Readers find little under the tree from the newsroom

The elegant bell tower of St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church on Lodi Street in Hackensack, where services are held in English, Italian and Spanish, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The Record's entire front page today looks back, not forward.

The major elements on Page 1 are the editors' way of saying they are far more fascinated with the past than with imagining what our future could be.

Two of the three stories are about NJ Transit and the Port Authority, but there is nothing here for commuters hoping for improvements in mass transit that could help relieve worsening traffic congestion.

This is triumph?

The photo package celebrates "North Jersey's triumphs [and] tributes of 2013."

Is that it? Is that the best North Jersey did?

The big photos show a high school football player, a singer who didn't win "The Voice" and the manager of a Moonachie restaurant that reopened after being destroyed by Superstorm Sandy (A-1).

View from Ridgewood

Don't miss the silly editorial on A-22 or the letter from Bob Hutton, a well-off Ridgewood resident who does a good imitation of being a Tea Party crackpot.

Hutton calls "taxation ... a redistribution of wealth."

Let's see. Property taxes go to pay for schools, police and fire protection; garbage pick-up and, if you live outside Hackensack, street paving.

How is that a redistribution of wealth?

The truth is Governor Christie broke the promise he made during the 2009 campaign to lower local property taxes, and he's made a mess of state finances by, among other things, refusing to tax millionaires.

More on the rich

The Local section today brings us yet another story about the nasty public battle between millionaires over the huge Hudson News inheritance.

Staff Writer Kibret Markos is true to his background as a lawyer, giving readers a tedious legal lesson as part of his overlong story on a trial that started in September, but has roots in an action filed in 2008 (L-1).

Markos and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza have put so much time and effort into covering this case they've ignored a surge in age-discrimination lawsuits and just about everything else going on at the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.


Dismiss columnists

When is someone going to tell Bill Ervolino that his funny stand-up routine doesn't translate into text, and that readers are sick and tired of endless stories about his parents on Long Island (BL-3)?

Readers would really have something to celebrate, if The Record of Woodland Park dismisses Ervolino and just about every other white male columnist -- Mike Kelly, the error-prone John Cichowski, Charles Stile et al. -- and gave us fresh voices in the new year.

A not-so-super scramble for news

Image via Wikipedia
This photo of the Broadway train station in Fair Lawn wasn't taken today, but it probably reflects the large number of hard-partying Giants fans who slept in this morning.

For the Giants, that's a wrap -- literally.


The Record's editors today wrapped a full-page photo of winning Quarterback Eli Manning around the main news section, concealing a second front page with news for the majority of readers who don't know or care who won the Super Bowl on Sunday.


Even if readers watched the game on TV, they certainly have no interest in reading every precious word about what happened from the paper's lame sports writers and columnists.


Once you turn the Manning photo page, you quickly realize the editors scrambled to fill the second Page 1 with North Jersey or New Jersey news, and failed miserably.


Breaking Pittsburgh news


Look at the size of that A-1 photo from Pittsburgh, clearly blown up to fill space. It's hard to believe there was no Occupy Movement news closer to home.


The lead story is a report on the Democrats who are stepping in for cowardly Rep. Steve Rothman, D- Fair Lawn, and preparing to take on and defeat Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, one of Congress' most conservative members.


The third major element on the page reports on churches that are trying to "shrink the educational achievement gap in their communities" -- a strong local story.


Unlike all the stories on Governor Christie's educational initiatives and his war against public-school teachers, today's story reports churches recognize the pivotal role of parents in their children's success. 


Instant music critic


See A-10 today for Staff Writer Mike Kerwick's 15 paragraphs of mishmash, supposedly a critique of Madonna's halftime show at the Super Bowl in Indianapolis.


Kerwick reports Madonna "appeared to slip at one point," but "still possesses a well of vigor at 53." 


Others saw a lot more, including Gloria, my fitness trainer at the gym, who noted that Madonna's knees buckled during her dance routines.


Never mind


For a change, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section has Hackensack news on the front of the section, but the story on possible regulation of solar panels on homes is woefully incomplete.


The story doesn't say how many homeowners plan to install panels nor tell readers that a PSE&G solar-loan program expired on Dec. 31, which is expected to limit future projects. 


At the end of the story, Hackensack Councilwoman Karen Sasso is quoted as saying officials haven't seen "anything that has been a problem yet" with current solar installations.


In other words, "never mind."

