More of the same old blah, blah, blah

A window at Barneys on Madison Avenue. Fashion Week in Manhattan is coming to a close today.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Compared to his previous efforts, there's little discernible difference in Mike Kelly's front-page column today on the 12th anniversary of 9/11.

In more than two decades of trying at The Record, Kelly has never developed a distinctive voice or the strongly opinionated point of view readers look for in a columnist.

If it wasn't for the outdated thumbnail photo, complete with shit-eating grin, the Kelly column reads like another, long news story (A-1).

His awkward writing is evident in the first paragraph of today's piece, when he has Tom Acquaviva of Wayne standing "in silence for a few humid moments."

A bad smell

A "few humid moments"? Kelly's phrases are indistinguishable from farts.

The paragraph ends with "the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, which most of us know as Ground Zero."

"Most of us" is a reference to reporters and the media, who adopted the phrase in 2001 and argued over whether it should be written with capital letters (The Record) or lower case (The New York Times). 

It's no wonder that more than a decade ago, news copy editors on River Street in Hackensack -- weary of Kelly's bad writing -- had to be ordered by their supervisors to edit his long, boring columns and slap on a headline.

Inside transit

Another Page 1 story today amounts to the same old blah, blah, blah about the incompetent administrators at NJ Transit (A-1).

But The Record's office-bound editors and reporters  continue to ignore the mass-transit agency's basic failing where the rubber meets the road: 

It's inability to provide enough rush-hour bus and train seats for commuters, aggravated by Governor Christie's anti-public transit policies.

Bergen corruption

The off-lead today -- new federal charges against Joseph A. Ferriero, onetime chairman of the Bergen County Democratic Party -- explains why even many Democrats helped put a Republican county executive in office (A-1).

Unfortunately, Ferriero allies were the power behind the Zisa family regime in Hackensack for many years, and still have their hooks into the city's Board of Education.

More errors

As the corrections on A-2 demonstrate once again, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, her minions and Production Editor Liz Houlton create problems as well as missing them.

Houlton's copy editors have completely given up trying to ensure accuracy in the Road Warrior column, according to a concerned reader:

"In his Wednesday column, the Road Warrior continued his epic inability to correctly report and provide any valid assessments on the problems and delays in completing the Route 17 Summit Avenue exit, which finally opened on Sept. 9.

"Road Warrior only explained there were 'additional work issues' involved in the delays and repeated that the only obstacle over the last 5 months was due to activating a traffic light.

"Yet, I was able to find out from NJDOT and contractors about other specific utility and ramp work that also caused the delays.

"Road Warrior is repeatedly befuddled by math, counting and calendars since he repeatedly got the number of days it took to finally activate the traffic lights wrong.

"Why was the Road Warrior unable to get more explanations, better information, and any completion date if the DOT and contractors provided me with all of that?"

To read the entire e-mail to Houlton, Editor Marty Gottlieb and management, go to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

When will Road Warrior's light go on?

Editors no speaky Spanish

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Many families in Guatemala are supported by illegal immigrants in North Jersey.

What do you do when a Guatemalan immigrant is killed in Passaic and apparently the only reporter you have who speaks Spanish covers the city of Hackensack?

"Screw Hackensack," Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes of The Record said in unison at the Tuesday morning news conference in Woodland Park, dispatching Monsy Alvarado to report and write today's heart-rending story at the bottom of Page 1.


Alvarado, however, seemed intent on not telling readers right away that victim Antonio Chiroy entered the country illegally, and the story never actually uses the phrase "illegal immigrant." 


Was that an oversight by Alvarado's clueless assignment editor or Liz Houlton's news copy desk? The copy desk also uses "SLAYING" as a jump word on A-1, but the jump head on A-6 says "BEATING."


Stories about illegal immigrants who support families in Mexico, Guatemala and other countries are few and far between in The Record, and it's clear that to get in the paper today, Chiroy had to be murdered.


In white news ...


Of course, the big front-page news today is aimed at the paper's favorite demographic -- the overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly wealthy residents of Ridgewood.


