Editorial is weeks overdue

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 Nearly four weeks after a massive earthquake hit Haiti, the editorial page of The Record of Woodland Park condemns "a vacuum of authority [that] is encouraging chaos and slowing the flow of supplies needed to prevent more deaths."

But this was evident weeks ago. Why did Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin finally turn away from preening in front of a mirror and focus on the humanitarian crisis in Haiti?

The editorial appears now, because the newspaper -- after much hesitation -- sent two staffers there, and several paragraphs on Page O-2 today are devoted to what they reported. Does The Record really care about Haiti or is it interested only in promoting its feeble news coverage?

The thinnest of papers

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One thing that jumped out at me after looking over today's thin paper is continued -- even redundant -- coverage of everywhere except Hackensack, Teaneck and Engelwood, the three most diverse towns in The Record of Woodland Park's circulation area.

Do readers really need a second, detailed sob story about wealthy Ridgewood's downtown (photo) on the front of the Local section? What about Cedar Lane merchants and Palisade Avenue merchants and the businesses on Main Street in Hackensack -- the last hit particularly hard by the absence of hundreds of newspaper employees scattered to the wind by the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group?

At least this Ridgewood story tells how greedy officials raised parking meter rates -- a crucial detail left out of the previous story, as we learned from outraged letters to the editor. Was this story intended to correct the earlier story, which I believe ran several months ago, without making the omission more obvious?

On Page 1, I read over a puzzling sentence a couple of times before I realized the news copy editor and the desk supervisor just passed it over on autopilot. In the guilty plea of a hedge fund manager, Staff Writer Andrew Tangel wrote the defendant "didn't face the roughly 40 people in court." Duh. Of course, anyone who has attended a court hearing knows the defendant faces the judge -- not the audience -- but in a sense still comes face-to-face with his accusers. What was the point of saying he didn't "face" the FBI agent, attorneys and investors? It only confuses readers. To add insult to injury, a fact box with a photo of the moron is topped with the words, "Day in court," a phrase usually associated with hard-pressed plaintiffs, not greedy, thieving financiers.

A story promoted on the front page under the headline, "Health care bill could raise costs," reveals that 33 million uninsured Americans would finally be covered. Wouldn't that add to our health-care expenses? The story makes it sound controversial, instead of just common sense.

The Business, Editorial and Better Living pages are throwaways today.


See earlier post: "A modest proposal"

CJR to Hackensack: Drop dead!

Columbia Journalism Review, one of the nation's chief media watchdogs, has expressed no interest in how The Record of Woodland Park is trying to conceal its abandonment of  Hackensack, where it was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years.

I first proposed such a story in a mid-October e-mail to Michael Hoyt, CJR's executive editor, who responded: "Let us throw this in the hopper and consider." Hopper, it turns out, is a euphemism for shit can. Hoyt worked at The Record from 1977-80, and his wife, Mary Ellen Schoonmaker, recently retired after a long editorial career with the newspaper.

I contacted Hoyt a few days ago to propose the story again, this time also asking him to report the start up of "Eye on The Record."

In a Dec. 2 e-mail, he wrote: "We're not planning anything on The Record's move (which was a while ago) or your blog at this time. We get a lot of decent story pitches and ideas and we have to choose; this one did not jump at us, that's all." He also rejected my contention that his wife's "loyalty" to the paper played a role in his decision. (The photo shows Columbia University's journalism building just across the Hudson.)

The Record completed the move of virtually all of its editorial staff out of Hackensack earlier this year -- many, many months before the timetable set by Publisher Stephen A. Borg in a story that appeared in the Buisness section on Feb. 21, 2008. Printing of  The Record and Herald News was moved to Rockaway Township in October 2006, about four months after Borg took over. Yet, the paper's address is still listed on Page A-2 every day as 150 River St. in Hackensack, the same address where it is allegedly "published daily."

The Record, Herald News and the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group now are headquartered at 1 Garret Mountain Plaza, Woodland Park.



http://www.cjr.org/

Borgs to Hackensack: Drop dead!