A strong week with a hiccup or two

Image via Wikipedia
An NJ Transit hybrid bus leaving a Newark garage. Have you seen any hybrid buses plying North Jersey streets? 

Today's all-North Jersey front page ends a week of similarly focused editions, though missteps were glaring.


On Page 1, interim Editor Douglas Clancy's relied much too heavily on crime news and ran a dude-ranch fire photo from Parksville, wherever the hell that is in New York State.


Focus on dead


And the A-1 story localizing the end of America's war in Iraq saw the assignment desk inexplicably focusing on the parents of dead soldiers, not on the relatives of those who are coming home for the holidays.


Poor editing by assignment and Editor Liz Houlton's news copy desk continues, even for front-page stories.


Just look at today's account of a star-crossed cop who acted out a classroom lesson; got arrested for overturning an all-terrain vehicle, allegedly while driving drunk; and was seriously injured (A-1).


The Gaeta family


Why in God's name wait until the last paragraph to tell readers Midland Park Police Officer Joseph B. Gaeta, 31, is the son of Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Gaeta, who was crippled in an automobile accident at 20 (A-6)?


The elder Gaeta, now deceased, was a passenger in a car that hit a utility pole.


The younger Gaeta also crashed into a pole in 2006 while answering an armed-robbery call, "leaving him with a gash in his head that required 60 stitches," the Woodland Park daily reports (A-6).


God bless the artist


The Record's layout rules lock in every editor to running a big color photo with the most prominent A-1 story, and the actual placement of stories and designation of headline sizes are decided by a graphic artist.


So that's how you get Page 1 stories that should be running in the Local news section, like today's judicial reprieve for a congregation that had been barred from its church (A-1).


And that's why another embarrassing loss of millions in federal education money gets shoved back to A-4. It seems the Christie administration was denied $60 million in early childhood program funds; last year, it blew $400 million in the same contest.


God bless, Chris


It's hard to know why Clancy didn't think this was a front-page news, though he may be trying not to embarrass Governor Christie, who has slashed state aid to public schools and favored the opening of more charter schools.


The A-10 photo of a double-decker hybrid bus in London might have North Jersey readers wondering whether NJ Transit has any hybrid buses -- a question that hasn't occurred to the paper's transportation and environment assignment editors.


News of advertiser


Why run a nearly 10-inch story on a new CEO for Montvale-based Mercedes-Benz USA on the Business page (A-12) -- unless Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg is trying to cut a deal for his next Merc? 


The executive, Stephen Cannon, was a member of the Mercedes team in Stuttgart that developed the gas-guzzling M-Class SUV.


Nothing happened


A story on sleepy Northvale appears on the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local, though you won't find any Hackensack news anywhere in the section.


Nothing actually happened in Northvale -- unless you count the mayor asking the borough engineering firm "to analyze ongoing remediation efforts at the former TECT/Danzig site on Livingston Street for a report to be prepared before the council meets next month," according to the lead paragraph.


Sykes and her minions were so desperate for local news they had to run not one but two big photos of a Little Ferry fire captain being sworn in on L-3. 


A story about contract negotiations between Mahwah and its teachers reports "progress," but no actual settlement (L-3).


This is really scraping the bottom of the news barrel, but it's what we've come to expect from the supremely lazy Sykes and her sub-editors, all of whom appear to be asleep at their computers.

Older people make front-page news

Image via Wikipedia

Carl Bergmanson when he was mayor of Glen Ridge.
In a letter to the editor today, he reports on an aspect
 of the nor'easter The Record and other media missed.

The two stories about older people on Page 1 of  The Record today are a rare occurrence, but it's unclear why they're out front.


This is a Monday edition devoid of breaking North Jersey news on A-1. The single assignment editor and the handful of reporters on the weekend staff really don't accomplish much.


Are the two stories about older people and the major element on the page -- about special-education students -- all the editors had for the front today?


Putting aside the canned census-data story on the wealth gap between younger and older Americans, from The Associated Press, the other stories could have just as well appeared on the front of Local.


And even with the census story, why was no attempt made to localize it and quote North Jersey voices?


Missing the story


An editorial urges readers to vote down a ballot proposal for sports betting at casinos and racetracks (A-11).


That just makes many people wonder why Francis Scandale, the former editor, ran so many stories on Page 1 and elsewhere by Staff Writer John Brennan, who seemed to have a personal stake in promoting sports wagering.


