A valuable lesson for all

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The danger of promising education coverage "every day," as The Record of Woodland Park has been doing for a few years, is not delivering and alienating readers, some of whom just stop reading the paper.

In the Local section today, we learn that a city of Passaic educator has applied for a grant to give every sixth-grader a laptop. A second education story was supplied by the Star-Ledger and doesn't mention Bergen, Passaic or Morris counties, The Record's circulation area.

My son is in his third year of attending public school in Hackensack, and I do not recall seeing any stories about his schools since we moved here in August 2007. Oh, wait. Isn't that the approximate time Monsy Alvarado, the Hackensack reporter, has been sidetracked on an inane, interminable investigation championed by her boss, Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes?

Has any Hackensack educator applied for a grant to give laptops to sixth- or seventh-graders in Hackensack, the former home of The Record?

The rest of the Local section has no news about Hackensack, unless you count volunteers who spruced up Friendship House in the city, or about Teaneck, Englewood, Ridgewood, Westwood or a host of other Bergen towns.

The so-called "Newstracker" feature at the bottom of L-1 inexplicably looks ahead to the sentencing of a Paterson man who killed his distant cousin. Yet, Saturday's paper didn't report any sentencings in the criminal courts of Bergen, Passaic or Morris counties -- even though Friday is sentencing day in Superior Court.

So was no one sentenced or did The Record's editors keep those stories out of the paper, as they have in the past, so there wouldn't be so much crime news to upset readers?

A Paterson woman who died in an arson fire made front-page news today, but I'll bet that was only because the editors got a spectacular photo of a non-fatal fire in another town they could run above the fold.

The features section called Better Living (not Better Eating) has the usual tips on how to carve a turkey today, but the paper has been silent so far on the merits of finding a turkey that was raised naturally, without antibiotics and animal by-products, or one that hasn't been bred to have a broad breast of tasteless white meat.

'Stupid' food coverage

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If you live in Hackensack or many other towns in Bergen County, you stopped long ago relying on The Record for municipal news. In the more than two years since I moved to River City, which was the onetime local newspaper's home for more than 110 years, I can't recall seeing a story about what the City Council did the night before.

You just have to drive by the paper's landmark building at 150 River St. and count the relatively few cars in the sprawling parking lot to realize The Record has virtually abandoned the city, moving printing and staff as far as 30 miles away. The consolation prize for local news hounds is the copy of a low-quality weekly called the Hackensack Chronicle that is delivered with the daily paper on Fridays. (The Chronicle is also owned by the powerful North Jersey Media Group.)

In The Record's Local news section today, I count four stories from Paterson, two from Wayne and one each from Kinnelon, Clifton, Morris County and Montclair (total of 10 stories). That's twice the number of  Bergen stories in the paper that missed landing in my Hackensack driveway.

In Better Living, food coverage is a 15-minute recipe from the Miami Herald, a list of cooking classes and a highly promotional, staff-written story about a new cookbook by a chef from Cleveland.
 
Does anyone pay $109 to learn how to cook Thai food? For that money, a family of three (two adults and a child) could have two great meals at Wondee's, the best Thai place in Hackensack. The recipe, unlike many the paper runs, looks like you might just be able to prepare the meal in about 15 minutes.

But of what value to readers is the story about the chef's book? This story, written by restaurant reviewer Elisa Ung, is just another in a series of gushing pieces about so-called celebrity chefs. Recall the ringing endorsement Ung gave Bobby Flay (photo top) when he opened a hamburger restaurant in Paramus -- without mentioning that the nail-biting Flay put profits before his customers' well-being by settling for beef raised with antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products.


It's no wonder Eric Levin, senior editor of New Jersey Monthly magazine, has called The Record's food coverage "stupid."

Short on Bergen County news

The Record today is the usual disappointment, short on local news and food coverage, but with a large patch of the front page devoted to the first game of the World Series.

A Page 1 tease, "Doc says defendant was too fat to kill," is the paper's way of addressing the obesity epidemic, which it has avoided reporting for years outside of an annual story saying it is getting worse all the time.

On A-4, a story carries a headline, "Number of trucks expected to soar on roads in Morris County," but the story doesn't mention The Record's Mercedes-Benz delivery trucks have been wearing ruts in Route 80 for a few years now, picking up the freshly printed edition at its Rockaway Township plant and returning to Hackensack, the newspaper's former home.

On A-10, a number of letters to the editor condemn the decision to endorse John Corzine for another term as governor, and readers point out the editorial seemed back-handed, because it omitted his accomplishments in office. On at least a couple of occasions recently, Record stories have reported that the governor raised taxes, but left out an important distinction: the higher levies are only on the rich.

The Local section has another story about Eastside High in Paterson, but I have read nothing about Hackensack High School in the more than two years I have lived in River City. The section has seven stories about Passaic County towns, only five about Bergen towns, plus a murder trial, political column, an expanded obituary and a story about Xanadu.

The local staff has struggled for years to fill the paper with Bergen news, especially when there were two separate editions: one for Bergen County, the other for Passaic and Morris counties. Now, there seems to be only one edition and the lack of local Bergen news is pathetic and a slap in the face to readers.

In Better Living, there is no food news, with the exception of an Atlantic City feature about a celebrity chef   judging a cooking competition and a promotion for Friday's restaurant review.