The Record's landmark building at 150 River St. in Hackensack is largely empty, just as the news pages carry little Hackensack news. Yet the Borgs -- Malcolm, Stephen and Jennifer -- try to hide how they've abandoned Hackensack readers and residents by continuing to list the paper's address on Page 2 every day as 150 River St., just under "The Trusted Local Source."

The former Hackensack daily continues to downplay the state's financial problems by putting fluff on the front page. Today's story about college textbooks completely ignores how greedy publishers and bookstores gouge students shamelessly, and should have run before the semester started.

On Page A-10, a letter to the editor praises the owner of Harley's on River Street in Hackensack for serving 150 to 200 Thanksgiving meals to the homeless, a story I didn't see in The Record. Now that it has moved to Woodland Park, why doesn't the newspaper use its largely empty landmark building several blocks from Harley's as a food pantry while the Borgs' North Jersey Media Group looks for buyers?

"What this country needs is more people like Pat Harley," the letter writer says. Can we put the young, wealthy NJMG President and Publisher Stephen A. Borg in that category, or will he be trading up soon to a $7 million to $8 million mansion from his $3.65 million estate in Tenafly?

You know there is little news in the Local section today by how large the paper ran a moody, holiday photo on the front. You certainly won't find any education or municipal or development news about Hackensack. But you will find a story about Jersey City.

If you doubt the levels of news copy editing and reporting have declined drastically at The Record, just check out the lead story on the first Business page:

N.J. companies taking flight

Recession, costs force CEOs

to relocate headquarters

But the story is about a study and doesn't name a single company that left New Jersey. Thanks to Staff Writer Hugh R. Morley and the anonymous copy editor who wrote the headline, it serves as tremendous publicity for a Princeton firm that helps companies relocate.

How to bury the real news

The Record of Woodland Park has been defending the status quo for decades, especially when it comes to home rule -- the small-town, local-government system that gave us the highest property taxes in the nation. Of course, the newspaper is trying to hold onto its readers, most of whom live in predominantly white towns that will fight to the death to defend their neighborhood schools.

So what do the editors do with a new poll showing that "a majority of New Jersey voters overwhelmingly support merging their school districts and local governments with neighboring ones to lower ... record-high property taxes"?

Today, they shoved the story inside, to Page A-4, and wasted almost the entire front page on a huge holiday travel graphic and a second story on a possible gas-tax hike with a lead paragraph that is both poorly constructed and inaccurate.

Since Frank Scandale took over as editor, The Record has been blaming high property taxes on the healthy salaries won by police officers and teachers. Under the previous editor, Vivian Waixel, the local staff spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours putting together a series of stories dramatizing just how expensive all these small, municipal governments are -- then ran the stories under an apologetic editor's note assuring readers the newspaper wasn't going to try to change the system.

I wonder what the former Hackensack daily is going to do when Chris Christie takes office as governor? Faced with a projected $8 billion deficit, he has been making pointed comments on the urgent need for local-government consolidation. But Christie hasn't been getting much Page 1 play in The Record since he was elected. And consolidation proposals have been soundly rejected time and again in Bergen County.

The Page 1 story by Tom Davis on the possible federal gas-tax hike is cast negatively -- "drivers may have to pay more" -- and not positively: that it will improve mass transit and ease highway congestion. It seems the newspaper's two transportation writers, Davis and Karen Rouse, and its transportation columnist, Road Warrior John Cichowski, are anti-mass transit.


Before The Record moved its newsroom from Hackensack to Woodland Park, all three were too lazy to cross River Street to the bus transfer station and look at or even ride the decrepit NJ Transit buses patronized mostly by minorities -- a stark contrast to the shiny new buses purchased for commuters to Manhattan. Rouse, handpicked by Editor Scandale from his old paper in Denver, made an excuse week after week about why she couldn't take the time to ride the rickety, wheezing No. 780 bus between Englewood and Passaic.

That's in keeping with a long-standing ban on any stories reporting on the quality of bus and rail service in North Jersey. Nor have we seen any stories on some of the new NJ Transit buses that have begun appearing on local routes. I guess the agency hasn't put out a news release yet.