Judging by the coverage of protesters, you'd think expansion of The Valley Hospital is a project akin to the Hoover Dam. The editors are clearly on the side of opponents.


Just look at the drop headline on A-1:

Hospital expansion could change face of village

That's  so exaggerated, it's laughable. 


The hospital's "expansion" plan is confined to its current campus, and doesn't require the taking of more land -- though you won't find that in today's story by Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton. 


That's rich


In the third A-1 story today, Rep. Leonard Lance, R-Clinton, calls for rejection of tax-deduction caps in President Obama's jobs bill -- tax increases that would affect individuals making more than $200,000 a year or couples making more than $250,000.


Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson actually quotes Lance as saying the tax hikes "will hurt, not help, the Garden State's struggling economy." 


But are wealthy residents the ones who are struggling?


Local yokels


Sykes' Local sections today and Tuesday contain little local news.


The lead story on L-1 Tuesday was a preview of today's A-1 report on the Ridgewood hospital-plan hearing.


A huge chunk of Tuesday's Local front is taken up by another No-One-Was-Injured photo, this one showing a truck fire on Route 17 in Paramus.


On Tuesday's front page, Scandale continued to turn his back on his staff by running a photo from Kenya -- rather than an image of life in North Jersey.


Fortress mentality


The big error in big type at the top of Monday's front page -- the headline over the unveiling of the 9/11 memorial on Sunday -- was never corrected, just as the editors ignored their confusion in two Page 1 stories recently between the borough of Point Pleasant and Point Pleasant Beach.

Sorrow etched in stone

Of course, the only problem is the names of 9/11 victims are etched in bronze. Who screwed that up?


Name game


Monday's paper also raised a question that was never answered -- what do we call the World Trade Center site destroyed a decade ago?


In Monday's paper, there are references in headlines, captions and text to "trade center memorial," "Ground Zero," "reborn World Trade Center site," "9/11 Memorial Plaza," and "new 9/11 Memorial Plaza" -- and that's just on the front page.


An A-6 photo caption on Monday called the reflecting pools the "National September 11 Memorial." Monday's New York Times continued to refer to a lower-case "ground zero."

Editors fiddle while Trenton burns

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On 9/11, Editor Francis Scandale blew a chance to make The Record's front page unique by ignoring a potential Pulitzer Prize-winning staff photo.

Editor Francis Scandale uses the front page of The Record today to distract readers from the looming battle over the state budget between slash-and-burn Governor Christie and Democrats fighting for the middle class.


The big photo-and-text element on the 9/11 memorial and the story on the Prudential Center in Newark elicit a "gee whiz" and little more.


The 9/11 story -- the third, detailed takeout on Ground Zero in about six months -- only serves to remind many readers of Scandale's deeply flawed news judgment on the day of the attack nearly a decade ago.


He still hasn't lived down relegating to a back page The Record's iconic photo of fireman raising the American flag over the ruins of the World Trade Center in 2001.


Today, readers search in vain for stories on the future of NJN, the millionaires tax, public school funding and other issues that have to be resolved by next Friday, the deadline to balance the state budget.


Scandale also is quoted today in the obituary of Gil Spencer, onetime editor of the Daily News in New York (L-5). Scandale worked for Spencer at The Denver Post.


"He commanded a room by his presence," Scandale says of Spencer.


Sadly, no one will ever say that about Scandale.


The Record's editor apparently inserted his comments into the obituary. His quotes don't appear on the Daily News Web site, where the obit appeared first.


Weight and see


On the front of Local, a story about a tank pull for veterans recalls the rumor that staffers planned to pull head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Projects Editor Tim Nostrand and  Production Editor Liz Houlton down the street to raise money to fight the obesity epidemic.


Unfortunately, officials in Woodland Park denied them a permit.


Swimsuit edition


Features Director Barbara Jaeger relies on T&A today to distract readers from the lack of food news in Better Living.


The 24-year-old woman, who works at Hooters in Wayne, was a public relations major at William Paterson University.

Food editor cooks up a good one

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Cartoonist Jimmy Margulies lampoons the attempt to kill the toll collectors union.

