Breaking news: Warmer weather ahead

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A map of halal restaurants in North Jersey that U.S. Navy Seals reportedly found in Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Did you hear the earth-shaking news? It's allergy season, The Record of Woodland Park reports in its lead story today. Tomorrow, the lead Page 1 story will look ahead to the arrival of summer.

It can't be too busy at the Bergen County Courthouse, if Staff Writer Kibret Markos had time to put together a detailed story with two sidebars on a nearly 20-year-old murder case (A-1). 

But he assumes readers have been following the story as closely as he has, so they have to turn to the continuation page to find out if the trial is over or not (A-6).

Osama bin Kelly

Pakistan's prime minister denies that any official was complicit in hiding Osama bin Laden (A-9).

Readers have yet to hear the same denial from Editor Francis Scandale, who seems to be protecting several incompetent reporters and columnists on his staff -- including John Brennan, Mike Kelly, John Cichowski and Bill Ervolino.

Adieu to Christie?

Many journalists are salivating over the possibility they'll able to lampoon Donald Trump, if he runs for president. 

Most New Jersey residents are hoping Governor Christie will follow Trump's lead, so the state can begin a healing process (A-10, L-1).

The big news from Hackensack today is the refiling of a sex-harassment suit in state court by a police officer who saw her claims dismissed by a federal judge (L-3).

Throwing vegetarians a bone

For several years, Better Living's carnivorous editors ran a single recipe for vegetarians on Mondays, and now the first full-fledged story quotes only those who eat meat occasionally (F-1). 

And during those years of token coverage, several vegetarians on the staff -- led by Travel Editor Jill Schensul -- must have been regarded as freaks, instead of as sources for a story on that lifestyle.

Kiss of death

Less than a month after Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung gushed about El Caney, the tiny Cuban takeout joint in Bergenfield is out of business. I saw a big "FOR RENT" sign on Monday.

Ung never explained why she devoted her entire Sunday restaurant column to this culinary pipsqueak or why she gave more ink to a takeout shack that had been featured a year earlier in the paper's own Marketplace column.

When I visited on April 22, El Caney was out of several menu items and had no whole fish. Portions were small.

Although the food was good, it didn't approach the quality of the many meals I enjoyed over the years at Migdalia's Cuban Cafe before the Bergenfield restaurant closed and the owner-chef moved to Miami.

            

Good news for teens, bad news for readers

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

On Monday, many Americans celebrated the death of Osama bin Laden.

The Record today delivers good news to the parents of teen drivers -- a law-enforcement survey shows perverts aren't targeting minors with red license-plate decals (A-1 and L-1).

Another study, this one by Eye on The Record, shows Editors Francis Scandale and Barbara Jaeger have targeted only columnists who are black, Hispanic or female, perpetuating those who are white and male -- Mike Kelly, John Cichowski and Bill Ervolino  -- no matter how incompetent.

Taxing coverage

Besides Osama bin Laden-related 9/11 memorial coverage, Page 1 carries another story pitting Governor Christie against Democratic lawmakers -- this time over the so-called tool kit to lower taxes.

This stuff is deadly boring. Why weigh down readers with process stories? Why not report what happened or didn't happen -- devoid of politics? 

For example, why is everything President Obama does reported in terms of its impact on the 2012 election (A-23)? Just tells us if it's good for the country.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Life is a cartoon

What's with Margulies? His cartoon today focuses on Christie's spirit of cooperation on state Supreme Court nominees -- not the loss of the high court's only minority members (A-22).

John Woodmaska's letter to the editor on the same page notes Christie, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are falling all over themselves "in service of the rich."

Eating too much

In her lukewarm, 2-star appraisal of Nicole's in Bogota, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung recommends two desserts, but only one appetizer, pasta and entree (Better Living centerfold).

Two people can eat out for $50 in the vast majority of North Jersey restaurants, so free-lancer Jeff Page is forced to pad his budget review today -- relating how he walked into a Colombian restaurant, was led into a larger room and then stared at other customers so he could describe them to readers (F-23).

Is this Bin Laden's death photo?

Image by k-ideas via Flickr

One of the many images of Osama bin Laden before he was killed.

On Monday, the front page of Vanguardia, a newspaper in Saltillo, Mexico, carried a small photo of what purports to be the face of Osama Bin Laden after he was killed by the U.S. military earlier that day in Pakistan.

Here is a link to the front page on the Newseum Web site:

Is this Bin Laden's bloodied face?  

If this link is broken, you will be directed to the Newseum site. Click on "View Archived Pages," then under Osama bin Laden, click on "May 2, 2011." Next, click on "Sort Papers by Region" and look for the Vanguardia front page.

The photo appears under a banner headline: "They killed Bin Laden."

The small photo in Vanguardia is next to a larger photo of a gray-bearded Bin Laden when he was alive, and the beard and hair on the bloodied face appear too dark to be Bin Laden's. 

Could the photo in the Bin Laden package be one of the hundreds of people killed in Mexico's drug war?