Who in the world is Al Frech of Wayne? A large portion of the editorial page (A-18) is devoted to his rant about health-care reform and an attack on Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., but Frech is the only one of the opinion writers today who is not identified. It just says "lives in Wayne," as if that confers expert status.

The Local section finally has some news from Teaneck and Hackensack, but is silent for another day about Englewood, Englewood Cliffs and Leonia, the beat of  hibernating reporter Giovanna Fabiano.

The Record's lazy editors love to run stories from other newspapers, such as the Miami Herald piece on Page F-4 about the new beaujolias wine from France. The price of a bottle from producer Georges Duboeuf is listed as $10. But you won't see anything about being able to find the same wine for under $8 in North Jersey.

Not much to read

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I was up about 7:30 this morning, had some juice and, while my coffee brewed, went out in my bath robe to fetch The Record of Woodland Park. By 8, I had finished "reading" the former Hackensack daily.

OK. It took a little longer to leaf through the paper, scan the headlines and mutter, Who cares?

The Local section, as usual, was devoid of any education or other news about the core Bergen towns of Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood, highly diverse communities where readership is high. (Circulation figures for The Record now include the Herald News, dubbed an "edition" of the larger paper, to hide from advertisers how many readers have abandoned The Record.)

True, as a former employee, I get a preferential subscription rate, but as a resident of Hackensack, even the 13 to 14 cents a copy I pay may not be worth it. And the shift away from covering the core Bergen towns began long before the newspaper moved its newsroom this year from Hackensack to Woodland Park, now also the home of North Jersey Media Group, which publishes the two daily newspapers.

Has anyone calculated the added pollution and the fuel wasted by the gas guzzlers driven by Stephen and Jennifer Borg, the siblings who now run NJMG, as they commute to Woodland Park, or by the fleet of Mercedes-Benz delivery trucks tearing up Route 80 between Rockaway Township, where the papers are printed, and Bergen County? The young Borgs certainly earn enough to trade in their SUVs for far more efficient hybrids, but do they care enough about the planet?

The rest of The Record today includes a lot of political news, including a bewildering, information-less story on Page A-4 supplied by the Star-Ledger on the change of guard in the state Senate and Assembly. I read the story, but understand nothing about what this means to me and others. What a waste of space.

Hackensack news drought ends

Lo and behold. After a 35-day drought, a story about Hackensack appears today in the Local section of The Record, which was founded there in 1895 and prospered for more than 110 years before abandoning the city for bucolic Woodland Park.

As stories go, this one isn't much -- only a sidebar to a larger piece about greater demand at food pantries, a phenomenon the paper has reported on a few times a year for more than a decade. Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado emerges out of her cocoon briefly to tell us about a food drive by police, just about the only city agency she wrote about before the latest dry spell (occasional police and fire news doesn't count).

Another thing I noticed about today's paper is a missing Marketplace column in Better Living, and that could mean the paper is reducing its already unfocused and inadequate food coverage.

The lack of Hackensack municipal coverage is startling for a newspaper that made its reputation on covering local news. Is Monsy even working in Hackensack? I drove through the parking lot of 150 River St., The Record's landmark building, about two weeks ago and counted maybe a dozen cars belonging to staffers, plus a bunch of unsold Toyotas from the dealer down the street.

I looked up the story that ran in The Record on Feb. 21, 2008, quoting North Jersey Media Group President Stephen A. Borg and Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg, his sister, on the future of the 300,000-square-foot building.

Stephen Borg acknowledged printing of The Record and Herald News was moved to Rockaway Township in October 2006, about four months after he took over. He said the expected time frame to vacate the "home of The Record" was "two to three years," so the earliest date would have been this coming February. Borg added he preferred to stay in Bergen County. In fact, most of the staff vamoosed earlier this year, the bulk of them to Passaic and Morris counties.

Jennifer Borg was quoted in early 2008 as saying the company "wishes" to stay in Hackensack, "if possible." Really?


"We really want to do what's right for the city and what's right for the county," she added. "We're very mindful of having the city's interests at heart."