Susan Leigh Sherrill, The Record's food editor, is referring to me as "a disgruntled reader" -- pretty mild when you consider all the names I've been called since I started Eye on The Record.

And all the vicious names I've hurled at the Borgs, the editors and incompetent staffers, including Bill Ervolino, Mike Kelly and John Cichowski.

Sherrill apparently was upset by my reference to her light workload in my April 20 post:

"Life is easy for Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill, whose entire job seems to be publishing a single recipe on Wednesdays (F-1), plus writing a few items for the Second Helpings blog and tweeting her brains out."

On April 22, she tweeted this to her 115 followers:

@susanlsherrill Susan Sherrill

I ask you, is 4-6, maybe a coupla more, tweets a day "tweeting my brains out?" A disgruntled reader seems to think so ...

Today's paper

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' local news staff must have great depth for her to allow Staff Writer Shawn Boburg to do today's Page 1 takeout on Ground Zero reconstruction, the second in five days.

Today's piece on the soaring, inspirational transit hub is a milestone at the Woodland Park daily, marking the the most extensive discussion of mass transit in years. Are cost overruns in a federally funded project really Page 1 news?

And its construction is a milestone at the Port Authority, reversing the agency's historically poor treatment of PATH commuters.

Coddling reporters

In fact, Sykes' local news staff really must be loafing, if the number of bylines in her A- and L-sections are any indication.

On Sunday, there were only eight Record staff bylines in 22 pages; today, there are fewer than that in the A- and L-sections. I would guess the size of the local reporting staff is at least 50. 

What, exactly, are they doing? I guess they don't find Sykes and her assignment minions very inspirational.

One thing they're not doing are the traditional school election boxes, which briefed readers on school board candidates' positions and school budgets. Today, only a listing of budget amounts and candidates' names appear (L-6).

Lying to readers

This is what Publisher Stephen A. Borg must have meant when he promised readers education news "every day."

But what readers have learned is how little Borg, Sykes and Editor Francis Scandale really care about keeping readers informed. And how the staff includes highly productive members and others who can write as much or as little as they want, without consequences.

The Borgs are beefing up security at their homes now that the so-called James Bond burglars have reappeared in North Jersey's wealthiest neighborhoods (A-1).

Didn't Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg and his wife lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in antique jewelry in one of those smash-and-grab jobs years ago?

Today's Margulies' cartoon (A-11) is in poor taste, given the New Jersey Turnpike Authority's drive to destroy the toll collectors union, with no plans to pass on the savings by lowering tolls paid by drivers and truckers.

Leading the paper with old news

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The shape of home rule is easy to see on this Bergen County map.

On The Record's front page today, Staff Writer Michael Gartland reports the old news of how outgoing Bergen County Democrats approved numerous lame-duck appointments and retroactive raises, but he doesn't get to the real news until the continuation page (A-8): the new Republican county executive will try to rescind them. 

Why wasn't that the lead paragraph?

You'd expect to see the Saturday swearing-in photos of Kathleen Donovan, the new executive, and the new Republican freeholders with the jump of Gartland's story on A-8, but you'll have to search the paper for them. 

It's not clear when Donovan was sworn in. The cutline on L-3 describes a "midnight ceremony" at the home of Alan Marcus in Saddle River. Marcus is not identified further.

There's more clunky packaging of the news, with the front page dominated by a story on the effort to meet the September deadline for opening the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero -- a decade after the terrorist attacks. 

Editor Francis Scandale must think readers are sitting on the edge of their seats and biting their fingernails awaiting resolution of this cliff hanger.


It's old news

Only four months ago, on Sept. 1, Scandale ran another huge A-1 package on construction at Ground Zero -- including the memorial -- written by then-Staff Writer Tom Davis, who attended a Port Authority dog-and-pony-and-propaganda show. That story included six photos by Staff Photographer Chris Pedota.

But today, reports on Governor Christie's public relations blunder in going to Disney World during the blizzard, how his 2% tax cap will affect towns in North Jersey and his combativeness are scattered over two sections. There are two stories on A-3 and a third story on the front of L-1 -- state news filing in for local news head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her minions couldn't produce.