A letter to the editor about the nor'easter that knocked out power for 175,000 in North Jersey reports PSE&G and other utilities severely reduced tree trimming and line maintenance, leading to even more damage (A-11) -- something head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes missed completely.


"Tree damage and power outages due to inadequate tree trimming and lack of maintenance are not 'acts of God'; they are acts of greedy corporations and complicit regulators," says Carl Bergmanson of Glen Ridge.


You know you won't find much municipal news in Sykes' Local section when record keeping in Englewood Cliffs leads the section (L-1).


Elitist's column


Columnist Mike Kelly apparently has checked out of the hotel suite -- with two flat-screen TVs and a Manhattan view -- where he weathered the loss of power at his Teaneck home last week, and presumably, he's removed his head from his asshole, as well (L-1).


The Local section is devoid of Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck news, but don't miss the story about an injured wild turkey in tiny Washington Township at the bottom of L-6.


Related posts

• Storm coverage marks new low for paper (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)
• Strange week gets even stranger (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)

Lazy editors lose directions to city

Image via Wikipedia

The Record refuses to send reporters to Zuccotti Park, shown before it was occupied.

The Record's assignment editors didn't want to send reporters to lower Manhattan to interview North Jersey residents taking part in the Occupy Wall Street protests.


So the lazy bums concocted a ridiculous story for the Local front today that would for the first time since mid-September try to gauge whether the occupation of Zuccotti Park "made any ripples across the Hudson River."


What a joke. What did they expect? Students skipping classes at Bergen Community College in Paramus? Books long overdue at the Wayne library? Depositors withdrawing all their money from Bank of America branches?


Editorial gas


Who was responsible for this slanted, poorly reported story -- head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes; her deputy, Dan Sforza; or clueless Rich Whitby? Maybe Assistant Assignment Editor Christina Joseph was on weekend doody.


In their North Jersey wanderings on the Occupy Wall Street story, Staff Writers John  C. Ensslin and Andrea Alexander apparently didn't try to find -- or want to find -- such North Jersey residents as James Martin of Ringwood.


Martin, whose office is a few blocks away from Zuccotti Park, has a great deal to say about what he learned from the protesters on O-2, the editorial page.


Martin puts to shame all those print and electronic reporters who have complained repeatedly the protest has no focused message. That's just grousing from lazy journalists who have been spoiled by having every other  story handed to them in the form of a press release.  


News scramble


There isn't much to read on Editor Francis Scandale's Page 1 today. I found it so boring, I stopped to unload a dishwasher, even though I had plenty of clean plates, cups, forks and so forth.


Editor Liz Houlton's news copy desk guaranteed readers would be instantly turned off by the main element on A-1 today by putting the year 2001 in the main headline.


The takeout on how New Jersey supposedly led the way in probing the decade-old anthrax attack comes five days after a "Frontline" investigation aired on PBS.


The off-lead story is another discussion of cutbacks in health benefits for current and retired state workers, the third or fourth piece recently on a similar subject by Staff Writer Juliet Fletcher.


Blame the victims


In the third front-page story, transportation reporter Karen Rouse continues to trumpet NJ Transit's company line that pedestrians killed by trains are "trespassers."


She has yet to report on the success or failure of lawsuits filed by victims' families against the state transit agency. Do juries believe the agency has been negligent by failing to post guards at all crossings and build fences along unprotected stretches of tracks in Hackensack and other towns?


Back on L-1, Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski retreats to a comfortable subject -- MVC computers -- ensuring he didn't have to stray far from his own computer.


On L-2, Staff Writer Melissa Hayes reports on what's been done to repair the "bad reputations" of Englewood's middle and high schools -- her first extensive education story since she took over the beat in May.


The story updates desegregation efforts at Dwight Morrow High, but doesn't mention that few white students attend Janis E. Dismus Middle School -- a tradition dating to when Publisher Stephen A. Borg attended a private school in Englewood.


Locals are yokels


Hackensack residents -- as well as readers in many other towns -- won't find any municipal news today.


Scandale must have been blinded by his love for readers in their 20s not to realize an expected increase in Social Security benefits this week should have been on Page 1 today, not B-1.


I'm sure readers also are having a hard time fathoming why a glowing profile of the CEO and president of Becton, Dickinson and Co. appears on the Business front today. 


He must be well-compensated, though the story omits any mention of his pay and perks. Still, B-1 and B-6 photos of Vincent A. Fortenza clearly show his clothes don't fit him.


