Hackensack, you can stop Zisa virus from infecting schools

A change in landing patterns ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration to keep noisy business jets away from Hackensack University Medical Center, as reported by The Record, hasn't brought much relief to city residents. This jet, with its landing gear down, was one of four or five to pass over southwest Hackensack homes and the Fanny Meyer Hillers School in about 30 minutes on Monday afternoon.

Many parents picking up their children at the Hillers School were unaware a Board of Education election is taking place today. The Record's local-news staff has ignored the issues or the attempted political comeback by the Zisa family. Three seats on the school board are up for grabs, and voters can say "yes" or "no" to a $79 million tax levy in support of a bloated $104 million school budget.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The powers that be don't want you to vote in today's Hackensack Board of Education and school budget election.

First and foremost are former Mayor Jack Zisa; brother Ken, the disgraced former police chief; their cousin, former City Attorney Joseph Zisa; and Ken's son, high school teacher Anthony Zisa.

The Zisas ruled Hackensack for decades, and stigmatized the small city with the accursed name of "Zisaville."

Now, they are attempting a political comeback by backing three Board of Education candidates under the banner of Team Hackensack. 

The world may be worrying about the Zika virus, but Hackensack fears the spread of the Zisa virus throughout the schools.

Three other candidates are believed to have the support of the political machine that propped up the Zisas for so many years before Citizens for Change, a slate of reformers, was elected to the City Council in May 2013.

This campaign flier urges voters to pick candidates 1-4-6, but someone ordered removal of the numbers on today's school ballot, below.

The ballot in today's election lists nine candidates for three seats on the Board of Education, center, and a proposition on the school budget, right.

Citizens for Change

Citizens for Change is supporting three other candidates, who call themselves Citizens for Better Schools:

Lawrence E. EISEN, Lancelot POWELL and Victor E. SASSON.

Their platform includes improving poor test scores and engaging parents in the education of their children.

Last week, the Zisas obtained the addresses of all of the members in the teachers union, and sent them an invitation to a Team Hackensack barbecue at Anthony Zisa's home, which was handed down from his grandfather, Frank C. Zisa, who was on the City Council for 16 years and mayor from 1977-81. 

Teachers union President Michael DeOrio blasted the Zisas, and called for "sanctions and/or discipline" for those involved.

The ballot

You need a PhD to figure out the ballot in today's school election.

Citizens for Better Schools is appealing to voters to pick candidates in positions 1-4-6, but someone ordered the numbers removed.

So, voters should look for candidates' last names in capital letters: EISEN, POWELL and SASSON.

Many residents also don't know they can vote on the school budget, which represents 44 percent of the property tax bill in Hackensack.

A tax levy of $79 million is up for a "yes" or "no" vote, but the total school budget is about $104 million.

The budget is bloated by administrators' salaries (some make nearly as much as or more than Governor Christie); legal fees and high rent for a Catholic school building.

A "no" vote would send the budget to the City Council, which has the power to trim it.

Campaign signs on Main Street in Hackensack.

Voter suppression

The powers that be have long conspired to suppress the vote in school elections by holding them in April, and not opening the polls until 2 p.m.

Today, the polls will be open until 9 p.m.

Although Hackensack has about 20,000 registered voters, only about 1,300 cast ballots in the last school election.

That apathy is fed by Editor Deirdre Sykes of The Record, which moved out of Hackensack in 2009.

Sykes was elevated to editor this year after many years of running the paper's local-news section.

Her distaste for local elections is well-known, and a couple of decades ago, she streamlined coverage of Boards of Education by reporting only on contested elections.

Now, she is ignoring even the hotly contested Hackensack school election.

Update

At 2 this afternoon, when the polls opened, only a small sign indicated where voters should cast their ballots at Hackensack High School, above and below.

Most of the voters I saw between 2 and 2:30 this afternoon were seniors from the neighborhood, which includes many of the high-rises on Prospect Avenue.