Today, President Obama refused to release any death photos of the terrorist leader.

See previous post for commentary on The Record

Big victory for U.S., big defeat for N.J.

Image via Wikipedia

The Record's large staff guarantees one story for each Ho-Ho-Kus resident.

A huge defeat for the people of New Jersey is buried by all the Osama bin Laden reaction news in The Record today.

Governor Christie has put all the pieces in place to remove the last minority member of the state Supreme Court in September after getting rid of the only African-American justice last year.

Incredibly, the story on A-3 and a political column on L-1 today portray a deal on court appointments as a victory for Democrats -- ignoring the resulting loss of both minority members.

Christie dumped the only black on the court; Editor Francis Scandale dumped the paper's only black columnist. 

Christie is poised to replace the only Hispanic on the court; Scandale busted the paper's only Hispanic columnist to reporter before he left in disgust.

Oh, the triteness!

Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily supposedly is for the best the paper has to offer -- not for the hackneyed words and phrases Mike Kelly has been pushing around for years.

Check out some of the columnist's gems:

"Jackhammers rattled. Cement mixers crunched gravel." He has these on a save/get key for any column on Ground Zero reconstruction. 

"Amid the syncopated din...." Is a conductor orchestrating the work?

"A day of passions that seemed to switch back and forth like wiper blades." Am I reading the Road Warrior?

More big flaws

I couldn't read any more, so I looked at the A-1 photos. 

The one with Kelly's column looks posed, and the one at the top of the page -- of President Obama and his national security team -- seems to have an incorrect caption.

TV news reported time and again the president and his team were watching live video of the raid on Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. 

The Record's caption says they are "getting updates on the mission."

The lead front-page story with that photo -- headlined "How we got bin Laden" -- is from The Washington Post, but doesn't mention what day the raid took place.

Second-class Muslims

A much better choice for the front page -- in place of Kelly and his leering image -- would have been the L-1 story on North Jersey Muslims hoping they'll no longer be viewed as terrorists.

Besides Kelly's lame column, the stories by the local staff, the editorial, cartoon and Op-Ed columns -- all under the misguided direction of Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes -- are just overload. 

Who could -- or wants to -- read all of this?

The Woodland Park daily just piles on top of all the coverage readers saw on TV late Sunday night and all day Monday. And it comes hard on the heels of all the nauseating coverage of the royal wedding.

One man, one story

The few non-Bin Laden stories in Local include one rich man's rant about a solar panel on the telephone pole outside his Ho-Ho-Kus bedroom (L-3).

Maybe if he took care of his wife's needs in the bedroom, he wouldn't  be looking out the window so much. Sykes and Staff Writer Evonne Coutros should know better than to pass off this nonsense as municipal news.

Bin Laden slaying has North Jersey ties

Image via Wikipedia

Osama bin Laden, right, during a 1997 newspaper interview. The Record's A-1 photo today should have at least shown a weapon or some menace.

The slaying of Osama bin Laden inadvertently dramatizes North Jersey's wildly inflated home values before the bubble burst a couple of years ago -- a greed party encouraged by The Record's promotional Sunday Real Estate section.

The al-Qaida financier was hiding out in a $1 million mansion in Pakistan -- according to CNN -- a home worth less than a third of Publisher Stephen A. Borg's monstrosity in Tenafly, bought with a $3.65 million company mortgage.

 Lame effort

The news broke late Sunday night, and likely required the Woodland Park newsroom to remake the front page. 

The Associated Press story, headlines and a huge photo of Bin Laden -- not the best choice, because it shows no menace -- appear to have been hastily thrown together.

The photo has no caption, the heads contain an "Obama" echo and the text on second reference should have given the terrorist mastermind's last name as "Bin Laden," which is Record style, not "bin Laden."

But you can be sure Editor Francis Scandale didn't make a special trip to the newsroom from his Glen Rock home or the story would have ended up on a back page -- which is what he did with the iconic, flag-raising photo taken by Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin on 9/11.

Cartoon madness

Is Margulies on drugs? 

His cartoon today shows Santa Claus complaining about solar panels on his block's telephone poles (A-9). Huh?

That's only slightly less bizarre than his Sunday cartoon (o-2), in which an apparently underage woman tries to use President Obama's birth certificate to gain entrance to a bar  (O-2).

Heaven on Earth

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section today is filled with lots of feel-good stories, but not a single word of municipal news.

Fund-raisers, a home for teen mothers, a party for flood victims, a squad for girls with special needs -- isn't North Jersey such a great place to live?

On L-6, a photo shows the Rev. Mark Giordani sprinkling holy water on motorcycle owners in an annual Blessing of the Bikes.

Readers who have been awakened by the roar of these bikes -- which are modified to make as much noise as possible -- wish Giordani was wielding a sledge hammer instead. 

The caption on a second L-6 photo doesn't say how many Armenians attended the Turkish Olympiad in Lodi -- held a week after Genocide Remembrance Day.