Section ate

Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung must have exhausted herself eating and drinking in recent weeks. I couldn't find her usual Sunday column in Better Living, "The Corner Table." 

That gives readers a break from her relentless promotion of restaurants and food professionals in a column that is supposed to the voice of the consumer.

On Page T-3 of Travel, a photo of one Hispanic family (lower right hand corner) breaks the all-white monotony of "The Record on The Road" feature.

Editors say F.U. to Hackensack -- again

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Take a good look at the Page 1 photo in The Record of Woodland Park today -- the one showing classmates and friends mourning the 12-year-old Hackensack boy killed by an NJ Transit train. Much has been written about his use of an electronic device, but nothing about the irresponsibility of the transit agency, which does little to keep people off the tracks.

It's right there in the photo: There isn't a fence in sight along the entire length of Railroad Avenue to prevent 12-year-old boys or anyone else from walking on the tracks that divide a neighborhood. And what does The Record do? It blames the victims.

Read the short follow on the front of Local by Staff Writer Erik Shilling. He's relatively new to the paper, but his story focuses on the distractions of cellphones and other devices, and is missing so much detail.  


Why doesn't the reporter tell readers Caeser Muloki was walking home from Hackensack Middle School, where the dismissal bell rings at 2:55 p.m. Why doesn't the reporter tell readers there is no school busing in Hackensack, and that if the boy was on a bus, he'd still be alive today? Why doesn't the reporter know Caesar always walked home with another student, but didn't Tuesday? Why didn't the reporter talk to the boy's parents?


Why? It's because Shilling and the white editors don't care one bit about this handsome African boy, and whether he is alive or dead. It's because the lazy, irresponsible editors, who spend most of their day in the office in meetings, don't care about Hackensack students and whether they have busing or about the added pollution and stress of hundreds of parents jockeying for parking spaces morning and afternoon in front of schools.


It's another royal F.U. to readers by the elitist Borg family, now represented at North Jersey Media Group by Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg's two spoiled brats, Stephen and Jennifer (Jenniphen, Stepher, Stephenfer?).


And that F.U. is delivered day after day by Francis Scandale, the editor, and Deirdre Sykes, the head assignment editor, and the minions that jump at their command. Instead of challenging authority, these editors and others at the paper roll over and play dead.


Hey, would you look at the A-1 photo and refer showing our bully of a governor getting in the face of a heckler at a political rally in California. Reporters love Chris Christie. He makes good copy. Unfortunately, he makes bad policy and has screwed more middle- and working-class residents than any New Jersey chief executive in memory, while favoring the Borgs and other wealthy residents.


But that doesn't stop The Record from quoting him in the A-3 story as telling the heckler, "We're here to bring this country together." What bullshit. He's done nothing but divide the Garden State into the haves and have-nots.

On the front of Local today, the great journalist Mike Kelly has nothing better to do than pick on an 84-year-old woman who is partially blind and deaf. Shame on you, you hack. Readers will find two stories about Emerson inside the section, but nothing about Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck.


Don't look for any local food coverage in Better Living today. So far, Susan Sherrill, the new food editor, has fallen flat on her face.

In discussing this past Saturday's paper in the previous post, I neglected to mention the A-1 story on Jewish rituals for Yom Kippur, another in a series of such stories by Staff Writer Deena Yellin, herself an Orthodox Jew. She followed that with a story on sukkahs.


The editors are so desperate for copy, they are running these stories, but neglecting other religious groups and conducting a smear campaign against the imam behind the mosque proposal near Ground Zero. That's more inspired journalism.

Reporter goes to dog and pony show

Image by derek7272 via Flickr

Ground Zero at an earlier stage of reconstruction in April 2008.

When the powerful Port Authority of New York and New Jersey calls, reporters jump at the opportunity to get up close and personal at the agency's latest dog and pony show. That's what Staff Writer Tom Davis did to produce today's breathless Page 1 account of construction at Ground Zero, and the reporter made sure he passed along a dig at backers of a nearby mosque.