Today's paper

Three of the four major elements on Page 1 today are what editors call "process stories."

None of them are news, just endless descriptions of the process of repealing the estate tax in New Jersey, electing a president and how the Supreme Court will rule on a better deal for undocumented aliens (A-1).

The fourth major story is an incredible waste of space describing the legal pissing match between a millionaire with 30 Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, and The Plaza co-op high-rise in Fort Lee (A-1).

Third story on small-plane crash still doesn't get it right

Abma's Farm & Market in Wyckoff was closed on Labor Day.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers know Labor Day is what editors call "a slow news day," but that's still no excuse for the third story in four days on pilot Jack Rosenberg.

The Spring Valley, N.Y., man is shown in a Page 1 photo today, recovering in a hospital bed from broken bones and other injuries, wearing what looks like a skull cap.

The Record's story not only doesn't say whether Rosenberg is an Orthodox Jew or if the slice of pizza he ate was kosher (A-6), it raises other questions.

Why is the Woodland Park daily doing a third story on the crash, and why is it all over the front page?

What's the big deal? 

Don't all small-plane pilots who go down after their engines conk out try to avoid injuring or killing other people on the ground?

Flawed story 

And why was first-day coverage of the crash on Friday missing the crucial details about Rosenberg deliberately turning his crippled plane away from cross-country runners and others on a Tenafly field?

Or, as the overworked police reporter, Staff Writer Stefanie Dazio, put it:

"As Jack Rosenberg looked out the window of his small plane ... hurtling 60 [mph] to 70 mph over the Cresskill and Tenafly border and saw dozens of young faces on a school field that would have made a perfect landing site, the father of seven knew he'd have to find another spot" (A-1).

Even my shortened version of that lead paragraph is enough to choke a horse.

Small-plane menace

Small planes like the one Rosenberg was piloting seem to crash all too often, usually with fatalities. 

When they're not crashing, small, medium and large planes, and the noise they make, have a huge impact on the quality of life in Bergen County, especially if you live in Hackensack, Teaneck and other towns near Teterboro Airport.

One story on Rosenberg would have been enough, but The Record's reporters and assignment editors never seem willing to hustle and do the legwork needed for such thorough reporting.

The two follow-ups corrected an error in the first account that Rosenberg contacted air-traffic controllers at La Guardia Airport; it was Teterboro Airport.

Overlooked pilot

Instead of a rehash and regurgitation of pilot Jack Rosenberg's crash, some enterprising editor should have put the obituary of a Tuskegee Airman on the front page today.

You'll find the compelling life story of Calvin Spann, 90, a former Englewood resident, literally buried in the back of Local (L-8).

The obit illuminates how African Americans in North Jersey still face discrimination today.

As a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps, Spann flew 26 combat missions, including the longest bomber escort mission of the 15th Air Force.

When Spann returned home, he wanted to become a commercial pilot, but the major airlines wouldn't hire African Americans.

The sub-headline on Spann's obituary says incorrectly he "faced segregation after war." 

He "found a job in pharmaceutical sales and settled in Englewood," the obituary notes.

Spann faced discrimination, but the black and Hispanic children attending Englewood schools today still face segregation in the elementary and middle-school grades.

Virtually all of the white children in Englewood attend private schools, and officials have sought to desegregate only the high school.

When will editors hit poor quality of life in Bergen County?

A business jet, above, and a noisy Italian-made airplane, below, roaring over South Hackensack as they prepared to land at Teterboro Airport last November.

Many of the jets that use Teterboro are flown over residential neighborhoods in Hackensack, Teaneck and other towns on their way to and from the airport.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Business jets and noisy single-engine planes roaring overhead around the clock. A Harley-Davidson motorcycle blasting past your house just before 7 in the morning.

Roads so antiquated that many lack turn lanes or proper drainage, leading to flash floods that threaten to swallow luxury SUVs (see Page 1 of The Record today).

