clearing of snow off vehicle roofs.

Hey, John. Get out of the office. It's almost spring.

'It's downhill from here'

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Compare reading The Record with the exhiliration of skiing.

It's downhill from here

That headline on the weather-skiing package on Page L-1 today could easily describe the state of local news in The Record of Woodland Park. 

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes gives readers quite a ride around North Jersey, but Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and other major communities are deemed not worth the municipal-news detour.

The arrest of a Clifton councilwoman on an assault charge is the off-lead on Page 1 today, but  Editor Francis Scandale still hasn't provided readers with a preview of cuts Governor Christie will reveal in his budget address today.

That pre-budget address story has been a mainstay in past years. Sunday's piece was long on conflict between Christie and the Democratic-controlled Legislature, and short on specifics. 

A Star-Ledger story on A-3 today reports the governor's staff refused to release details -- yet another sign of Christie's success in managing the news since he took office 13 months ago.

Three embarrassing corrections appear on A-2 today.

Travelogue of local news

On Sykes' Local front, you'll find stories from several towns, including West Milford, and inside, you can take your pick of police news on almost every page.

The section specializes in long stories previewing future events, such as an April referendum on how to fund a regional school district (L-1) and possible expansion of a school to accommodate preschool classes (L-3).

Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano and Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado manage to come up with a single story each -- the former reports a drug arrest from Saturday, the latter car break-ins in Maywood (L-2).

Alvarado hasn't had a single story on the budget process in Hackensack, a subject she completely ignored last year, although Fabiano and other municipal reporters have written about it in their towns in recent weeks.

 

More good P.R. for Christie

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Like the Talmud, The Record's coverage of Englewood has hidden meaning.

The Record continues to use its front page to promote Governor Christie's conservative agenda, without characterizing his policies for what they are: an unprecedented attack on the middle and working classes in New Jersey.

Editor Francis Scandale leads Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily with the Christie administration's proposal to revise teacher-tenure rules.

We love you, Big Guy

Below the fold on A-1, Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson continues his unabashed love affair with Christie.

He reports the governor "mixed trademark bravado and self-professed humility in a speech to a conservative think tank ... that further burnished his rising star-status in national politics," but denied he has any interest in running for president. 

On the continuation page, the reporter says, "The speech, full of self-deprecating jokes, played among the crowd of conservatives, many of them young people, and journalists, including some top Washington columnists."

 

You can't buy better public relations. I wonder if Jackson is pulling out all the verbal stops for Christie because he hopes to become part of any national campaign the Republican might launch in the future.

Christie says he isn't afraid politically to call for cuts in entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- a stance that reveals growing ageism in society.

It's a trend familiar to Publisher Stephen A. Borg, Scandale and other editors, who laid off mostly older workers in 2007-08.

Christie wants to cut New Jersey's Medicaid program. He's already cut property tax rebates, school lunches for low-income children and health care for low-income women, among other programs.

Stories such as this divert attention from Christie's refusal to generate more tax revenue from millionaires, including his wealthy supporters, or raise the low gasoline tax on their gas-guzzling limos and SUVs to repair roads and bridges and improve mass transit.

Narrow focus

Letters to the editor today scold The Record for its narrow focus on Orthodox Jews in stories about young athletes who can't compete on the Sabbath (A-12). Protestants and Catholics have similar conflicts, readers say.  

Divided city

In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, you see a similar bias in coverage by Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano, who breaks a long silence today with two municipal stories from her beat -- the first since Jan. 22. 

Fabiano has written  about the efforts of Orthodox Jewish residents to cut taxes, but not about the positions of other groups.

Today, she reports the City Council voted to name a park after an Orthodox Jewish doctor who lived in Englewood, but worked in New York City (L-3). He was killed by a hit-run driver as he returned home from a prayer service.  

At the same meeting, the longtime pastor of a black church who extended his ministry to the city's "poorest neighborhoods, as well as hospitals and prisons" before his death at 81 late last month, was honored in "a special resolution Tuesday night."

I guess city officials ran out of parks to rename.

Fabiano has a second story on budget deliberations in Englewood (L-3), but I have seen nothing similar from Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado, who also seems intent on ignoring the current re-assessment of homes throughout the city as real estate values fall. 

