Page 1 news is boring us to tears

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Hackensack in the 1890s.

It doesn't get any duller than Page 1 in The Record today.


I saw all I wanted to see about the earthquake in Turkey on TV last night.


More prostitution arrests in North Jersey? The off-lead A-1 story has no statistics to back that up. And what man is so hard up he'd go with one of the hags pictured on A-6?


The story on witness intimidation at the bottom of the front page is another one of those court stories that sound important, but really don't affect many readers.


Sunday night blues


It's the kind of story that runs on Monday's front pages, because the pitiful editors who get stuck working Sunday nights really have nothing else from Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.


In Sykes' Local section, there is municipal news from Englewood -- actually, a story about police salaries (L-2) -- but there's no news from Hackensack, Teaneck and many other towns.


A graphics package on L-1 tells readers 2011 may become the wettest year in New Jersey since 1931, when data collection started.


The Woodland Park daily also appears to be on its way to setting a record for publishing the least local news since the paper was founded in 1895 in Hackensack.


In Better Living, a rumpled Bill Ervolino completely misses readers' funny bones with a story on his pedicure (F-1). Too bad, the shop couldn't manage to do something for his odd sense of humor.


Free lunch


On Sunday, Ervolino's Better Living colleague, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, used her Sunday column to list her "top 10 nicest things that some restaurants do for their customers" (F-8).


How strange. She has to roam as far as San Francisco and recall a service experience "several years ago" in Manhattan to complete the list. 


What does that say about North Jersey restaurants -- where she can indulge her dessert obsession on The Record's expense account -- that she couldn't find her "top 10 nicest things" here?


Of course, the nicest thing a restaurant can do is cut its prices in this difficult economy -- in the form of a multi-course meal that delivers great value. She doesn't list any of those.


'Eye on The Record' 


Sunday marked the 2nd anniversary of Eye on The Record.


I recommend the most popular posts, listed on the right.


Eye on The Record could not have lasted this long without the uninspired newsroom leadership of Scandale, Sykes, Tim Nostrand, Liz Houlton, Dan Sforza and all the other editors who have been there "forever."


The infamous Barbara Jaeger -- who ran the features department so badly and for so long -- is gone. 


She shared a contempt for older workers with Scandale and Sykes, but some of the young staffers she championed simply fall flat on their faces more times than not.


Absentee Publisher Stephen A. Borg's greed seems to have blinded him to how far this once-great daily has fallen.

Rehabilitation of Paterson

Image by Afghan LORDّ via Flickr

Do you recall how The Record once devoted hundreds of hours of staff time and tens of thousands of dollars in salaries to portray Paterson as North Jersey's biggest drug bazaar, which lured many Bergen County suburbanites to ruin? Then, more recently, the paper ran another sensational series on prostitution in Silk City.

Well, that's all in the past (but you'll notice how reporters Mike Kelly and John Brennan have been prostituting themselves with their "public relations" coverage of a cop-turned-criminal and a tipsy athlete-turned-killer, respectively).

For the second day in a row, Paterson has been put in a flattering light on Page 1, the latest in a series of positive stories since North Jersey Media Group and its flagship daily moved their headquarters last year to Woodland Park (formerly West Paterson).

I haven't been counting column inches or stories, but it may be fair to say Paterson has received more news coverage than Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years before the greedy Borg family hatched a plan to sell its landmark River Street building.

Someone should tell Brennan and the news copy editor who read his story that killer Jayson Williams won't "accept" an 18- month prison sentence today, as if it is an invitation to a tea party. The reporter again omits in his Page A-6 story that Williams killed his limo driver after a night of drinking, but found room to tell readers the square footage of the ex-athlete's home (27,000 square feet -- eat your heart out, Stephen A. Borg, you have live in a mere 8,500 square feet).

On A-8 today, the editorial on recycling incentives in Paterson includes the financial arrangements with a private company the reporter omitted from her front-page story yesterday.

On the front of Local for a change, an obituary about an interesting North Jerseyan appears in place of the drivel from Kelly and fellow Columnist John Cichowski.

I'm glad Vietnamese Chef K.T. Tran is getting more recognition for the traditional soup called pho she has been serving at Saigon R. in Englewood for close to a decade, but why does Better Living waste space on a recipe that calls for 10 pounds of beef bones among its 20 or so ingredients? Do the lazy editors think any reader is going to tackle this at home?