Freeloader's complaints


On the Better Living front today, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung passes along her pet peeves, as well as those from her co-workers. And is that photo above the headline an actual waitress or a clumsy attempt to smear servers with a posed studio shot?


Readers' biggest pet peeve is Ung, a restaurant reviewer on an expense account who is blind to how restaurants mark up bottles of wine 500% or more to boost their profits or price entrees higher than at comparable places in the city.


It's not her money, so she gladly pays through the nose for meat and poultry that are raised with harmful additives, and for artificially colored farmed salmon.


God forbid, she would ask a restaurant owner to tell her how the food was raised or grown and pass that along to readers so they can make an intelligent decision on whether they want to eat there.

Dumbest headline of the year

Image by NASA Goddard Photo and Video via Flickr

Don't blame Irene for tax hikes. Taxes are going up anyway.

We've still got a few more months before the end of 2011, but Editor Liz Houlton's news copy desk has already written the dumbest headline of the year.

Tax hikes likely

This headline appeared on Page 1 of The Record on the Sunday before last -- over a report exploring the financial impact of Hurricane Irene.

Anyone who has lived in North Jersey for a few years knows property taxes always go up, not down, so tax hikes are always likely, despite the campaign pledges of such politicians as Governor Christie.

As a headline, "Tax hikes likely" should be banned, at least until the first time some genius actually cuts them.

Holes in their heads

That same. Sept. 18 paper wastes the front of the Business section and a half-page inside on the rise and fall of H&H Bagels -- the puniest, most-expensive bagel ever produced in the metropolitan area, one that was clearly inferior to bagels offered by several North Jersey shops.

On B-1, the copy desk couldn't even get the bagel jump correct, referring readers to B-6 instead of B-7.

More strikes against home rule

Image by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region via Flickr

The Great Swamp really was swamped by Hurricane Irene.

Today's editorial blames "civilization" -- not all those poorly run North Jersey towns desperate for ratables -- for repeated flooding that crested with the destruction of Hurricane Irene.


The editorial on Page A-20 of The Record of Woodland Park says:


"Environmentalists and state environmental officials have spent years shouting into the void that paving over flood plains, building houses in flood plains and generally ceding common sense to the lure of commercial development is about as wrong a move as civilization can make."


Of course, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin knows the shouting should have been at all those petty officials who hammer homeowners with high property taxes to run their expensive, inefficient home-rule towns, so why doesn't he say so?


Power plays


And how many businesses and homeowners have to lose power and sustain millions of dollars in damages before building officials insist that any new wires be installed underground, and that utilities begin to take down poles and put wires out of harm's way (A-1)?


Why do readers need an A-1 news story on the reopening of roads and a Road Warrior column on the same subject (Local front)?


In the second story marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11, what's the big deal about the rate of volunteerism falling from 28.8% in 2005 to 26.3% in 2010, and why did Editor Francis Scandale put the story on Page 1?


The only good thing about the piece by Staff Writer Harvy Lipman is the non-profit reporter's byline has been appearing more than once a week lately.


Why does Doblin's A-21 column on President Obama carry a headline with a really unfortunate double entendre: "Can you come later?"


Office-driven coverage


Four days after gawkers invaded some flooded Bergen County neighborhoods to make light of homeowners' misery, a story appears on the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section.


Apparently, no reporters or photographers visited those same neighborhoods until Thursday -- cementing the assignment desk's reputation as the laziest in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.


With all the news generated by the hurricane, tropical storm or whatever it was, it's a wonder Sykes found room on L-2 today for a photo and caption updating readers on telephone-pole news.


On L-3, a story and photo caption don't tell readers a police officer rescued the the driver from his smoking tanker truck until the fourth paragraph.


Stale review

In Better Living, the mouth-watering photos on the cover and Pages 16-17 deliver more than Gregory T's, an upscale diner in Emerson, where the "tough" prime rib "bore a grayish pallor," tortilla chips were stale and the crab cakes hid tiny pieces of shell.


Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung delivers the kiss of death with a 2-star rating -- what she gives to a mediocre chain restaurant.


The features copy editor also lost his way in writing the caption for three food photos in the centerfold, describing the photo on the left  as "far left."

Editors have an eye for young women

Image by Mowie Kay via Flickr

A Better Living cover story has a hole big
enough to drive a milk truck through.

The Record's most dramatic photos from coverage of Tropical Storm Irene show rescues from floods, but why did an attractive young woman land on Page 1 while the best an octogenarian could do was the front of Local?