How does a paper get so boring?

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act in August 1935.

You have to give the page designer an A for effort, but if you actually try to read the front page of The Record today, it will put you to sleep.

The main element is the debate over the federal budget -- a "battle," in newspaper parlance -- and the Woodland Park daily's package of headlines, text and photos is certainly attractive, but it all boils down to the Democrats say this and the Republicans say that.

If you think the Associated Press is a weak wire service, check out the story at the bottom of Page 1 from McClatchy Newspapers, quoting "disappointed budget experts."  

This slanted piece of trash actually tries to make a case for cutting three of the greatest government programs in existence: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Editor Francis Scandale will do anything to create conflict, and make readers feel anxious.

There's even more about the federal budget on the continuation page (A-6): pie charts, graphs, more photos, more text. Are you still awake?

The headline on the lead A-1 story today sounds like it's about the bloated Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners, the constipated officials who were on the front page several times recently as Governor Christie gave them an enema:

Agency

workers

awash 

in perks

But this story is about another agency, the Passaic Valley Water Commission, which also pays  bloated salaries and overtime. My eyes are getting heavy. Given all the exposure of the sewerage agency, a better headline would have been, "Another agency awash in perks."

The third main story on the front page tries to sum up seven hours of testimony before a Superior Court judge on state education funding, an issue that is before the Supreme Court again. Less than riveting.

About the only interesting thing on the Editorial Page is Margulies' cartoon of Christie: "My Way or The Highway," riffing on the battle over highway toll revenue.

Sleepy Hollow

On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Columnist Charles Stile rehashes how Christie has taken on the state Supreme Court. At least in this column, Stile identifies former Associate Justice John Wallace as the court's only African-American member.

Under Sykes, how well residents are informed about events in their towns is in direct proportion to the enterprise of the assignment editors and the legwork of the reporters who cover those towns.

So you have a dynamo like Staff Writer Denisa R. Superville, who has three stories in the section today -- two of them on the front -- and then you have slugs like Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado and Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano, who seems to be writing about everything but the city she is supposed to cover.

Why this blast from the past?

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A cameraman focuses on a flower outside Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' office.

The 30th anniversary of the release of Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days? Covering more than one-third of the front page in The Record of Woodland Park? Are Editor Francis Scandale and Columnist Mike Kelly kidding? 

Kelly is inconsistent, but Staff Writer John Brennan is bad all the time, and today we have two stories about the Jets' Super Bowl playoff game in Pittsburgh -- one by him on the front and one by another reporter inside.

The move of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to rehab leads the paper, as it should, but readers must be wondering why they haven't seen any photos of her since the shootings in Tuscon, Ariz., two weeks ago.

'We goofed again'

Page A-2 brings two corrections, one from Better Living, which seems to get dates, telephone numbers and other basic information wrong almost every day. 

An L-1 headline on a lawsuit story by Jean Rimbach, one of the paper's investigative reporters, also was wrong Friday -- really wrong. 

The original headline says, "Papers sealed in suit alleging coverup by prosecutor," and to be fair to the news copy desk, the story mentions a prosecutor's office -- "apparently the one in Bergen County" -- a number of times, and includes the Bergen prosecutor's name. 

The correction says, "The headline should have said that the suit alleges a coverup by the investigator's bosses in the state criminal justice system," even though that isn't clear from the story. 

The reporter worked on this sensitive story how long -- weeks or months? Did  Sykes edit it before it was sent over to the copy desk for a headline, and did she order the desk not to alter a word or challenge any vagueness, as she has done so many times in the past?

The other remarkable thing about this correction is that it's one of the few errors acknowledged by the dysfunctional copy desk under Vinny Byrne and Liz Houlton.

The front page promoted Governor Christie's charter-school initiative three days in a row this week, but an editorial today deplores his systematic attack on public schools, including vouchers (A-13).

Sometimes reporter

Does anybody besides head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes take Lou Dobbs seriously as a congressional candidate? That 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH feature is "brought to you by" a German luxury car dealer whose ad appears above the fold on the Local front.


Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano has her first story about municipal affairs in 17 days today -- on a plan to cut the city budget by privatizing trash pickup and eliminating the volunteer ambulance corps. 

