Decisive victory for home rule

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There it is on Page 1 today in The Record of Woodland Park -- a huge victory for home rule. The Christie administration is reversing its stance on merging school districts. The proposal would have eliminated 250 of the state's 600 districts at an average savings of 3 percent to 6 percent of a district's budget.


Preening Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin was too busy shopping for clothes to write an editorial taking Governor Christie to task for squandering this huge savings opportunity. But he did have enough time to craft a highly favorable column about Christie on A-23 today. With Doblin in the governor's corner, the paper compromises its objectivity and credibility. (Just a couple of months ago, Doblin was screaming bloody murder when Christie's state aid cuts boosted the editor's train fare.)


How is it that Staff Writer Pat Alex can handle this big education and home-rule story, with the assistance of one other reporter, while Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado needs much more assistance on stories about Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa? Alvarado doesn't even have a hand in today's Zisa story, but head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes needed four other reporters to get it onto the Local front. (Zisa and a detective have been suspended without pay.)


Meanwhile, Hackensack residents have to rely on the weekly Hackensack Chronicle -- not Alvarado -- for details of the city's proposed budget, which could raise taxes 7.5 percent. The weekly today reports on a City Council budget meeting 10 days ago. (The weekly paper is delivered with The Record to subscribers in Hackensack on Fridays, so why is a second copy thrown in driveways?)


The 38-day-old oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- the nation's worst ever -- finally makes it to Page 1 today, but this is clearly too big a story for The Record staff -- as was Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The paper has been relying on the wire services for all of its coverage of BP's fumbling attempts to stop the gushing oil, and Doblin's editorial page hasn't been of much help to readers. Why hasn't he condemned the company for apparently hiding the magnitude of the leak?


Where are the clueless editors? Courthouse reporters could be assigned to give readers a preview of the legal battles that lie ahead on the liability of BP and the operator of the drilling platform for negligence. You know the families of the 11 dead oil workers will be suing for hundreds of millions of dollars, as will commercial fishermen, state and federal governments, and others. Could the companies be charged with criminally negligent homicide? Is there any precedent for barring a foreign-owned company from doing business in the U.S.?

Why don't the editors get off their lardy asses instead of always following the wire services' lead?

Desperate for a real newspaper

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The earthquake survivors in Haiti are desperate for relief, according to the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today, but I'm just desperate for a newspaper that has the balls to go to bat for people who have been ignored by the world for far too long.

You won't find anything in today's disaster coverage -- not even an editorial -- expressing outrage at the failure of government in Haiti, at the collapse of law and order, at the slowness of the rescue effort and at the realization the world may have allowed this Caribbean nation to descend so far, it may be beyond help without a truly massive, unprecedented infusion of aid. But how many Haitians will this neglect have killed?

(Similarly, the Borgs may wake up one day and actually read the paper, only to realize too late that the lazy, incompetent editors have run it into the ground so deep, it can't be saved.)

The absolute failure of government quickly became evident only a day or two after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, but The Record was unwilling to go out on a journalistic limb to say so. It waited -- for an "expert," a story from one of its wire services, anything to avoid its own responsibility to report what a poor job the Bush administration was doing to help one of the nation's greatest cities.

We're seeing the same thing with the earthquake in Haiti. Look at the nonsense from Columnist Mike Kelly (see yesterday's posts). Where is an editorial criticizing the Haitian government and its greedy ruling class? Where is the editorial on how little the world community has done for Haiti in the last few decades?

If ever there was an argument for busing students to school, look at the story on the front of the Local section about a teen driver who manages to hit a tree -- cutting the car in half -- and nearly kill himself and his sister. Does anybody believe he wasn't speeding? Why was the reporter, Marlene Naanes, able to get his sister's name, but not his? What is a story about Giants Stadium memorabilia doing on the Local front?

Reporter Monsy Alvarado's byline on a Hackensack story appears for the first time since Dec. 30, with another detailed piece on disciplinary hearings for police officers who are suing the chief. This is a subject she has reported far more than any other, ignoring schools, development, the City Council and  municipal government. There is no news of Teaneck or Englewood, two other premier towns in Bergen County. Between Dec. 20 and today, only one Englewood story has appeared in the paper, outside of police and fire news.

The restaurant review today, in the centerfold of Better Living, is written by food editor Bill Pitcher, whose sudden visibility is welcome now that Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung is on leave until summer. Pitcher's familiarity with fresh fish, in this review of a Greek restaurant, is a revelation, compared to Ung's constantly obsessing about dessert. But why run a photo of  "overcooked and flat-tasting" grilled shrimp and a second one of the owner holding that dish?

There is an unusually long list of restaurant sanitary inspections on Page 24 of Better Living today, but what about Wyckoff and other towns that never appear? And is it really fair to readers to run a long story on the next page supposedly containing "facts" about antibiotics in poultry and other issues written by the National Chicken Council, an industry promotional group?