Really? Well, what really happened? NJMG moved the Borg siblings and its headquarters to Woodland Park and The Record moved its newsroom to the same Garret Mountain building, joining the Herald News. Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg was left behind to preside over a largely empty building. Really? Really.

Doesn't what was said and what was done widen the NJMG credibility gap even further?

Editors who sing for their supper

A newspaper is only as good as its local assignment desk, those editors who largely determine the content of the paper by virtue of assigning reporters to cover certain stories. I had a lot of time to observe The Record's assignment desk when I worked there as a news copy editor for nearly two decades.

Copy editors are a lot like Toyota mechanics: Toyotas may have a reputation for reliability, but the mechanics see all the broken ones. The Record may have a good reputation, too, but the copy editors see all  the broken stories -- stories that have been promoted, edited and approved by those lazy assignment editors.

Here is a ditty I wrote about six or seven years ago that reflects my experience with assignment editors starting in September 1989, when I became a copy editor after 10 years as a reporter at The Record.

When I wrote this song, the newsroom was still in Hackensack and the assignment desk was run by Deirdre Sykes, an immovable force whose shrieks and peals of laughter echoed across the room late every weekday afternoon -- no matter how grim the news that day -- prompting homicidal thoughts in nearby staffers.

SONG OF THE ASSIGNMENT EDITORS

    We sit on our fat asses to scan the 

competing papers,
   
    Then order out for linguini, oil, garlic and capers;
   
    We run a newsroom that can’t write straight,
   
    And our copy’s arrival is frequently late;
   
    We can’t write a nut graf and we’re lousy at math,
   
    So we avoid reporting on community wrath;
   
    Challenge authority?
   
    No thanks. That’s not our priority!
   
    We assign reporters to cover lots of stories,
                           
    Rapes, council meetings, train wrecks, but never Tories;  


    Our unsteady publisher hits the sauce each and every day,
   
    So his attitude toward probing local news coverage is, 

What the hey!

   
    Our newsroom is busy, it’s often in a tizzy,
   
    With editors, photographers, reporters and graphics people 

running to and fro,
   
    Yet we’re just a bunch of journalism hos.
   

Taking Bergen out of The Bergen Record

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The Record today is another edition with too much Passaic County news for this Hackensack resident, especially from a paper that is still known in many circles as The Bergen Record.

The biggest element on Page 1 reports that on Dec. 1, Passaic County officials will become the first in New Jersey to use a $3 surcharge on mortgage, deed and foreclosure actions to provide housing for the homeless. I still have not seen a story in the former Hackensack daily about the completion of a new homeless shelter only a few blocks from the paper's old headquarters.

In the Local section, there is more Passaic County news: five stories on Pages L-1, L-2 and L-3. A story about a jewelry heist in Englewood leads the section, but never explains why the store was closed around 12:30 in the afternoon on Wednesday. Did the owner go to lunch? That would be an expensive lunch. For Hackensack news, we have the opening of a health center for the indigent by the medical writer, Lindy Washburn.

Better Living continues the boycott of food news on Thursdays, despite the paper's pledge to provide such coverage "every day."

My critics say I complain too much and do not give The Record "props when deserved." The problem is that even when the paper does something right, it could have been done so much better. It seems that the incompetent editors are totally submissive to Publisher Stephen A. Borg, whose "good-enough" philosophy has dumbed down the paper and destroyed its reputation as an aggressive local news and advertising presence.

It is poorly researched, poorly written and poorly edited, and many reporters can't even seem to spell people's names correctly or get the correct name, as can be seen by the correction on A-2 today.

And how can anyone minimize the virtual abandonment of Hackensack -- where The Record was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years -- by moving printing of the paper and most of the editorial staff to other counties? Hackensack is now out of sight and out of mind.

The wealthy Borgs apparently have never informed readers or advertisers about the moves and continue to perpetuate a myth by stating on Page A-2 every day that The Record is "published daily by [the Borg family's] North Jersey Media Group at 150 River St., Hackensack, N.J." By the way, NJMG is listed as the 8th-largest family business in the state -- with 1,231 employees -- by NJBIZ.com.