When is the last time Sykes' Local section had anything about budget deliberations in Hackensack by Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado?

Pie in our faces

Features Director Barbara Jaeger deserves a pie in her face for wasting readers' time on pies as "the latest hot food trend" (Better Living front).

Jaeger rolled over and played dead when Publisher Stephen A. Borg folded the Food section about four years ago, and food coverage has been all downhill since then. 

She also reduced how much the paper reimburses Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung -- limiting the number of dishes she can sample -- and added more photos and bigger headlines to distract readers. 

At the same time, Ung's obsession for dessert has displaced any concern over whether restaurants are serving food that is raised or grown naturally.

A great paper for sports fans

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Francis "Frank" Scandale, editor of The Record, apparently learned nothing from Columbine.

Who is Magdy Elamir and why is a story about this doctor leading The Record of Woodland Park today? Well, you get a hint in the drop headline's "latest brush with law," but wait until you turn to A-12 and find out he's allegedly been breaking the law for more than 12 years and has been practicing medicine all along. 

Now, that's Page 1 news, not a story focusing on weeds in the driveway of his empty multimillion dollar home in Saddle River. Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her minions are on autopilot again.

You'd think Editor Francis Scandale would be ashamed of how he downplayed the Arizona shootings to run a huge photo of a Jets football player on the front page last Sunday, but here is another big photo of a Jets "rally" on A-1, while the shooting rampage story has been shoved inside the paper.

In fact, there are so many good stories and and at least one column that should have appeared on A-1 today, all this bonding Scandale is doing with the other male editors over sports is getting really irresponsible. 

Rich will get richer

Governor Christie is vowing to give another tax break to the wealthy -- corporations and small businesses this time -- and that should have been all over Page 1. There is no evidence tax breaks create jobs, and a A-1 refer doesn't cut it. 

The profile of Tuscon in the wake of the assassination of a federal judge and the attempted murder of a congresswoman, now on A-5, also should have been outside, especially in view of all the letters to the editor on the shootings from North Jersey readers (O-3).

This still is the most talked-about story in the region and the nation, even if Scandale can't hear it for all the ass-slapping and high-fiving he's doing over the Jets' playoff game.

Readers are constantly asked to wade through drivel on Page 1 from Columnists John Cichowski and Charles Stile. So why didn't Scandale put a powerful package -- Mike Kelly's column on our weak gun laws (O-1) and Margulies' cartoon on the gun lobby (O-2) -- out front today? 

How many more massacres will it take?

That question is the headline on Kelly's column, but it could just as well be posed to Scandale, who covered the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 when he was an editor at The Denver Post -- as he never let anyone at The Record forget in the decade since he arrived here. 

I'm no fan of Kelly, but here, for a change, he writes directly and effectively:

"America is awash in too many handguns, too many angry nut-jobs, too many gun laws with loopholes and too many politicians who fear the narrow-mindedness of the National Rifle Association."

More jock itch

Even Sykes is succumbing to jock itch, putting Yankee captain Derek Jeter on the front of Local today as one of the 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH, along with a six-column auto dealer ad above the fold, an abomination. Sykes doesn't get out much, if she can't find any local people to watch.

How is local news covered by her clueless assignment desk? 

The towns assigned to her pets -- such as Hackensack and Englewood -- languish, while the towns covered by energetic staff members flourish. One of those, Denisa R. Superville, has three stories in the section today, but there are none from Monsy Alvarado and Giovanna Fabiano.

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

More slanted Cuba coverage

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Except for the colors, the Cuban flag, above, and the flag of Puerto Rico are identical.

Editor Francis Scandale made sure only two staffers wrote about Cuba for The Record. Both were Cuban exiles who hated Fidel Castro and who turned out one slanted story after another -- quoting the same anti-Castro Cubans year after year. Did Scandale's wife, who is Cuban, have any influence on that policy?

The reporters, Miguel Perez and Liz Llorente, are no longer with the Woodland Park daily. But the paper's strong anti-Cuba stance continues, despite increasingly moderate views among Cuban-Americans and other readers.

