After the big game, news editors deliver boring coverage

Members of the Palisades Park Senior Citizens Center staged a Lunar New Year show today for seniors at the Jewish Community Center on the Palisades in Tenafly. 

In addition to dancers, a choir of men and women performed several songs, including the national anthems of the United States, Korea and Israel.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I'm no fan of football or how the editors of The Record are always running sports columns on the front page, displacing far more important stories.

In fact, the first thing I do after I pick up the paper in my driveway every day is put the Sports section into the recycling bin.

I did watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, and the big story for me was how a young, black, overconfident quarterback was humbled by a veteran.

But today, Page 1 is dominated by Tara Sullivan, one of The Record's long-winded columnists, whose first two paragraphs are guaranteed to put you to sleep.

Unedited crap

How Editor Deirdre Sykes allowed this apparently unedited crap onto the premier page of today's paper is a mystery.

Sullivan's first two paragraphs describe Denver Broncos Quarterback Peyton Manning walking to his seat on the sideline after victory was assured (A-1).

"Across the field and down the sideline he strode" is how the first paragraph begins. Yawn.

"Down he sat" begins the second. Give me a break.

And the headlines are just awful, because the main and sub-headline basically repeat speculation the Super Bowl might have been Peyton Manning's last game:

"Manning's magical exit?"

"Super Bowl
win would
be a great
final act"

A far better main headline would get rid of the question mark, which is discouraged on many news copy desks:

"Manning's magical game"

"Super Bowl 
win would
be a great
final act"

Local news?

If Sullivan's pathetic column wasn't enough, the front of the local-news section is dominated by a stale story on the cooking of mystery chicken wings on Sunday at a bar in Passaic County no one has ever heard of (L-1).

That's one of five stories with Passaic County or Morris County datelines in a section delivered to Bergen County readers.

Lady Gaga

On the Better Living front, Staff Writer Jim Beckerman wrote an entire story on Lady Gaga singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" (BL-1).

Everyone I talked to today thought she did a terrific job, praising her voice, her delivery and how she made the national anthem her own.

In short, she rocked that old song.

Pray for local readers, not for a fat slob Yankees pitcher

Hackensack City Council candidate Richard L. Cerbo distributed fliers over the weekend, urging residents to vote in the Nov. 3 special election to fill a seat on the governing body. Cerbo is the son of Fred Cerbo, who was elected mayor of Hackensack in 1981. The elder Cerbo died in August 2012 at 87. The council meets tonight, starting at 6:30.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record has a good run going -- another boring front page with no local news that has most readers eyes rolling.

Today, Gottlieb features two of the paper's burned-out columnists on Page 1, and devotes the centerpiece to the release of a wealthy South Korean college student from Tenafly who had been "detained in North Korea since April" (A-1).

Who cares?

Sports Columnists Bob Klapisch treats Yankee pitcher CC Sabathia as if he is a favorite uncle, reporting the athlete is "deeply troubled and needs more than therapy; he needs our prayers."

The Yankees are paying this schlub $23 million a year.

I saw the 290-pound Sabathia on TV news Monday night, and his enormous belly made me wonder why no one had intervened long before he announced he is entering alcoholism rehab.

More rehab

Staff Writer Charles Stile devotes yet another column to Governor Christie's crippled campaign for the Republican presidential nomination next July, but the GOP bully needs more political rehab than even this pandering reporter can manage (A-1).

On A-2 today, the editors finally correct the LOL misspelling of Grange restaurant as "Grunge" on Sunday's Better Living front.

There's no telling how many readers showed up expecting to dumpster dive behind the Westwood restaurant.

Local news?

Three of the five stories on today's Local front are from Passaic County.

Two others involve the police shooting of a black man in Rutherford last year, and a Republican court case involving the Nov. 3 ballot (L-1).

The rest of the section includes Law & Order stories on L-2 and L-3.

For some reason, a story on the lack of a sewage-alert system for New Jersey waterways is buried on L-6, despite "an estimated 23 billion gallons of raw sewage and other pollutants pouring into ... rivers and bays each year."

I guess the editors worry more about CC Sabathia than public health.

The sewage story could have been illustrated with photos of water pollution, including turds, in contrast to all of the turds editors and columnists are trying to polish on the front page.

Another front page overflowing with news we can't use

The exterior of the 222-unit Meridia Metro rental building on State Street in Hackensack appears to be complete, but tenants won't be moving in until the fall. Completion of the project, the first in the city's ambitious downtown redevelopment plan, was delayed.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's Sports section does such a pathetically poor job of covering Formula 1 and other auto racing readers are bewildered by a Page 1 story today on a Wayne college student's quixotic quest to drive in the world's most exclusive club.

That's only one of the stories and columns Editor Martin Gottlieb chose for a front page that basically wastes North Jersey readers' valuable time (A-1).

A-1 is dominated by the same images of a refugee crisis in Europe readers have seen on the nightly TV news for many days now.

Christie, Iran deal

Gottlieb also robs readers with yet another A-1 story by Staff Writer Melissa Hayes on Governor Christie's floundering campaign, especially in New Hampshire, which he visited 22 times.

Are you looking for an opinion on whether families of victims killed "in Iran-sponsored attacks" should finally collect on court judgments from billions of dollars that will be unfrozen as part of the nuclear deal?

You won't find one from opinion Columnist Mike Kelley, who pushes thousands of words around in another overly long piece to frame the "debate over the deal" (A-1).

The thumbnail photo of Kelly's shit-eating grin -- dating to the early 2000s -- is an insult to readers.

Local news?