We can only  imagine the economic impact on struggling Main Street merchants after hundreds of press people, reporters, editors and so forth decamped, so the Borgs can try to make a killing on selling the landmark River Street building and its many surrounding acres.

In place of local news coverage, we're given Stephen Borg's marketing slogans, such as the one under the masthead every day: "The trusted local source."  Indeed, The Record in so many ways has repudiated its former slogan: "Friend of the people it serves."

'Eye on The Record' seeks help from ACLU

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Eye on The Record has appealed to the American Civil Liberties Union in Newark for help in fighting The Record's attempts to shut down this blog. 

Last week, the newspaper's attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter to my attorney, Joshua L. "Josh" Weiner in Morristown.

I filed a complaint on Saturday, asking the ACLU to represent me or to assist my lawyer in defending my free-speech rights, and to help me publicize the newspaper's threats against me and the blog.

The Borg family, owner of North Jersey Media Group, and editors of The Record jealously guard their rights to publish what they want, but deny those same rights to others.

Nothing special on this Sunday

The Sunday edition of The Record once was special, but when you take a look at today's paper, you'll search in vain for news of your town's municipal affairs, especially if you live in the core towns of Englewood, Teaneck and Hackensack, the paper's home for more than 110 years. This from a newspaper that had been long praised for its local news coverage.

The Local news section is a measly six pages. This saves newsprint, but cheats readers. If you need evidence the editors and reporters didn't generate enough local news, take a look at how big they ran the photo on Page L-3 with the continuation of a stabbing story, which leads the section. The photo, of cops with evidence, is clearly filler, to take the place of stories that were never assigned or written.

On Page 1, the main element is a long story on how Boy Scout troops are searching for more Hispanic recruits. This reminds me of a time at The Record when it was unlikely a minority would get on the front page without committing a major crime.

That's not as exaggerated as it might sound. Early in his tenure, Editor Frank Scandale had to order municipal reporters to find and write a non-crime story about minorities in our circulation area at least once a month.

After virtually ignoring for at least two years how the food she writes about has been raised or grown, restaurant reviewer Elisa Ung has a column on the Better Living front today listing places that serve organic items, wild fish or meat and poultry free of antibiotics. She lists five eating places in all of North Jersey.

This past Friday, her restaurant review displayed no such sensibility. She is an inconsistent voice for the consumer. She has spent far more time obsessing over the quality of desserts she has encountered in her reviewing and feature stories.

The Record could be of even more service to readers by listing supermarkets that sell this kind of food, but that might run afoul of the drive for advertising revenue.

Kudos to Your Money's Worth columnist Kevin DeMarrais, one of the experienced staffers who wasn't shown the door during restructuring of The Record and Herald News in 2008. On the Business section front today, he tells readers how they can cut their home-heating oil and gas bills

Unfortunately, the business news staff has so far ignored the fleet of AIG  jets at Teterboro Airport, among the noisy aircraft that have such an impact on many Bergen County residents' quality of life. It would be interesting to know how much the company wastes on the fleet after helping to bring the economy to the brink and then taking billions in federal bail-out money. If all the AIG executives flew commercial, it might help revive the airline industry.

The food-phobic travel editor

Page 1 of The Record today is filled with hard news, which is not always the case. The newspaper loves putting sports and infrastructure stories all over the front. Readers may not know that a story, no matter how important, will not be assigned to the central element of the page unless it has a great photo (or graphic, as in the algebra-test story today). In Record parlance, that story is "the patch."

On Page A-8, a story about a protest by commercial fishermen is silent on whether the new rules will affect New Jersey fishing ports.

A letter to the editor on A-11 claims "police salaries are out of control." The Record has published a number of stories in recent years, blaming high police and teacher salaries for the financial troubles of many towns. But it has been silent for the past decade on the incredible inefficiencies of home rule. Does Bergen County need 70 police chiefs, and police and fire departments; almost as many superintendents of schools and Departments of Public Works, and 100 to 200 neighborhood schools? Aren't they the reason property taxes are so high?

