The photogenic front page

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The Record today is an example of how feature news with a good photo trumps news of vital importance to readers in North Jersey.

On Page 1, the main element is a story and photo about a West Milford woman who will donate her home, a business and land to the township to end a decades-long search for a site to expand or replace the community library. Isn't that nice? How sweet. OK. The township is really far away from Bergen County, and hasn't it fought for decades against Newark's attempts to build affordable housing on city-owned watershed land? Isn't that racism?

So where is the real news? On the front of the Local section, Staff Writer Ashley Kindergan reports weak ethical rules in many towns allow pay-to-play and nepotism to flourish. This story has a nice graphic, but not nice enough, I guess, for Page 1. The Record has long defended home rule, which, many observers believe, fosters corruption and keeps property taxes high. Did that have something to do with placement of the Kindergan story?

Want more New Jersey news? Unfortunately, the A-section has lots of stories, but they are from Texas, Maine, California, Cleveland, Arizona, Seattle, Baghdad, Jerusalem and so forth.

Better Living has the usual food coverage in a Monday paper -- a single vegetarian recipe -- but under Health on F-8, there is more: a Washington Post story about fish that are not only caught sustainably but are also rich "in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids," a key in reducing the risk of heart disease.Pole-caught albacore tuna is listed, but the rankings by the "influential" Monterey Bay Aquarium don't take this tuna's high mercury content into account. So the headline isn't really accurate: "Good for the oceans and good for you." The story probably could have used a subhead: "Oh, but not the albacore tuna."

This is one of the dangers of running a lot of stories supplied by outside sources, including the Washington Post, especially when, like The Record, your food and copy editors know little about what is healthy and what is not.

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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