Critics say Editor Francis Scandale, Assistant Assignment Editor Rich Whitby and others have an eye for young women -- and it shows in today's coverage.


To cover the storm on Sunday, Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes had less than half the number of reporters they threw at the recent earthquake, plus a handful of photographers and an unknown number of assignment, copy and layout editors.


Fifteen reporters are listed as contributing to the storm report, and they turned in an impressive amount of copy. 


Keystone Kopy Editors


But Liz Houlton continues to resist sending her news copy editors to boot camp for writing photo captions, and a couple I saw are embarrassing, to say the least. 


On Page A-4 today, the photo caption says, "Three men navigating a boat...." But it's clear from the photo one man is pulling the boat by a rope, a second is bailing water leaking into it and the third is smiling for the photographer.


On L-6, a photo shows two men in the foreground looking at a tractor-trailer partially submerged in flood water in front of Costco Wholesale in Hackensack. Why does the caption call them "spectators"?


Readers angry at the lack of local news coverage in North Jersey can relate to the residents of Fresno,Calif., where no media covered a Board of Education meeting at which the superintendent decided to give back $800,000 in compensation to the schools (A-8).


The Record didn't attempt to localize the story, and ask North Jersey school superintendents if they intend to do the same thing.


Spoiled reporters


As with past storm coverage, the paper says it will take up to a week to restore power to homes and businesses (L-1). 


But the stories  never explain why. Are the utilities short on staff? Why don't they hire more people to help ease the recession? And where are the reports of supermarkets and restaurants throwing out spoiled food?


Better Living's cover story on milk alternatives lists the nutritional contents of soy, almond, rice and other substitutes, but not cow's milk, so how are readers supposed to make an intelligent choice (F-1)?

See previous post on Web site comments

More slanted Cuba coverage

Image via Wikipedia

Except for the colors, the Cuban flag, above, and the flag of Puerto Rico are identical.

Editor Francis Scandale made sure only two staffers wrote about Cuba for The Record. Both were Cuban exiles who hated Fidel Castro and who turned out one slanted story after another -- quoting the same anti-Castro Cubans year after year. Did Scandale's wife, who is Cuban, have any influence on that policy?

The reporters, Miguel Perez and Liz Llorente, are no longer with the Woodland Park daily. But the paper's strong anti-Cuba stance continues, despite increasingly moderate views among Cuban-Americans and other readers.

The Record and other media continue to treat Cuba as if it is still a U.S. colony, and deliberately portray the Caribbean's biggest island in negative terms. I recall that Llorente once even called Cuba "tiny" in the lead paragraph of one of her stories.

Not close, no cigar

Today's Page 1 story is by Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano, who isn't Cuban, but she uses the same loaded language Perez and Llorente did, and through ignorance or deliberate malice, leaves out Cuba's many positives.

The story and headline -- "Anniversary divides Cuban passions" -- are almost identical to many stories The Record ran in the past decade. As usual, Fabiano makes no mention of the U.S. economic embargo and how it has slowed the island's growth.

She invokes "the fabulous [19]50s" and Cuba's "glory days," but ignores that era's deeply ingrained racial and economic inequality; the lack of health care and schools in rural areas, the Mafia-run casino-hotels; and the live, biracial sex shows for American tourists.

Today's story, as did those in the past, makes no mention of free education, health care and food rations enjoyed by all Cubans; the lack of gun violence and the absence of a drug problem.

Crackpot on A-1

The rest of the front page is a joke. 

Why is Scott Garrett, the arch-conservative congressman from Wantage, given a bully pulpit for his radical notion the federal government shouldn't spend money on public education and local transportation projects?

Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson reports the Tea Party supports Garrett. Wonder why Jackson -- in covering a Tea Party rally in Washington -- failed to mention the banner comparing President Obama's health-care plan to the Holocaust?

Slam-skunk

What's the new owner of the Nets doing on the front of the Local section, which is fast becoming a garbage can as head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her lazy minions scramble to fill empty columns.

A photo-graphics package on L-1 reports North Jerseyans are more likely to take public transportation to work than workers nationwide, but doesn't address why transportation reporters Karen Rouse and John Cichowski are so lazy they refuse to ride mass transit and assess the quality of bus and train service in their stories or columns.

Nor is there a photo of public transportation with the package -- only cars. When you don't cover mass transit, you won't have any file photos of buses or trains. It's as simple as that.