The Record and other media continue to treat Cuba as if it is still a U.S. colony, and deliberately portray the Caribbean's biggest island in negative terms. I recall that Llorente once even called Cuba "tiny" in the lead paragraph of one of her stories.

Not close, no cigar

Today's Page 1 story is by Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano, who isn't Cuban, but she uses the same loaded language Perez and Llorente did, and through ignorance or deliberate malice, leaves out Cuba's many positives.

The story and headline -- "Anniversary divides Cuban passions" -- are almost identical to many stories The Record ran in the past decade. As usual, Fabiano makes no mention of the U.S. economic embargo and how it has slowed the island's growth.

She invokes "the fabulous [19]50s" and Cuba's "glory days," but ignores that era's deeply ingrained racial and economic inequality; the lack of health care and schools in rural areas, the Mafia-run casino-hotels; and the live, biracial sex shows for American tourists.

Today's story, as did those in the past, makes no mention of free education, health care and food rations enjoyed by all Cubans; the lack of gun violence and the absence of a drug problem.

Crackpot on A-1

The rest of the front page is a joke. 

Why is Scott Garrett, the arch-conservative congressman from Wantage, given a bully pulpit for his radical notion the federal government shouldn't spend money on public education and local transportation projects?

Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson reports the Tea Party supports Garrett. Wonder why Jackson -- in covering a Tea Party rally in Washington -- failed to mention the banner comparing President Obama's health-care plan to the Holocaust?

Slam-skunk

What's the new owner of the Nets doing on the front of the Local section, which is fast becoming a garbage can as head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her lazy minions scramble to fill empty columns.

A photo-graphics package on L-1 reports North Jerseyans are more likely to take public transportation to work than workers nationwide, but doesn't address why transportation reporters Karen Rouse and John Cichowski are so lazy they refuse to ride mass transit and assess the quality of bus and train service in their stories or columns.

Nor is there a photo of public transportation with the package -- only cars. When you don't cover mass transit, you won't have any file photos of buses or trains. It's as simple as that.

No Hackensack or Teaneck (or Ridgewood or Westwood or Fort Lee) stories appear in Local today, and the dull Englewood story is by a weekly reporter.

A Jewish education conspiracy?

Image by Mirza R via Flickr

Teaneck might have to give $1.4 million to a Hebrew-immersion charter school.

How far will Orthodox Jews in Englewood and Teaneck go to use public funds to educate their children -- without having to actually send them to public schools?


Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park reports on an ingenious solution to a dilemma faced by parents who send their children to Jewish day schools at a cost of up to $15,000 a year, but who still are obligated to pay high property taxes, a good part of which funds the public schools they reject.

The Shalom Academy proposes a Hebrew-immersion program to serve students in Englewood and Teaneck. If its application is approved, Teaneck might have to give the school $1.4 million of its tax dollars and Englewood slightly more, Staff Writer Pat Alex reports.

Although Alex deserves praise for laying out the elements of this proposed educational sleight-of-hand, she doesn't go far enough. She should point out that any money Englewood has to give a charter school only makes it more difficult for the district to improve its elementary and middle schools, which are virtually all black and Hispanic.


Her story also could use more background. A few years ago, a slate of Jewish candidates promised to rein in spending, but were unsuccessful in their bid for seats on the Teaneck school board, and before that,  the same thing happened in Englewood. Now, a citizens panel of rich East Hill residents has asked the city to cut aid to the public library.


And the headlines don't focus on Englewood and Teaneck. Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes sought put the Hebrew school proposal in a wider context of the Christie administration's support for such charter schools.


In Sykes' Local section, a headline on L-5 gave me a cynical chuckle:

UPDATE: ENGLEWOOD NOW A GREEN COMMUNITY

Of course, that's a reference to an environmental program. But the city has long been divided along color lines -- in its neighborhoods and in its schools -- a sad fact Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano has carefully avoided in just about everything she writes.

Dan Sforza and Christina Joseph, two of Sykes' clueless minions on the assignment desk, covered Englewood as reporters, but apparently learned nothing about the city they could pass on to Fabiano.


One of the untold stories is dramatic development of Englewood's main street and other parts of the city that accompanied big demographic changes in the past two decades, principally an influx of wealthy Orthodox Jewish families. 