Even though Bergen County residents pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation, their quality of life often sucks, and The Record could care less.

Today, the Local editors celebrate a charity run by hundreds of lawbreakers riding motorcycles modified to make as much noise as possible (L-1). 

If police can set up checkpoints to catch people who don't buckle up, why can't they do the same to cite motorcyclists for violating anti-noise ordinances?

One reason may be that many Harleys are owned by cops and firemen, both active and retired.

Members of Fourth Watch, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle club exclusively for emergency medical personnel, firefighters, members of the military and police officers, at Englewood's Memorial Day Parade. The roar from their bikes was defeaning, and their fumes filled the air. What a poor example to set for spectators, including children.

Page 1: Dead and dying politicians, murder and mayhem

In the Fort Lee Public Library, a display on the bitter World War II battle against 21,000 Japanese troops dug in on Iwo Jima notes that "256 men [U.S. Marines] went up to Mount Suribachi to place the flag on top" and "only 22 men came back down."  In the 2010 census, about 1,300 Japanese residents were counted in Fort Lee.

By VICTOR SASSON
EDITOR

Nearly the entire front page of The Record today is devoted to dead and dying politicians, a motorcyclist who lost part of a leg on a poorly engineered highway and a businessman murdered in South Hackensack.

What was Editor Martin Gottlieb thinking when he assembled this schlomozzle?

I can certainly see the obituary for Gerald Calabrese of Cliffside Park, New Jersey's longest serving mayor, as front-page news (A-1).

But it doesn't look like his death will bring to end the Calabrese family dynasty that continues to rule the borough, and that point isn't made forcefully enough.

Look what a sorry mess the Zisa family made of Hackensack, where reformers struggle to repair the damage to the city's treasury from defending and settling lawsuits filed against a corrupt police chief and former state assemblyman.

But what about the lawsuit over a poorly engineered stretch of S-curves on Route 23 in West Milford, where Jim Smetana crashed his motorcycle and lost part of his left leg (A-1)?

Why is that on Page 1 today? 

Ditto for another boring Charles Stile political column, this one on twice-failed former presidential candidate John McCain, a war hero long past retirement.

Corrections

Two major editing errors are corrected on A-2 today. 

In one, the lame assignment and copy editing staff couldn't get right the name of a kid who donated his organs to three others after his death in October.

Local news?

Most of the stories on  the Local front today are from the courts or the police blotter (L-1).

Instead of according Mayor Calabrese a privileged place on A-1 today, the editors could have given better play to the death of actress and director Judith Malina, whose credits include "Dog Day Afternoon" and "The Sopranos" (L-1).

You'll find more Law & Order news inside the local-news section.

Hard landing

As an example of how out of touch the editors are, a photo caption on L-3 today of a corporate jet landing at Teterboro Airport notes low aircraft are "an all-too-common site for motorists."

But it's homeowners in Hackensack, Teaneck and other towns near the airport who endure the noise of those jets around the clock, a quality of life issue The Record has ignored for many decades.

Cowardly columnists, sloppy editing and potholes

A pothole on Euclid Avenue in Hackensack, where I haven't seen any crews repairing pockmarked streets that bend car wheels and blow out tires, and have drivers cursing their public officials.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Why is Columnist Charles Stile wasting readers' time today by examining what Governor Christie said as long ago as 2011, but never saying whether he thinks the GOP bully is lying about his role in the Bridgegate scandal?

That's what readers want from a columnist for The Record -- an opinion, a point of view, an accusation based on the seasoned Trenton reporter's experience dealing with public officials.

Instead, the best Stile can do is say "Christie's credibility -- and his career -- are in the shadow of a scandal" (A-1).

This "scandal" thing is a variation of what he wrote in his boring column on Friday: 

"Recast by scandal as a bully whose aides closed off part of the George Washington Bridge as a political revenge plot...." 

