Editors scramble to catch up to big local story

These rules of conduct displayed on an NJ Transit local train to Suffern, N.Y., above and below, help explain why Governor Christie has such disdain for mass transit. The GOP bully surely would be thrown off the train if he tried his in-your-face, insulting behavior with other commuters.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The Record of Woodland Park continues to play catch up today on a big Hackensack story -- the untimely death of prominent businessman Jerome S. Some, who was killed crossing the street in front of his Prospect Avenue high-rise on Tuesday night.

Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza has struggled to keep up with the story since then, even following the lead of this blogger in reporting charges against the driver and interviewing the 87-year-old's survivors.

It doesn't seem possible for a daily newspaper, but here it is the fourth day after Some's death and Sforza is only now naming the poor man's widow, Diane Some, who is shown in a photo on the Local front (L-1).

The photo runs with a story on Friday's humor- and tear-filled funeral in Hackensack.

Local editor wilts

Running the local-news operation in the absence of his boss has exhausted Sforza, but the former reporter is doing a good job padding his report with Law & Order news, photos of minor fires and accidents (L-3 and L-4) and wire service obits of obscure people (L-5 and L-6).

Food crystal ball

What's the point of the Better Living cover story today on "the next big trends in cuisine" (BL-1)?

It's pretty clear the North Jersey chefs interviewed have at least one eye on the bottom line: 

Not one predicted that restaurants will be serving more organic and naturally raised or grown food, knowing that would cut into their profits.

Second look

It's hard to believe that Friday's front-page story on so-called apartheid schools in New Jersey completely omitted mention of Englewood's long-segregated public schools.

The elementary and middle schools in the white-ruled city certainly fit the profile: "1 percent or fewer of the students are white."

Maybe someone can explain to me how North Jersey Media Group Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, former publisher of The Record, could have lived on Englewood's East Hill for decades and allowed his newspaper to be so derelict in its duty to the city's minorities.

Of course, his children, Stephen and Jennifer, were considered too special to attend public schools. And now that they are running The Record, they have as much disdain for Englewood's public schools as their father.

Cashing in on 9/11

The Borgs refused to spend a few thousand dollars to remake the front page on Sept. 11, 2001, and relegated to a back page the iconic photo of firemen raising the American flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center.

But in recent years, Jennifer A. Borg, Esq., the paper's hotshot lawyer, has milked the photo for all of the damages she can win from people who violate NJMG's copyright.

On Thursday, an L-3 story in The Record reported NJMG is seeking as much as $150,000 in damages from Jeanine Pirro, a Fox TV personality, for such a violation.

A few years ago, a glossy 8-by-10-inch copy of Tom Franklin's famous photo was inserted into copies of The Record.

On the other side was an advertisement for a Ford dealer in Hackensack.

We've lost confidence in all of you

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St. Paul remains the capitol of Minnesota, despite a map published today in The Record.

How sloppy can The Record of Woodland Park get? In seemingly every section of today's paper, readers find lazy journalism, laughable reporting, writing and copy editing; errors, and omissions. Columnists just push around words, masking their subjects, afraid readers will protest, "Again!"

What are Editor Francis Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Production Editor Liz Houlton and their minions doing to earn their inflated salaries? They're certainly not concerned with the rapid decline in the quality of the paper.

On Page 1, the otherwise interesting story on the personal wealth of North Jersey's congressional delegation by Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson gives the age of only one of the five members, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. Great copy editing.

On the front of Local, Columnist John Cichowski continues in his self-appointed roles of the region's driving instructor and the paper's chief space filler with, what, his 20th column on tips for traveling by car in bad weather.

Sykes had no "LOCAL ISSUE" for today's L-1, so we get a story on the first year of the New Meadowlands Stadium, which was used by a fraction of readers. What about real issues -- such as aircraft noise, decrepit local buses and lots of other stuff the lazy editors ignore?  

Staff Writer John Brennan's lead paragraph sounds like he is summing up the weather in the last year. He then quotes the stadium CEO: "I can certainly say we've been battle-tested, but the problem is you have to go through the battles to get there." Huh? Get where?

The driver-centric newspaper does, however, have some mass-transit reporting today -- a hilarious filler story on an issue of huge importance in Cresskill: The location of a new bus stop (L-3). It's only five paragraphs, but they are so imprecise, unanswered questions abound.

Another John Brennan?

The reporter says: "Because it's new, government officials are expecting little traffic." Is that a reference to the bus route being new? What does that have to do with the amount of traffic? "Government officials" usually is used to refer to the federal government. Is this bus stop a federal case?

Cresskill Councilman John Brennan seems to be as dim-witted as his namesake, the John Brennan who wrote the stadium piece: "We don't think it [the bus stop] will be a big deal. It won't be highly used. If there is nobody [bus rider] there, nobody [the bus driver] will be stopping there." Oh, is that how it works?

Pie in our faces

Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung surprises me today by not mentioning her chief obsession -- dessert -- once in "The Corner Table" column on the "best of 2010 in dining," but she also ignores restaurants that serve organic produce and naturally raised meat (F-1).

She did a column on food professionals' "holiday wishes," but not one on the wishes of readers, whom she is supposed to serve. Today, she expresses her own wish -- that restaurants would make her job easier by identifying their specialties, apparently so she can confine herself to reviewing their best dishes and not waste time eating anything else on the menu.

Where would that leave readers who don't order specialties? And isn't she motivated by the paper's budgetary cutbacks? 

Though Ung hasn't told readers, penny-pincher Features Director Barbara Jaeger apparently is limiting her to one guest -- instead of three -- on each of two visits to restaurants, meaning she can sample only about half the dishes she did before. So most reviews discuss a limited number of appetizers and entrees, but Ung insists on sampling four desserts at each place.