What has happened to all the property taxes the city raked in from new apartments and condominium projects along Palisade Avenue and on both sides of Route 4? They certainly haven't been spent on the schools or to open a community center.


The Englewood update story in Local is just about the only municipal news in the section.

Paper turns back on readers again

Image by joiseyshowaa via Flickr

Will New York City's No. 7 subway be Lucky 7 for North Jersey commuters?

The news copy desk at The Record of Woodland Park is in disarray. The stupid headlines are bad, but it's the inaccurate ones that annoy most of all. The copy desk, where I worked for 19 years, once had high standards, and copy editors who didn't meet them got poor performance reviews. Now, anything goes.

And the safety net -- proofing the early, so-called good copies of the paper just off the press -- was ripped away by Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who moved printing from Hackensack to Rockaway Township more than three years ago.


Stupid headline of the week

Virtually all of The Record's circulation is in North Jersey, so what do you make of the moronic streamer above the masthead on A-1 today? What dummy wrote it, what dummy approved it?

TAKE THE SUBWAY TO SECAUCUS? IT'S ONE IDEA ON THE TABLE. A-4

That streamer is of no interest to North Jersey residents. You wouldn't be able to "take the subway to Secaucus" unless you live in Manhattan, because the plan is to extend the subway from Manhattan to Secaucus, so North Jerseyans arriving at the huge transfer station by rail or car have another way to get into the city. 

After all, the new subway plan would use federal funds left over from the Hudson River rail tunnels Governor Christie killed based on his wife's complaint. She moaned and groaned that after getting off the train at a proposed new station under Macy's, she'd have to walk too far to catch a subway in Manhattan.

Are there any other exciting, mass-transit proposals to replace the rail tunnels? Who knows? You wouldn't know mass transit is the only solution to the region's infamous traffic congestion, because not one but two transportation reporters today are all worked up over airport scanners.

First, Staff Writer Karen Rouse has what amounts to a huge graphics package on Page 1 about the scanners, accompanied by two sidebars on A-6. Then, Road Warrior John Cichowski tries to gain altitude with an entire column about them on the front of Local. 

Rouse is Editor Francis Scandale's pet (he brought her all the way from Denver, site of his glory days), and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes thinks Chick is the cat's meow. Often, she can be seen stroking his hair as he turns another phrase.

Airport security is working

I dislike airport security as much as anyone, but in return for the inconvenience, I get to live in a country where planes aren't blown up; hotels and other buildings aren't destroyed by terrorists and I can shop for food without updating my will.

What really troubles me is how both Rouse and Cichowski disdain commuters, especially the poor souls who are stuck with NJ Transit's decrepit local bus system, which uses decades-old white elephants that are literally falling apart -- in stark contrast to buses on Manhattan routes that are changed every decade or so.

Rouse is especially disappointing, because as an African-American journalist, she has turned her back on fellow blacks and a sizable number of Hispanic residents who can't afford cars and must rely on local buses. Cichowski, under pressure to fill space, is just lazy.

Scandale is a joke

Scandale today, for the second day in a row, squanders more A-1 space on the Meadowlands Racetrack, when New Jersey Network, which is far more important to state residents, faces extinction (A-3). 

Someone must have lit a fire under Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano, who has two more Englewood stories on L-1 and L-3 today -- her 10th and 11th stories since Nov. 5. She actually had three in Tuesday's paper. 

Unfortunately, she tends to ignore what's really going on in Englewood, including schools with few  white students, an embarrassing number of empty downtown storefronts and traffic tie-ups worthy of Manhattan.

Sykes' Local section today includes a blown-up accident photo by staffer Tariq "Crash" Zehawi on L-3, and a good number of municipal stories and crime news, but no stories about Teaneck, Ridgewood or other major towns. 

Hackensack news is a proposal to replace an abandoned gasoline station. Does everyone know where East Kennedy Street is? Is that the station near Route 80? You're guess is as good as mine, because the story doesn't say.

Editors should read this

Former Managing Editor James Ahearn is a sane antidote to all the fawning editors do over Christie. In his OpEd column today on the governor's battle with teachers (A-21), Ahearn concludes: "He looks more like someone fixated on getting his own way."