Did local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza give up their best local story to Gottlieb -- the one on Page 1 of a 19-year-old's Formula 1 dreams?

That would seem to be the case from all of the Law & Order news in today's local-news section (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

On L-3, readers stare dumbly at filler photos of a trash spill on Route 17 and a non-fatal fire in Clifton, where the tenants have so little rent money they have to live over a bar.

The number of Paterson stories in the section delivered to Bergen County readers suggests North Jersey Media Group is trying to save money on newsprint by eliminating a separate section for Passaic County.

Bergen editors' three-day weekend robs us of local news

Spring getting a chilly reception in Hackensack's Fairmount section on Friday.

A winter scene only a block or so from the former Little Ferry Circle, as seen from the bus to Manhattan on Thursday.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

If you live in Bergen County and subscribe to The Record, do you really have any interest in two court cases involving the Passaic County superintendent of elections and the legal bills of an imam at a Paterson mosque (L-2)?

Or the extended registration for a new all-boys elementary school in Silk City (L-8)?

The local Bergen County editors must have stayed home on Friday, forcing the layout editors to scramble for just about any old story to fill today's Local news section.

Page L-8 also carries wire service obituaries for the inventor of ceramic body armor, a drummer for a heavy metal band and an astronaut trainee no one has ever heard of.

Another dead rocker, Michael Brown,65, of Englewood Cliffs, "who helped put the Bach in rock," gets a royal send-off from Staff Writer Jim Beckerman, himself a musician (L-1).

Cool reception

Sticking with the Local front, who is the moron who wrote the photo-package over line, "Winter Overstays Its Welcome," and what incompetent supervisor approved it?

Did anyone in North Jersey "welcome" the brutal winter we've just experienced?

One of the captions with the weather package also doesn't make sense: 

"Jessica Silva of Ramsey leaving the Route 17 train station as she headed to work" (L-1).

Why would a Ramsey resident be leaving the NJ Transit station in the same town? Did she take the train one stop from the downtown Ramsey station?

Obesity news

One of the few Bergen stories in the section ignores the elephant in the room, an obese Ed Sinclair, the director of public works in Mahwah (L-3).

His photo might remind former staffers of overweight local Editors Deirdre Sykes and Tim Nostrand in their heyday, when they did their best to keep news of the obesity epidemic out of the paper.

More corrections

Two of the four corrections on A-2 today try to fix editing screw-ups in local stories.

Also on A-2, a photo of schoolchildren in London has readers wondering whether local kids tried to see Friday's solar eclipse.

Low drama, high drama and political hype

Image by TalkMediaNews via Flickr

Gabrielle Giffords six months after the shooting.

The anti-climactic approval of the debt deal is a minor footnote to the surprise appearance of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to cast her vote on the House floor, as captured by The Record today in A-1 and A-6 photos.


Unspoken in the Associated Press story is the stark contrast between her values and those of the Tea Party conservatives who paralyzed the process for so many months and who may face defeat in 2012, just two years after they helped the GOP take control of the House.


Giffords' dramatic appearance also served to remind readers how Editor Francis Scandale treated her and the Arizona shootings nearly eight months ago.


Here is an excerpt from Eye on The Record on Jan. 13, 2011:

"The Arizona shootings are back on the front page again today. 

"Even though it's the most talked-about story in the nation, Editor Frank Scandale again demonstrated his famously flawed news judgment by underplaying it badly on Sunday on The Record's front page.

"Then, he played catch-up on Monday, allowed it to play second fiddle on Tuesday to the dismemberment of a Cliffside Park man and knocked it off the front altogether on Wednesday.

"Running a huge photo of a Jets football player on Sunday's front page -- and squeezing the attempted assassination  of Gabrielle Giffords under a one-column headline -- is so insensitive that it could only come from an editor like Scandale."

 Read the entire post here: An emotionally cold editor

Image via Wikipedia

Gabrielle Giffords before the shooting.

Editors love Chris Christie


Scandale and other editors fell all over themselves to give Page 1 play today to Governor Christie actually doing something good for seniors and the disabled.


The story by Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton is careful to omit mention the $100 to help pay energy bills comes not from Christie, but from the federal government, as readers learn from the Political Stile column on L-1.


An editorial on A-8 blasts "a core of Tea Party-aligned House Republicans [who] held their party and the nation hostage," but that's diluted by an OpEd piece on the next page, A-9, claiming the Tea Baggers scored "a key victory."  What B.S.


F.U. to old people


The big photo of an old car in a pool on the front of Local again dramatizes the challenges facing elderly drivers, but don't expect head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes to awake from her nap and direct the staff to do a series on the subject (L-1).


Another L-1 story reports Passaic County ranks extremely low in a quality-of-life poll -- likely because of the presence of the editors and managers who run The Record, Herald News and North Jersey Media Group in Woodland Park.


At the bottom of the Local front, a story on changes to school-bus routes in Teaneck leaves readers wondering why they should sympathize with parents who spend $15,000 to $20,000 a year to send their kid to private school, on top of paying public school taxes.


Not a suspect


Tenafly police are dismissing a tip the polite robber at the NVE Bank was Publisher Stephen A. Borg, scrambling to make the mortgage and property tax payment on his $3.65 million Churchill Road McMansion (L-3). 


On the first Business page, the Your Money's Worth column -- on spending by 10 charities -- has readers questioning what happened to the full-time newsside reporter assigned to non-profits (L-7).

The amateur hour

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

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

Image via Wikipedia

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

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

Image via Wikipedia

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


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

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

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

A valuable lesson for all

Image via Wikipedia

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.

Taking Bergen out of The Bergen Record

Image via Wikipedia

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."