 The upbeat account, with six photos by Staff Photographer Chris Pedota, appears orchestrated to silence critics who complain none of the buildings will be finished by Sept. 11, 2011 -- the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The reporter played right into the hands of the bistate agency.


A clueless news copy editor -- looking for a quote to place above the big, A-1 photo of the site -- finds the dullest one in the story: "More than a construction site." But why ignore this quote? "A passion and a mission."

The reporter tells us, "Workers scurried around, " and notes some wore stickers on their hard hats opposing the mosque. A Port Authority official is quoted saying, "These guys work around the clock." Wow. What dedication. And great public relations, too.

The anti-mosque reference is in keeping with the paper's smear tactics this past Sunday against the imam backing the proposal. And Editors Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale and Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes apparently oppose assigning stories on mosques in Paterson, Teaneck and Hackensack, which co-exist peacefully in their communities. 

'Liar, liar, pants on fire'

The Governor Christie-Bret Schundler privileged white male pissing match is back on A-1 today, and each man pretty much says the other lied about who did what to whom in the state's failed application for a $400 million federal education grant. 

No matter who you side with, you as taxpayers and your kids are the ones who really got screwed -- but since Christie took office, you have gotten used to that -- while the Borgs and other millionaires count all the money they don't have to send to the tax office in Trenton.

Playing catch-up

On the front of Local, the paper catches up with a story it missed -- the lawsuit to stop the expansion of The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood -- a controversy readers both inside and outside of the village are thoroughly sick of reading about, especially in the absence of news from Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck and other important towns.

Road Worrier

Road Warrior John Cichowski, who routinely turns his back on the commuting problems of bus and rail riders, has an L-1 column about highway rest stops. Boring. 

He's the one who really needs a rest. Why not take Christie to task for refusing to raise the low gasoline tax to help repair infrastructure and boost mass transit?

Cichowski's boss is Sykes, the head assignment editor, who spends hours in the office looking busy, micromanaging, laughing loudly and sipping delicately on her water bottle, but accomplishes nothing in the way of improving local news coverage.

There's not a word in Local today about a plan to remake Main Street in Hackensack -- two weeks after a public meeting in the Johnson Public Library. Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado is missing in inaction.

New food editor on board

Food Editor Susan Sherrill's name appears on Page F-2 of Better Living for the first time today, but the section's food coverage remains as lackluster as ever.

Time to dump the restaurant reviewer

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In her first Sunday column since returning from a six-month maternity leave, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung informs readers: " We're in a period of transition here, reevaluating all aspects of our coverage of food and dining [an apparent reference to new Food Editor Susan Sherill]."What do you find the most useful? What would you like to see more of? What should we dump."


What should The Record of Woodland Park dump? In a word, Ung or, as I like to refer to her, Ugh.


That would complete a house cleaning that began with the presumably voluntary departure of her  previous boss, Bill Pitcher. 


In their restaurant reviews and other coverage,  Pitcher and Ung almost completely ignored rising consumer concern with how food is grown or raised on America's factory farms, while celebrating artery-clogging desserts and hamburgers made with drug- and hormone-filled beef, as Ung does in today's column.


Ung has been in the job since 2007, and came to The Record from the Philadelphia Inquirer. But I guess she has never learned journalists, including food writers, should be leaders, not followers. Ung and her editor should be setting the criteria for food coverage, not readers.


The imam as landlord


What exactly is the connection between poorly maintained North Jersey apartment buildings owned by a Muslim cleric and the mosque and Islamic cultural center he wants to build near Ground Zero (lead story and Mike Kelly column on Page 1 today)? 


This coverage, including a rare byline for Jean Rimbach, clearly is intended to smear the imam, because The Record has virtually ignored all the slumlords in Paterson and Passaic city over the years, despite fire deaths, lead-paint poisonings and all the other ills visited on their working-class and immigrant tenants.


The front page today has a lot of hard news, but the story on shootings in Paterson is difficult for the majority of readers in North Jersey to relate to. 

More change needed 
  

You wouldn't catch John Cichowski dead riding a train or bus to evaluate the service for his Road Warrior commuting column. But here he is today on the Local front with a blame-the-victim piece on pedestrians killed by trains. It's time for him to go, too.