He's no Breslin

Of course, it's Stile's credibility that is on the line, along with the credibility of the paper's other columnists, including Road Warrior John Cichowski and Mike Kelly, who can't muster any strong opinions, either.

Instead of condemning municipal crews' half-assed job of snow removal and pothole repair in the region, Cichowski's column on Thursday delved into fantasy, based on a single driver's comment:

“'It seems like every street corner has snow piles up to the heavens, making it impossible to turn onto any street.'

"Yet," a concerned reader noted, "there were no reports of regionwide or local traffic gridlock, if it really was 'impossible to turn onto any street.'

"The Road Warrior’s column predicted that 'current accumulations are likely to keep streets narrow and dangerous for weeks' due to freezing temperatures, even though four straight days of temperatures in the 50s and three days of rain would melt a lot of the snow."

See the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers by clicking on the following link:

Road Warrior puts up factual roadblocks 

Good for transit

What is the big deal about leasing a North Bergen park-and-ride lot to NJ Transit for $1 a year, even if the agency was a client of lawyer David Samson, chairman of the Port Authority (A-1 on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and today)?

NJ Transit is the state's mass-transit agency -- not a profit-making company -- and in giving up $900,000 in revenue from the lot in 2012, the Port Authority was, in effect, making a contribution to the viability of public transit and helping to ease traffic congestion.

The bi-state agency is supported by fees and tolls, not taxes, and operates the PATH commuter rail system, owns hundreds of buses used by NJ Transit and others, and runs the reverse express bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel.

No question

Today's Page 1 story by Staff Writer Shawn Boburg actually reports Samson "has been the focus of questions about whether clients of his law firm benefited from his public position."

"Whether"? 

Weeks ago, National Public Radio (WNYC-FM) reported lobbying and legal work boomed at Samson's law firm after Christie named him chairman of the Port Authority.

Those clients know a good thing when they see it -- their lawyer at the pinnacle of power.  

Wasting our time

The front of Local today carries another Road Warrior column -- this one about drivers who run  stop signs at a traffic circle in the Bergen County backwater of Franklin Lakes (L-1).

Drivers run stop signs everywhere. Why waste an entire column on this spot? 

What about an epidemic of speeding and aggressive driving, and the dramatic decline in the enforcement of traffic laws on highways and in many towns.

Why not report on Hackensack Police Director Mike Mordaga's crackdown on traffic violations? 

Sloppy editing

Also on the Local front today is a beautifully written local obituary for Sidney Kronish, who lived to 101, with an inexplicable flaw in the first paragraph:

"Rozanne Zweig addressed the mourners as she stood aside [italics added] her boyfriend's simple pine coffin."

Shouldn't that be "beside" or "next to" the coffin? Where were the assignment, news and copy editors who went over this obituary? Were they asleep at their computers?

Silence is golden

On the Opinion front, Carl Golden, a former Record reporter who was press secretary to two Republican governors, discusses the stresses of a job now held by Mike Drewniak, Governor Christie's discredited chief spokesman (O-1).

Golden doesn't explain why Drewniak, a former Star-Ledger reporter in Trenton, has such a foul mouth or why he cursed and belittled former colleagues who were looking into the Bridgegate scandal.

Drewniak has laid low in the weeks since his expletive-filled e-mails emerged, and no one has reported whether it is a coincidence his last name rhymes with "maniac."

Jets v. residents

The Business front cover story on increased private-jet activity at Teterboro Airport is a royal F.U. to residents of Teaneck, Hackensack and other towns who are kept awake by all of those noisy planes (B-1).

Nor does it report that Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg is the filthy rich co-owner of one of the unregulated private jets that seem to be screaming overhead day and night. 

More Christie spin, more three-day-old news

Hackensack officials are counting on new luxury apartments, such as these under construction at State and Bergen streets, to bring more customers to Main Street stores and restaurants, a strategy that has already failed in nearby Englewood.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Critics call the closing of Fort Lee access lanes to the George Washington Bridge political revenge exacted by Governor Christie's Port Authority appointees.