The Local section has no municipal news from diverse Teaneck, Hackensack and Englewood.

Better Living  has no food coverage, which is the case on most Saturdays, unless you count the stories on Halloween candy.

The Sunday Travel section -- delivered with the Saturday paper -- is a collector's item. It actually carries a story about restaurants (in New Orleans). Many travel sections are filled with stories about food, a big reason many people travel, but not The Record's section.

Have readers noticed the paper has had no major articles about travel in South Korea in many, many years? It's believed The Record's travel editor -- an animal lover -- is horrified by the notion  that some South Koreans allegedly eat dogs and won't run any stories about South Korea. This same editor traveled to Africa to help animals -- not people.

The story about New Orleans restaurants confines itself to the French Quarter, ignoring all the great neighborhood places, including Li'l Dizzy's Cafe (shrimp and grits) and Parkway Bakery (overstuffed po' boy sandwiches). It also provides no strategy for avoiding all the artery-clogging butter and cream in creole food, such as eating at one of the great Vietnamese places in or near the city.

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'The fish stinks from the head down'

Frank Scandale was named editor of The Record in 2001 after he helped the Denver Post win a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. He was the latest out-of-town editor hired to remake the Hackensack daily. (He grew up in Westfield and worked at the Elizabeth Daily Journal, both outside The Record's circulation area.)

Scandale replaced Vivian Waixel, a Queens native who had worked her way up through the ranks and who I believe was the first woman to become editor. She was named executive editor of The Record and Herald News. Eventually, she left after being offered an office in a converted storage closet with a large window on the Hackensack newsroom.

When he was tested by 9/11, Scandale took part in the bone-headed decision by editors to relegate one of the most powerful images captured by a photographer that day to a back page to save the paper money. (See post, "Major detour on the road to a Pulitzer Prize.")

His reign as editor has been marked by increasing tension and animosity between dayside reporters and editors such as himself  and the nightside staff of news, layout and copy editors, who have been frozen out of decision-making and handcuffed for trying to improve news stories written by an increasingly inexperienced staff. For this reason alone, he should of been replaced long ago. But there is more:

1. He launched news and feature coverage of 20-year-olds in order to win new readers,  ignoring young people's addiction to the computer and that the baby boomers are the ones who have the money to patronize advertisers. In 2006, Publisher Stephen A. Borg called this initiative a "failed strategy."
2. He banned local news stories about one town from the front page, an edict that apparently still stands.
3. He did little to boost the number of minorities in the newsroom (before The Record's and Herald  News' staffs were merged), but did hire three from his old newspaper. And his third managing editor, Frank Burgos, is Hispanic. Still, one black editor left, the paper's only black columnist was fired and the paper's only Latino columnist was told to return exclusively to reporting, leading to his eventual departure.
4. He failed to stand up for his newsroom workers after money for ergonomic furniture was taken out of the budget year after year. Yet enough money was found to buy a dozen or so new, ergonomic desks, chairs and computers for the digital news group, which puts out The Record's online edition, and they were placed smack in the middle of the Hackensack newsroom for all to envy as they continued to use and be injured by furniture dating to the typewriter era.
5. He was rumored to have taken to lunch on separate occasions two of the most attractive young women on the reporting staff. If that is true, was it appropriate for an older editor to have lunch with a young female reporter? Or would a group setting have been wiser, especially in view of  the sexual harassment of women in the newsroom that Scandale and other editors, notably head assignment editor Deirdre Sykes, had long tolerated?  It got so bad at one point that the supervisor of  news clerks stopped hiring young women for the job.

I  have always heard about a Sicilian saying, "The fish stinks from the head down." (It is so appropriate here, given Scandale's Italian heritage.) Now, it's time for The Record to lop off the head and go fishing for a new editor.

Wasting the front page on sports

As has been the practice on too many days in recent years, a big part of  The Record's front page today is wasted on a sports story.

When I was still there, Editor Frank Scandale, at a staff meeting, shared the results of the latest reader survey. What has stuck in my mind is that readers listed sports in 12th spot among what they wanted to see most in the paper. But before and since, sports often dominates Page 1.