No Hackensack or Teaneck (or Ridgewood or Westwood or Fort Lee) stories appear in Local today, and the dull Englewood story is by a weekly reporter.

Reporter deserves a pat on the back

Image by Ed Yourdon via Flickr













Business reporter Hugh R. Morley deserves a hearty well-done today for his profile of an Oakland man who lost his job two years ago and who remains unemployed. It's filled with detail, and the reporter does a good job of exploring all the sacrifices the man and his family have made.


The story gets the play it deserves, on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park, but a nagging question remains: Why have the editors waited so long to try and tell the story of North Jersey's long-term jobless? Would a man out of work only one year make for a less-compelling story? And is this the only story readers will see?


I heard a horror story about a former colleague who left The Record more than two years ago, but have been unable to confirm the details. Surely, there are other stories about the long-term unemployed out there. Why stop at just one? 


Nothing says more about the abysmal state of local news under the so-called guidance of head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes than the lead story on the front of L-1 today. When the addition of turn lanes and traffic signals to a downtown intersection dominates the Local news section, you can only throw up your hands in disbelief and disgust.

The headline, "Traffic plan inches ahead," is about as dull as you can get. For the second week in a row, the word "inches" appears in black headline type. Last week, it was associated -- nonsensically -- with Hurricane Earl.


Now, the Johnson Public Library apparently has become so alarmed about the lack of Hackensack government news in The Record in the past couple of years that it is giving a seminar on "the city's inner works," according to an L-2 headline.


The story was written by Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado, who joins Sykes in shouting to all far and wide, "See, naysayers. We cover Hackensack government."


No. They cover their asses.

This front page caters to few readers

Image by joseph a via Flickr












If you are Korean-American with a limited or no ability to speak English, or you give a hoot about Passaic County politics, today's front page appeals to you. However, the vast majority of readers are left wondering what Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale might have been smoking over the weekend.


And what did head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes eat over the weekend that clearly disagreed with her? Maybe she was just pissed that the strongest story her assignment minions could come up with to lead today's Local front is the hiring of an assistant principal in Haworth's tiny school district.

Local journalists say F.U.

I hope Publisher Stephen A. Borg is taking note of what a great job Scandale and Sykes are doing with The Record of Woodland Park -- as day after day they give the finger to readers hungry for municipal news of Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other important towns.

Talk to the neighbors

I recall the staff meeting where Scandle promised to finally get around to talking to his neighbors on Monmouth Road in Glen Rock on what they would like to see in the newspaper. I guess he never talked with them. He likely feared that if he introduced himself as editor of The Record, they would laugh in his face.

News for Korean-Americans

It looks like the photography staff produced no better picture than of a golfer who won a tournament in Paramus and his family, but maybe all the space it takes up on A-1 is by design, not out of desperation. 
 
Koreans are big golfers themselves and that image would have led them to the story at the bottom of the page about Holy Name Hospital's special program for these North Jersey  immigrants, with everyone from drivers to doctors who speak their language. (The article may find a few more readers, if the staff translates it for patients.)

Passaic County politics

The lead Page 1 story, about Jerry Speziale's $1 million campaign fund, is a waste of space. The least the tin-badge lawman can do is give the money to the county to ease the tax rate after his years of overspending and padded payrolls as Passaic County sheriff.

Laughing off laziness

On Page L-3 in Local, a story on Labor Day travelers is dumped at the bottom of the page. There's nothing in the story about whether Staff Writer Karen Rouse or the paper's other transportation writers will for the first time actually ride a bus or train to evaluate service this coming weekend. 


Two huge wire-service obits of obscure people came in handy to fill more than half of L-5 -- another embarrassment Sykes dismisses with one of her belly-shaking laughs.

A couple of late hits 

I was moved by the personal accounts in the Paterson shootings story that was all over the front on Sunday, but wonder why the paper didn't put more of the blame on the city's Police Department for not protecting residents.

On Sunday's Better Living front, a bullfighter who lives in Verona justifies killing the animals with the preposterous claim that it is more humane than raising and slaughtering cattle for food.

It's pretty obvious the gullible reporter has never seen a bullfight, where the bull is brutally punished by the picadors, who drive lances into their muscles, and where the bull, in turn, drives its horns into the padded flanks of the sedated horse, causing serious internal bleeding that eventually leads to death.