But Christie chooses to characterize the closures as "mistakes," and he pressured two flunkies, David Wildstein and Bill Baroni, to resign, as reported on Page 1 of The Record today.

Democrats in the state Legislature just spun their wheels when Christie rubber stamped exorbitant toll hikes on the Hudson River crossings, but they've matched his spin with exaggeration and hype of their own on the impact of the Fort Lee incident in early September (A-1 and A-9).

Now, Christie's every action involving the Port Authority or inaction on lowering college tuition for illegal immigrants is being interpreted by The Record in terms of how they will affect his presidential ambitions in 2016 (A-6 and Friday's A-3).

Striptease

Why is a new terminal for business jets at Newark Liberty International Airport news (A-8), and when will The Record address the impact of airplane noise on the quality of life in North Jersey?

An unintentional double entendre in a headline on the first Business page suggests people are stripping at shopping centers owned by Simon Property Group Inc. (A-8).

Minimizing death

On the Local front today, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza catches up to three-day-old news -- a wealthy 73-year-old woman apparently was run down and killed on Wednesday during an errand on a narrow section of Grand Avenue in Englewood (L-1).

However, Sforza gave better play to the no-injury collision of a train and tractor-trailer carrying jars of stuffed olives, probably because of the wreckage photo taken by Tariq "Crash" Zehawi.

Even with two full days to gather information, the story about Myrna Sherman tells readers little about what happened to the matriarch of the Sherman tobacco family, and doesn't even discuss Grand Avenue's reputation for speeding drivers or previous pedestrian deaths.

The story also plays into the stereotype of Korean-Americans as bad drivers, reporting only that Sung Park, 22, of Ramsey was charged with reckless driving.

Did driver see woman?

"Sherman was either getting out of or into her parked car on Grand Avenue when she was hit by a Honda Odyssey [minivan] near Sheffield Avenue," today's story says, adding that the woman was going to the dry cleaners at 5 p.m.

Today, I called the dry cleaners, the Laundress at Grand and Sheffield avenues, and the owner said Sherman had parked on Grand Avenue in front of the store, and the minivan had turned the corner and struck the woman.

He said it was dark, and he doesn't believe the driver saw the woman. The portion of Grand Avenue where the accident occurred is narrow and carries two-way traffic.

Hackensack mess

Also on the Local front today, Staff Writer Hannan Adely continues to report on the new Hackensack City Council trying to come to terms with the mess left behind by officials allied with the Zisas, who ruled the city so ineptly for decades (L-1).

Today, she reports Hackensack University Medical Center has paid the city $176,000 for school crossing guards that were never billed, just as the city failed to bill the Board of Education $1 million for a police officer assigned to the high school for seven years.

Still, Sforza struggled to fill the section with Bergen County news, and had to resort to using four Paterson stories as filler (L-2, L-3 and L-5).

Friday's paper

Editor Marty Gottlieb wasted readers' time with Columnist Mike Kelly's Page 1 account from Newtown, Conn., on the anniversary of the massacre.

In his first paragraph, the tired columnist describes the removal of the same pile of teddy bears, ribbons, cardboard hearts, candles and cards that he described so lamely in his column a year ago.

Readers stopped there and just stared dumbly at Kelly's dated column photo and shit-eating grin. What a phony (Friday's A-1).

A couple of photos of Newtown would have sufficed to cover the anniversary.

Remember, Kelly is the same moron who repeatedly compared the Teaneck gunman who committed suicide at Westfield Garden State Plaza on Nov. 4 to the maniacs who killed so many at Columbine high and in the Newtown elementary school.

Also on Friday (A-21), Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin's silly rhymed couplets on the Port Authority-Fort Lee brouhaha ticked off many readers, including Jeff of Hackensack:

"Doblin's opinion pieces are usually the lowest of the low in terms of how he must continually mix and interconnect irrelevant metaphors, mottos, symbols, etc., in order to justify his somewhat senseless opinions about various matters.