You can almost imagine Scandale and the other jocks among the male editors slapping each other on the ass at the end of the afternoon news meeting, which determines the "play" of stories.

Today's Page 1 story, which continues onto more than a half page inside, concerns a ticket stub from a 1923 World Series game at Yankee Stadium. Unfortunately, Staff Writer John Brennan fails to say how much the ticket cost anywhere in this unusually long story. You have to squint at a photo to barely make out the price.

A story on A-4 reports that Governor Corzine again has outspent his opponents by a wide margin. This is news? As far as I know, The Record has never examined a system that bars everyone but the rich from running for county, statewide and nationwide office. In fact, it's lack of investigation on this issue is tantamount to supporting a system corrupted by money.

A letter to the editor on A-12 seems to draw a comparison between former Republican Gov. Christie Whitman and another (Chris) Christie, the lawyer and former prosecutor who is the Republican candidate running against Corzine. Have The Record's reporters drawn that parallel before?

Whitman defeated the incumbent, Democrat Jim Florio, by promising to cut taxes drastically, then had to loot the pension fund of state workers and borrow heavily, according to the letter, which warns readers to be wary of "politicians who yell about our high taxes."

On another aspect of the campaign, The Record has criticized the governor for mentioning Chris Christie's "weight." But the paper hasn't asked whether as governor, Christie would serve as a good example to both children and adults during the obesity epidemic (another subject the paper does its best to ignore).

The Local section contains no news of Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood, the three most diverse towns in the paper's circulation area. Or Ridgewood. Or Wayne.

In Better Living, on F-2, we read about an "authentic" Greek place that serves burgers, mozzarella sticks and Buffalo wings. I and many other North Jerseyans shop frequently at Korean markets, but an item about Korean black garlic lists no Korean store that stocks it.

These two food reports, an illustrated recipe and a story about wine ($12 a bottle and higher) are all the newspaper could muster on a Wednesday, when readers in the past could feast on an entire Food section.

The Food section was dropped by Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who promised readers food coverage "every day." Unfortunately, despite an occasional house ad touting "every day" food news, there is no food coverage on Thursdays and a vast majority of Saturdays. Monday's coverage usually consists of a single recipe for vegetarians.

Hurting the newspaper's credibility

Omissions -- intentional or otherwise -- damage the credibility of The Record and everyone associated with it, from its wealthy, young publisher to its low-paid news clerks. In newspaper lingo, these are called "holes."

Leafing through Tuesday's paper, I found an editorial on Page A-10 that urges residents of Woodland Park to vote next month to change its name back to West Paterson. No mention is made of The Record having moved almost all of its staff out of Hackensack to a building in Woodland Park, where its sister daily paper, the Herald News, is located, and to other offices. Right now, it's The Record of Woodland Park, but could become The Record of West Paterson.

On Page L-10, in business news, there's no mention in the Start-Ups column of whether the sea salt being promoted contains iodine, a necessary nutrient.

On Page L-11, also in business news, a story about rapidly declining newspaper circulation devotes three of the 10 paragraphs to The Record's circulation figures and what Publisher Stephen A. Borg says the paper is doing to bolster daily and Sunday circulation, which determines the rates the paper can charge advertisers. What's not mentioned is that circulation figures listed for The Record include the Herald News, which was made an edition of The Record a few years ago to bolster the then-Hackensack daily's dramatic drop in readership.

In the Better Living section, on Page F-1, 2 and 3, a staff written story on Jewish deli maven David Sax and a so-called 15-minute pork-chop recipe from the Chicago Tribune fail to discuss whether any of the meat was raised on factory farms with antibiotics, growth hormones or animal byproducts (bits of dead animals and kitchen scraps), or whether the hot dogs contain preservatives linked to cancer.

Shameless plug: The Record's food coverage rarely mentions these matters, but you can find them discussed extensively in my other blog, "Do You Really Know What You're Eating" at blogspot.com.


Coming soon: Did The Record blow a Pulitzer Prize on 9/11?