A little Hackensack news -- finally

Cover of The 15-Minute Chef

Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado has finally reported and written some non-Police Department news from Hackensack. Today's L-3 story on 19 teachers and 34 para-professionals facing layoffs is the first education story about the city where The Record was founded since Dec. 14 -- if you don't count the routine school elections coverage in April.


Readers in Teaneck and Englewood go begging for yet another day.


Below Alvarado's story in Local is one from Wyckoff by Staff Writer Shawn Boburg, another member of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' investigative team. With Sykes' blessings, the core members -- Alvarado, Boburg and Staff Writer Jean Rimbach -- have wasted years and hundreds of thousands in staff salaries with little to show for it.


In recent years, Rimbach has had the fewest bylines of any other staffer, although she is likely one of the highest paid reporters in the Woodland Park newsroom. The key is her close relationship with Sykes -- which I observed personally.


When I was still a news copy editor at The Record, I edited a three-part series Rimbach and another reporter had worked on for six months, and it was filled with holes and other problems. When I asked Sykes about these flaws, her answers invariably were: "We're not going to go there" or "We didn't get that."


Maybe Boburg should find out why Wyckoff refuses to release restaurant inspections to The Record, which publishes the ratings on Fridays in Better Living. Food Editor Bill Pitcher seems not to have noticed that the Wyckoff inspections are always missing.


Pitcher, who is paid $70,000-plus a year, had a hard day Monday, as today's food coverage shows. The 15 Minute Chef now runs on Tuesdays without a big color photo -- pushed to the margin of F-2 by shopping news. Is that even his recipe or did he conveniently leave off the credit? 

The paper should sponsor a contest to see which reader can actually prepare this meal in 15 minutes. The prize: An extension of his/her subscription.

(Photo: The book by the original 15-Minute Chef, Patricia Mack, onetime food editor of The Record.)