"He believes that he is also a brilliant humorist and editorialist, who is able to seemingly combine the humorous with the serious in forging his supposedly classic opinions, which are unfortunately frequently way off the mark.

"However, his 'opinion' piece today about the Port Authority fiasco with the reduction of three dedicated tolls lanes to one for Fort Lee's entrance to the GWB has to be one his sickest, if not the sickest attempts at his frightful Goblin, I mean Doblin humor, which is mixed with Shitty, I mean Gritty, opinions to his dominions in the form of a frightful, I mean spiteful, attempt at a humorous, poetic, opinion fleece, I mean piece."

Hackensack news

Downtown Hackensack got some good news with a story about the purchase of a three-story building for a Korean cultural center (Friday's L-2).

Young Cho, board chairman of the non-profit Dongwha Cultural Foundation, is quoted as saying the new center will be three times the size of the current one in Englewood.

On Friday's L-3, a story reporting that the family of a pilot killed near Teterboro Airport "will receive $7.5 million" is inaccurate since about a third of the settlement amount will go to the plaintiffs' lawyer or lawyers.

At Bibi'z in Westwood, Resturant Reviewer Elisa Ung and her guest were served overcooked mahi-mahi and chicken kebab, but she still gave it a good-to-excellent rating (Friday's BL-22).

Readers want fresh voices for old columns

Image via Wikipedia

North Jersey's future lies in transit -- not cars -- but The Record publishes negative stories or simply ignores problems facing bus and rail users.

Do columns in The Record have to go on forever, especially when the writers ran out of ideas months or years ago?


Staff Writer John Cichowski succeeded Jeff Page as the Road Warrior in late 2003, but he's no Jeff Page.


He soon became obsessed with the problems of drivers to the exclusion of all other commuters, especially those who use mass transit, and often his advice is inaccurate.


This incredibly lazy reporter fizzled out quickly, compared to Page, who wrote the column for 13 years.


His column today isn't even about drivers (L-1). 


Sign off, Chick


Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who picked Cichowski to write the column, need to give him the heave-ho. 


Bust him back to reporter and get his ass out of the office.


Allow another writer to take over the column, especially one who will become an advocate for public-transit users in one of the most congested regions of the country.


The same goes for Columnists Mike Kelly (20 years), Bill Ervolino (10-plus years), Kevin DeMarrais (17 years) and Elisa Ung. 


Readers want to hear fresh voices that reflect their concerns.


Food for thought


DeMarrais is the only consumer columnist at the Woodland Park daily, and I've long admired his work, plus he's the only reporter who writes about food shopping.


But he is stuck in the past, refusing to add organic and naturally raised food to his monthly Marketbasket Survey of supermarket prices.


DeMarrais also destroyed his credibility with a February 2011 column about a wealthy woman who sells $10 million to $50 million business jets by omitting the name of one of her prominent customers: Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg.


Ung, the restaurant reviewer since 2007, also writes a Sunday column called The Corner Table, which is supposed to represent the customer's point of view.


But she ran out of ideas long ago, and seems reluctant to ask restaurant owners hard questions about the origin of the food they serve, the prices they charge and the slave wages they pay their servers.


In fact, Ung devotes too many of her columns to glorifying restaurant owners, chefs and food producers, such as today's piece on a Fort Lee man who produces pricey, controversial foie gras (F-1).


Kelly and Ervolino could be much more effective as reporters. Their columns are more annoying than all those business jets heading for Teterboro Airport.


Kelly has been pushing words around for years. Ervolino is what, in his 50s? His single lifestyle is pathetic, not funny.


Today's paper


Scandale's front page today is dreadful, especially for a Sunday paper.


A Page 1 photo of the Giants quarterback? Boy, I'm glad the world is safe again.


