Monsy Alvarado's new burden

Image via Wikipedia

For about two years, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado was sidelined to work on the so-called investigation of Michael Mordaga, the well-regarded Hackensack detective who went on to become chief of detectives for the Bergen County prosecutor.

A single story, with the bylines of Alvarado and other staffers, appeared Dec. 16. It not only wasn't good enough for Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park, but the reporters had to resort to guilt by association to get it published at all. Mordaga's name didn't even appear in the lead paragraph and his alleged conflict had ended in February 2007.

Now, it seems, Alvarado has a new burden from the head of the local news assignment desk, Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, who somehow kept her job even after pursuing the vendetta against Mordaga for nearly three years, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries. Sykes' pal, Jean Rimbach, the lead reporter on the Mordaga project, had not had a byline for two years.

Alvarado's new assignment from Sykes, it seems, is covering the lawsuits filed against Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa and the disciplinary hearings of officers who have dared to challenge their boss. In the process, she has ignored  just about all the other news about Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years. On at least two occasions in the past 18 months, her byline has not appeared for more than a month at a time.

Today, Alvarado reports, an attorney for one of the officers has asked the county prosecutor to investigate Zisa. Alvarado apparently has never asked the mayor or City Council why they haven't suspended Zisa or taken any other action in the many months since the suits were filed, including allegations he used officers to take care of private matters. Maybe bulldog Sykes picked the wrong target for her so-called investigation. Or was Mordaga just another laughing matter? Does Publisher Stephen A. Borg have anything to say about this?


The Zisa story leads Local today, but you'll also find a superficial story on downtown improvement districts by Staff Writer Karen Sudol, who ignores Hackensack altogether, not even reporting the reason the head of that district was fired last June. She also ignores the closing of several restaurants in Englewood's district, including Panera Bread and Cosi.

The front page today is dominated by Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax's long piece under the headline, "Haiti's long road." He spent maybe a week in Haiti in late January and early February, but Local hasn't  had a Teaneck story since Jan. 23. So, it's "Teaneck's long road."

You'll find more reporting exploits in Opinion, where Columnist Jersey Mike Kelly boasts of all the risks he took when he covered 9/11. His many columns since then have been mostly covering his ass.

The sickos love Columnist Mike Kelly

If you read some of the online comments on the pathetic column by Jersey Mike Kelly in The Record of Woodland Park today, you realize what a sick readership he has. Click on the following link:
Rochelle Park gadfly

The amateur hour

One lavishly-illustrated Page 1 story today is nothing more than a series of strung-together quotes from Jets fans that was probably written a few days ago, before airhead reporter John Brennan left for Indianapolis. Two "filler" stories in the Local section -- one about bears, the other about changing the archaic freeholder title -- are promoted on the front page.

Do reporters at The Record of Woodland Park write more stories about bears and deer than about the people of Hackensaack, where the paper was founded in 1895? It seems likely they do, and I'm sure head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes promotes the hunting stories as "local news." You can just hear her honeyed, chuckling voice importuning the hapless layout editor about the "cute" photo of a bear she has in her bag of tricks.

Image via Wikipedia

Meanwhile, you'll search in vain for news of Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other Bergen County towns, as the news-coverage focus shifted long ago to the west with the the move of the former Hackensack daily to Passaic County and printing of the paper to Morris County. More evidence of that is the entire half page devoted to the schools superintendent in Paterson. And the obituary of a Tenafly native who battled a brain tumor would have been a far better choice for the bottom of L-1 than a "Newstracker" item on the delay of a civil trial.

In Business,  shame on Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais for equating his mysterious French traffic violation with red-light cameras being installed in North Jersey. DeMarrais joins Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski in dissing the cameras, without acknowledging violators are sent a photo of their vehicle and license plate. DeMarrais wastes precious space on his own selfish interests, rather than asking state officials about the bureaucracy homeowners have to fight to get solar panels installed, a two-year-plus process.

Image via Wikipedia

And when will Business reporters stop writing such promotional stories? The owners of a charter-jet company at Teterboro Airport that caters to the rich are never even asked to address the tremendous noise they generate, impacting the quality of life for residents of Hackensack and other towns. The multimillionaire owner of the first Smashburger franchise in North Jersey is allowed to boast about the "quality of the meat" he serves without backing that up with details. The truth is his meat probably comes from cattle raised on antibiotics and growth hormones, and fed animal byproducts -- bits of dead animals -- to boost his bottom line.


In Better Living, readers are denied consumer-oriented stories about restaurants and getting our kids to eat healthy food, in favor of stories about the home lives of chefs and owners planning their second restaurants. It turns out the "culinary pros" really don't know anything more than you or I about kids' eating habits, and the restaurant owners column is pure promotion, one in a long series by Elisa Ung, who is supposed to speak for restaurant-goers.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

In Opinion, tired Columnist Jersey Mike Kelly fires new salvos at Jon Corzine's single term as governor, but ignores how the state Legislature and the pay-to-play and home-rule systems blocked much of what he wanted to accomplish.