Why is this bizarre profile in the paper in the first place? A bullfighter (bullshitter) lives in North Jersey? Gee-whiz. Big deal. Next time, Features Director Barbara Jaeger, assign a writer who doesn't have his head up his A-hole or do some intelligent editing before the story is published.

(Photo: Passaic County Courthouse in Paterson.)

We give you The Passaic Record

Image via Wikipedia

When there was more than one edition of The Record of Woodland Park, Bergen County residents might think a paper with a lot of Passaic news -- like today's -- was delivered to them by mistake. But today's Passaic-centric edition is no mistake. With the local Bergen editors off in La-La Land, this single edition is all the desperate weekend staff could come up with.

For those subscribers who still call the paper The Bergen Record, here is The Passaic Record.


The front page needs not one but two filler wire-service stories to supplement the main North Jersey element -- more on DuPont pollution in Pompton Lakes (map). One of them, a doomsday AP piece on Social Security payouts and revenue during the recession, omits any information about the system's huge reserves. No attempt was made to localize either wire story.

The Pompton Lake clean-up story appears to be of wide interest -- this lake serves as backup to reservoirs that supply drinking water to many North Jersey towns-- but the focus is on technical aspects of removing soil. My eyes glazed over. Could this story get any more boring? 

At the same time, the reporter never answers the question of whether mercury has tainted drinking water in those reservoirs.

It's bad enough North Jersey Media Group and other companies stampeded hundreds of thousands of workers into early retiement, but why is its flagship paper leading today's edition with a Social Security story that amounts to a fraud? Reserves of $2.5 trillion -- that's right, trillion -- plus payroll taxes are expected to cover full payment of benefits for 33 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The front of Local is filled with more Passaic County news -- from Wayne, Clifton, and Woodland Park. Inside, you won't find any news of Hackensack, Teaneck or the 'Woods (Englewood, Westwood, Wood-Ridge and Ridgewood), but you will find a story from Ringwood.

Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale lives in Glen Rock and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes lives in Harrington Park. You'd think they could get more Bergen County news into the paper, wouldn't you?

On days like this, the Passaic County bias is so blatant, it must have to do with more than the move of NJMG and The Record newsroom to Woodland Park, and the move of daily newspaper printing to Rockaway Township.


Just about the only Bergen thing left at the old Bergen Record is Old Man Borg slowly walking the empty hallways of the former headquarters at 150 River St., Hackensack. He's probably muttering to himself, What the f--- did my two spoiled brats do to my beloved paper?

North Jersey haves and have-nots

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Dogs saved from house of horrors

The main headline on Page 1 of  The Record of Woodland Park today made me wonder, Who will save readers from Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale's newspaper of horrors?

Sure, it's awful how an apparently deranged homeowner abused 26 dogs that lived amid garbage and feces. But is this front-page news? 

Just below this report on one of North Jersey's have-nots is another dog of a story that doesn't deserve to be on A-1: 

The sale of furnishings at the $14 million home of two haves, an ostentatious music mogul and a chubby ex-model. Staff Writer Evonne Coutros, usually excellent, wrote a lead paragraph that lands with a thud. A $2,000 pillow from a bed Versace slept on? Gee-whiz. Wow-wee. Can you believe that?

The third A-1 story -- on air safety in North Jersey and over the Hudson River -- buries a remarkable detail. It seems truckers use jamming equipment to prevent their employers from tracking their movements with GPS, and that has delayed testing of the nation's first satellite-navigation system at Newark Liberty airport (photo). Given the lack of detail, Staff Writer Tom Davis didn't think much of the problem. 

On the Op-Ed page (A-17), Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin oversteps his role in another partisan column -- this one blaming Democrats for not being able to override Governor Chistie's antiabortion veto of family planning funds.

Except for a police chase, there is no Hackensack news in Local today. Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado apparently missed or ignored a July 29 meeting of First Ward residents who complained  about the behavior of the homeless from the new county shelter a couple of blocks away. Read all about it in the weekly Hackensack Chronicle.

Maybe head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes told Alvarado she needed her beauty sleep and not to cover the neighborhood meeting. 

The L-1 story on sisters putting up for sale one of the last farms in Saddle River makes no mention of the state's farmland preservation program, though that money may have been among the funding cut by Governor Christie to avoid taxing millionaires like the Borgs.