More drivel from Columnist Mike Kelly

I'll post a critique of today's edition of The Record of Woodland Park later, but now I want to highlight the inane column from Mike Kelly on the front of the Local section.

Many people at the paper know Kelly has been floundering for years. Haven't the incompetent editors noticed he is unable to muster the requisite outrage of a columnist? Is his topic today -- the breakdown of cellphone and other communications with Haiti after a devastating earthquake -- even worthy of being printed?

Isn't there enough said on this same topic in the Page 1 news story about local Haitians that more than a dozen reporters contributed to?

"But now, suddenly, a small part of our world has gone dead," Kelly writes. Sadly, Kelly went dead long ago.

With images of children sleeping among the dead in Haiti, is this the best Kelly can do? What about writing how the world has ignored Haiti, allowing it to spiral into misery with a corrupt, dysfunctional government and a greedy ruling class? Why not question why aid wasn't rushed there from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba -- only a few hundred miles away -- rather than from Virginia and California?

Of course, this is a much bigger natural disaster than Hurricane Katrina, but did it occur to Kelly to write about how the U.S. response was far more immediate for Haitians than for the residents of New Orleans?

Is this front-page news?

Two stories taking up most of Page 1 and the front of the Local section in The Record of Woodland Park today seem out of place. They easily could have been reversed, giving readers a compelling Hurricane Katrina success story on the front page.

Instead, readers are lectured by Road Warrior John "Drivers' Best Friend" Cichowski on Page 1 about the dangers of walking along highways such as Route 4 and Route 46. Is this front-page news? New Jersey saw only 157 of the 1,200 pedestrian deaths cited for the metropolitan area in 2006-08.

The profile of an African-American woman in Paterson who was displaced by Hurricane Katrina, which took her father, doesn't quite fit the Local news section. It reads more like a North Jersey story, with data on other survivors. It just goes to show how unlikely it is for black people to get on the front page of the former Hackensack daily unless they are charged with murder or some other heinous crime.

The rest of the Local section is silent on any news of Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck -- the three most diverse communities in Bergen County -- unless you count the obituary of a woman who ran the old homeless shelter in Hackensack. The Record's move out of River City seems to have shifted the focus of news-coverage to the west, such as the story today on the Garret Mountain deer hunt -- near the paper's new headquarters.

The placement of stories continues to grate. The sanitation problems at a city of Passaic Mexican cheese factory and the opening of a new hamburger restaurant in Montclair -- essentially two food stories -- appeared this week in the Business pages, where the latter seemed like a big, free advertisement.

Where is the thunder?

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The Record of Woodland Park gives Columnist Mike Kelly the bottom of  the front page today to speak for the ailing 9/11 rescue workers, and what does he do? Where is thunder, where is the outrage?

You won't get any from Kelly, a columnist who has been stuck in a reporter's mindset for far too long. As he does here, all Kelly can manage is pushing words around to set a mood, waste a lot of paragraphs on he said-she said and utter such banalities as:

"This is not just a story about health care, but a story about politics -- and whether our federal government can find enough money to help them."

"Our" federal government?  Where has Kelly been? The rescue workers, who are dying off one by one, have been royally screwed by government, just like the American soldiers sickened by Agent Orange in Vietnam, wounded Iraqi war veterans and New Orleans residents routed by Hurricane Katrina. This story is about a failure of government, but mouse Kelly can manage only squeaks. (And doesn't anyone but me think the photo that runs with his so-called column is unflattering, with a leer worthy of a child molester?)

On Page A-4, Staff Writer John Brennan reprises his role as P.R. man for Jayson Williams, who faces a DWI charge after crashing his SUV in Manhattan. Brennan again omits the especially relevant detail that Williams killed a limousine driver in 2002 after a night of drinking.

On the front of the Local section, Road Warrior John Cichowski squanders another column on answering stupid questions from drivers. When I still worked on the news copy desk of The Record, Cichowski appeared to be one of the hardest workers, often staying late into the night. Yet his column is a disappointment so often, you have to wonder whether he has totally lost his commuting and mass-transit focus.

As usual, you won't find any news of Hackensack or Teaneck in the Local section today, but Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano actually covers a story -- the swearing in of a new mayor. However, the headline and story don't report how this event preserves the status quo: a rich, powerful, white male attorney hands power to another rich, powerful, white male attorney -- this one with real political connections -- whose priority is easing the city's high tax rate.  

Mayor Frank Huttle expresses no concern about the segregated elementary and middle schools, or some of the highly diverse community's other major problems. It all comes down to money. How noble.

In Business, veteran reporter Joan Verdon shills for a new hamburger chain, omitting any mention that the meat used is really nothing special -- conventionally raised with antibiotics, growth hormones and other additives.