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.

It's a democracy everywhere but here

Image via Wikipedia

Leonia is virtually ignored by The Record's Local section.

Isn't it rich?

The off-lead story in The Record of Woodland Park today says Ramsey might ban free speech "on school property when children are present" (A-1).

Free speech has been banned in the newsroom for ages, and editors reminded reporters, "This isn't a democracy."

In recent years, Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg has rushed into court to defend the paper's First Amendment rights, then turned around and disciplined whistle-blowers and other employees who spoke their minds. 

Page A-2 today has four embarrassing corrections, including one that fixes a Page 1 story from May 17. 

Politically obsessed

On the front of Local, why does Columnist Charles Stile portray the attempt to restore $7.4 million to Planned Parenthood clinics as a battle between Democrats and Republicans?

Isn't he enough of a journalist and columnist to declare Governor Christie "insensitive to women," without reference to politics?

Now that Teaneck reporter Joseph Ax left the paper, township resident and local-obit reporter Jay Levin is picking up the slack with a story on the community vegetable garden (L-1). 

Who is picking up the slack in Englewood, Englewood Cliffs and Leonia now that Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano has left?

See previous post on AOL Patch