Does anyone edit the restaurant reviews in Better Living? Judging from the first paragraph, Santorini Taverna in Fort Lee leaves its doors open on the hottest days. Who would want to eat there, even though it gets a good rating? Today is Food Editor Bill Pitcher's last day at The Record, but we may see more of his work in weeks ahead. One of his recent reviews noted he visited the restaurant two months earlier, and he hasn't given a firm date for Elisa Ung's return.

Restaurants from only 15 North Jersey towns are listed in the health inspections column today on Page 21 of Better Living. Bergen County alone has 70 towns.

Keeping alive a dead story

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What do you do when you have important state news that isn't easily illustrated and a Cold War-era story that didn't amount to a hill of beans when it broke about two weeks ago?

If you're the editor of The Record of Woodland Park -- locked into having a large color photo on Page 1 every day, in a desperate attempt to match the impact of color TV -- you play up the dead story with everything in your bag of journalistic tricks -- even though the actual spy swap occurred Thursday and led the paper Friday.


You make sure your news copy desk uses such headline words as "fast-paced" and "whirlwind," then you blow up a  photo of one plane on the tarmac and another leaving a European airport (A-1 today). Boy, that's an exciting photo.

Then you shove inside real news -- that the BP oil gusher in the Gulf may be stopped soon -- and hope North Jersey readers don't notice the absence of Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood news, not to mention lack of coverage of a bunch of other towns among the 90 or so in your circulation area.

For these kinds of boneheaded editorial decisions, Frank "Castrato" Scandale was promoted to vice president by clueless Publisher Stephen A. Borg, and presumably given a raise. And no one bothers to ask head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes why so many of her reporters -- including Jean Rimbach, Shawn Boburg and Monsy Alvarado -- allow days, weeks, months, even years to separate their lame stories.


I'm sure readers today would have been far more interested in reading about Governor Christie's privatization plans, such as making motorists pay for emissions tests (A-3). That's A-1 news in my book -- not a bunch of laughable Russians. In fact, I'd be more interested in reading about the young Russians and other foreign workers who staff Jersey Shore resorts and highway rest stops, but that would require old-fashioned legwork.

Why do that when you can slap a wire service story and photo all over the front page? (One of the aircraft is operated by Vision Airlines. Just reminds you of how little vision Scandale, Sykes and all the other overpaid editors have.)

A reader's letter today (A-9) notes the former Hackensack daily missed the 100th anniversary of the cornerstone laying for the imposing Bergen County Courthouse (photo), whose dome is visible from the long-empty, fourth-floor newsroom at 150 River St., Hackensdack. You can just imagine what else  the crack local staff has missed -- in a continuing disservice to readers.


On the front of Local, a story on town officials' mixed reviews for all-electric MINI prototypes makes no mention of the Nissan LEAF, an electric car that will be going on sale this year, with full-market roll-out by 2012, compared to 2013 for the smaller but more expensive and far-from-flawless BMW models.

Friday, July 9, 2010

With a possible new lease on life for the Xanadu retail-entertainment complex, and a sensational New Jersey inheritance battle among billionaires, does anyone really care about those buffoonish Russian "spies" or that a professional basketball player will be playing in Miami, not New York or New Jersey?


Friday's front page was dominated by LeBron James and the swap of those 10 Russian suspects for other alleged spies. How do those stories affect my life or the lives of tens of thousands of other readers? They don't.

In Local, Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano has two stories about Englewood, in contrast to no stories for days and weeks at a time, but there is no Hackensack or Teaneck municipal news. 

The front page of The Hackensack Chronicle, the weekly delivered with The Record of Woodland Park on Fridays, reports on the swearing in of a new mayor in Hackensack on July 1. I didn't see that story in the former Hackensack daily on July 2.


In his review of Hamilton & Ward, a high-end steakhouse in Paterson's new mall, Food Editor Bill Pitcher inexplicably discusses the source of salmon, but ignores the origin of the steaks. We are left to guess whether they are naturally raised or stuffed with antibiotics, hormones and animal byproducts.

I also feel he is being unfair by citing the Silk City's "reputation for being a rough spot after dark." That certainly is not the case for South Paterson, the neighborhood with Middle Eastern restaurants, bakeries and markets. Has he ever visited that section -- day or night?


His rating of the steakhouse -- two and a half stars -- is diluted by the two stars Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung gave a chain restaurant on the highway in Wayne. In fact, her generosity in rating the faux-Caribbean Bahama Breeze (Page F-22 on Friday) will continue to hurt the credibility of all restaurant reviews in Better Living.