Nowhere does he question the adequacy of fencing and other safety measures taken by NJ Transit to prevent those deaths. And Cichowski's claim that one man determined to kill himself tried suicide by train three times before he was successful raises a question the gullible reporter never asked: How did anyone know that?  

No Hackensack news appears in today's paper. 

Scattershot approach to news

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How many stories are followed up by the newshounds at The Record of Woodland Park? And how many stories are dropped after one day?

It's bewildering to see what Editors Francis "Castrato" Scandale and Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes think is worthy of a follow and which stories appear for a single day, then disappear, despite all the unanswered questions from poor reporting and even poorer writing.

The front page today has a heart-warming story about a dog surviving a horrific Route 80 accident Sunday -- and being found and reunited with the victim's family -- but does this really belong on A-1? Even the original story, involving the death of a human, wasn't on the front page.

And there has been no follow on whether the 1996 Ford Explorer involved had been recalled for safety problems, so I guess readers are supposed to believe the driver lost control on a curve simply because it was raining.

When a 23-year-old Glen Rock woman was killed by a train recently, there was no follow, not even any comment from the family, and no attempt to find out if it was an accident or suicide.

The Route 80 dog story jumps to the animal news page, A-6, where we learn a bull ran amok in Spain and rampaged through the stands. Unfortunately, no one was killed, so the bull's revenge was incomplete and he not only died for his troubles, but will be eaten by grateful Spaniards. When are the food pages going to run a recipe for rabo de toro (tail of the bull)?

Today's weird Page 1 leads with the indictment of a baseball player on perjury charges -- who cares, except him and Scandale? -- while the middle of the page is taken up by photos of minor incidents at airports in Dallas and San Francisco that wouldn't be front-page news even if they happened at Newark Liberty International. 

But Scandale and Sykes are desperately trying to sell the paper, and distract readers in Hackensack and other important towns that are withering on the news vine.


For example, the Hackensack and Englewood reporters never asked officials if a plan to combine Teaneck's Police and Fire Departments would work in their cities, which also have professional firefighters and are similar demographically. It would save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Thursday, on Page A-8, a sharp wire editor ran a "FACT CHECK" on the controversy over building a mosque "roughly a half-dozen normal Lower Manhattan blocks" from Ground Zero (not the two blocks you hear repeated on TV news), but the newspaper hasn't interviewed Muslims living in Teaneck and Hackensack, despite the peaceful establishment of mosques in both towns.

By the way, the FACT CHECK by the Associated Press reported that opponents lied or distorted information about the backers of the mosque in Lower Manhattan, where Muslims are already praying in the building that would be replaced by an Islamic cultural center. Two other mosques are five and 12 blocks from Ground Zero.

A great Page 1 story is Governor Christie making New Jersey a potential leader in offshore wind power (L-3), if for no other reason than to show Christie isn't just looking out for the Borgs and other millionaires. Another potential A-1 story is the resurgence of layoffs (L-7). 

Or maybe the lazy editors and their pampered staff can finally get off their rumps and profile some of the long-term unemployed, such as those people shown the door by greedy Publisher Stephen A. Borg in 2007 and 2008. Those profiles would make better A-1 stories than a dog rescue.


In Better Living, you'll find another restaurant review by Bill Pitcher, the food editor who left the paper but who repeats on readers like a bad meal. He calls the tacos Mexicanos at Chapala Grill in Bergenfield "the real deal," but doesn't know an authentic taco is garnished with cilantro and onion, not cilantro and diced tomato.


The weekly Hackensack Chronicle, another North Jersey Media Group rag, is doing a better job of covering Hackensack than the daily's Sykes and Monsy Alvarado, the reporter nominally assigned to the city. 


Today, the lead story is about residents of 310 Prospect Ave., which shared a garage with 300 Prospect, the luxury building that was evacuated July 16 after the garage collapsed. One of those quoted is David Blomquist.

Is this the same Blomquist who once worked at The Record as a reporter and pollster?

(Photo: Green aracari at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Wash.)