Jaeger long has denied Ung reimbursement for wine or other alcoholic beverages, though that doesn't stop the editor from running a three-year-old photo of the reviewer's chin and pudgy cheeks poised above a glass of wine.

Numbers challenged

Columnist Mike Kelly's lead paragraph on the front of Opinion today is almost word for word what appeared in the lead paragraph of the paper 22 years ago, when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown apart above Scotland. 

Twenty-two years is closer to 20 years than to 25, so why does he begin, "Almost a quarter century ago...."? He's one of the paper's chief word pushers, that's why. Just say 22 years ago and be done with it.

Thank God for Margulies

The best page in the paper today is O-4, with a review of Margulies cartoons in 2010 (and another on O-1). 

They dramatize how honest the cartoonist is in assessing Governor Christie, compared to all the apologists on the reporting and Editorial Page staffs who have done such a good public relations job for the Republican bully. Remember, he balanced the state budget on the backs of the middle and working classes in New Jersey.

Unreal estate

Since it was created by Publisher Stephen A. Borg three or four years ago, the Real Estate section has polished the image of the real estate industry, while publishing distorted "Moving Up" profiles of such communities as Paterson and Englewood, and running a feature on second homes in far off places that is of interest to only the wealthiest readers.

An exception is today's R-1 story by Staff Writer Kathleen Lynn on how a bank is trying to screw a family that has fallen on hard times.

But also on R-1, a map of Minnesota with the "Getting Away" feature substitutes St. Louis for St. Paul as the capitol.

For your entertainment

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Here is the latest comment from former Breaking News Editor Jerry Demarco on Malcolm Borg and the ascent of Stephen Borg (The Prodigal Sin) to North Jersey Media Group president and publisher. As he notes, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of anything he says, but, boy, it's so readable and entertaining -- as DeMarco does his own version of walking a tightrope across the Great Falls (photo):

"Honestly: I thought he [Malcolm Borg] looked good considering all he'd been through.

"Put yourself in his shoes, for just a minute. Down deep, you think he's happy how everything's turning out -- not just to his empire but throughout the industry that's been in his family more than a century?

"Malcolm Borg never counted on this, cause the knuckleheads at the switches never told him. For Christ's sake: Markey openly told the entire company that TR was going to "bring younger readers" back to reading newspapers.

"When your president makes a complete fool of himself, you can't keep him around much longer. So what were Mac's alternatives? Step into the breach himself? He couldn't, given his health.

"Go find a bona fide president? With what "brain trust" to help him choose one?

"Jen never wanted it. She's a lawyer (a good one, too), not a publisher. So Dad scraped the bottom of his own gene pool and gave the keys to the SL to Corey Feldman.

"The Prodigal Sin first had the weeklies to play with. He turned them into money-makers.

"So Dad, when push came to shove, went with him as a last resort -- a heartless, punchless boob who couldn't hold his old man's suspenders, who grew up in the shadow of a smarter, more popular sister. The kind of dork whose high school life must've been an unending series of wedgies.

"From there, the formula's simple: Shit rolls downhill.... Frick & Frank do what they're told. Mama Crass bitches to her immediate subordinates, then kisses ass when called to account. And a huge investment is made in Ian O'Connor -- who immediately brings the paper major sportside cred, then parlays that to greener grass.

"The hope then becomes that Klap returns to form, that the weekly reporters can be absorbed into the mainstream, and that dollars in Passaic County can be tapped.

"F&F vehemently oppose the moves; unfair to Local 12! But that's really the only hope they have, as their budgets grow smaller and smaller.

"The staff shrinks. Holes aren't filled. Everyone's told to do more with less -- when, actually, it makes them less inclined to meet that directive.

"Meanwhile, F&F run from one side of the ship to the other, trying to figure out what'll make Junior happy, instead of establishing principles that stick.

"Be sure to tell everyone how you don't vouch for the accuracy of anything I say. Then privately ask people you trust if even the slightest shred of this isn't the absolute truth."

Rare sighting in Hackensack

Image by romulusnr via Flickr

I pulled into a parking space at my polling place Tuesday afternoon and rubbed my eyes. Could that be Monsy Alvarado, the reporter assigned to cover Hackensack for The Record of Woodland Park? Judging by how little she writes about the city, could be this one of those rare times she was actually covering a story in the paper's former home?

I waved to her, then went inside to cast my vote for the school budget and three candidates for the school board. When I came out, I interrupted her conversation with a man and asked why she hasn't been covering Hackensack. She said she couldn't talk to me because she was speaking with or interviewing the man. But she said I could call her.

Today's paper carries her bare-bones, seven-paragraph story with election results, and Hackensack residents are quoted elsewhere in the paper. But there is no explanation for why two incumbents were bounced off the board.

On the front of Local, Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano's story provides absolutely no context for readers on the defeat of the budget in that city, except for reporting the mayor's last-minute campaign against the tax levy. (Last week, the Teaneck schools superintendent was ordered to withdraw a letter asking for residents' votes in support of the budget there. Go figure.)

Fabiano has done her best to ignore segregated elementary and middle schools in Englewood. Has she even updated readers on integration efforts at the high school? (A black student in the Academies@ Englewood in Dwight Morrow High School told me the other day she cannot use copiers at the school unless she brings in her own paper.)

What about the role of the many Orthodox Jews and other white residents -- who send their children to private schools, as former Publisher Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg did with Jennifer and Stephen -- in the defeat of the budget? Is Fabiano going to report the vote by ward in a follow, and get to the bottom of what happened?