The two local A-1 stories -- one on high-tech 911 hoaxes and the other on public insurance adjusters -- couldn't be duller, and the assignment editors seem only to have spell-checked them before sending them on to the news copy desk.


The story on adjusters doesn't even answer an obvious question: If you have a good insurance company, do you even need a public adjuster?


Staff Writer Shawn Boburg doesn't discuss incompetent police work as a factor in the hoaxes.


In Sykes' Local section, you won't find any Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck news.

See below: Bill Maher on Governor Christie

It quacks like an editor taking a freebie

Image by insidethemagic via Flickr

The Record's lavish coverage of a new cruise ship takes up a third of the Travel section.

The Page 1 headline today tells us the Packers added to their legacy with a Super Bowl win, but what does  spreading the coverage all over A-1, L-1 and the Sports section tells us about Editor Francis Scandale? Green Bay isn't even a team that plays in New Jersey.

Of course, we know Scandale loves the male-bonding, ass-slapping, towel-snapping and jock-strap waving camaraderie of the news meeting when sports is on the table, but it goes beyond that.

Scandale is no intellectual. Nor is he interested in issues, such as dictatorships in the Middle East, so the Egypt story keeps on bouncing onto and off of the front page. 

He's antsy, like most journalists, and gets bored by a story quickly. He needs to be stimulated every minute of the day -- and he thinks the same of his readers.

More drunk fans

Bill Ervolino's Super Bowl story on fans at a Westwood tavern might have sounded like a good idea, but in the paper, it reads like every story written from a tavern on game day (L-1).

The lead A-1 story on a new proposal for a Hudson River rail tunnel is important for the region's future, but The Star-Ledger beat The Record to it. 

Lucky for Scandale, the two papers have a cooperative news gathering agreement, and Star-Ledger stories plug a lot of holes left empty by The Record's lazy assignment desk under Editor Deirdre Sykes.

Another drone

On the Local front, why is Columnist Mike Kelly wasting his time on a single small-engine plane operated by the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, when he could be writing about the hundreds of small planes and business jets that ruin the quality of life in Hackensack and other towns near Teterboro Airport?

At  the top of L-1, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado was on weekend duty and writing about whether ponds and lakes are safe for skating. Good thing she didn't fall through the ice or Hackensack residents would go from little news to no news about their city.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Mickey Louse

In Travel Editor Jill Schensul's lavish spread on a new Disney cruise ship, she uses the phrase "full disclosure" a number of times, but makes no effort to come clean with readers on whether this was an all-expenses-paid press junket in return for a million dollars of free publicity. 

Her report and photos cover more than a third of the thin, six-page Sunday section.

Although she has a reputation of being a good writer, she delivered this "full disclosure" clunker on Sunday: "My palate is not sophisticated....[But] I was traveling with a serious food knower."

"Food knower," huh? I guess that must make me "a serious fraud knower."

Hacks cover Hackensack

Image by Global Jet via Flickr

Schools near Teterboro Airport get federal soundproofing money. Homeowners get the shaft.

Why does The Record of Woodland Park -- formerly of Hackensack -- have hacks covering the city where it was founded in 1895 and where it prospered for more than 110 years? And how have the hacks kept their jobs?


When the Hackensack City Council introduced the budget, The Record ignored it. When the council passed the budget and set the tax rate, The Record was silent. When the council picked a new mayor, only the weeklies reported it.


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes is chiefly responsible for local news, along with her crew of clueless assistants. She often sidetracks municipal reporters on expensive, prolonged investigations that bear little fruit. Wrongdoing often is exposed long after it has ended.


Sykes apparently has told Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado that her mission is blanket coverage of the Police Department, where the chief has been suspended and hit with a number of lawsuits, and he, in turn, has brought some of his officers up on administrative charges.


In nearly a year and a half of covering little else, Alvarado hasn't reported whether policing has been compromised or the public's confidence in the department has been shaken. 


Sykes even has Alvarado covering the administrative hearings as if they are pronouncements from the state's highest court, including spell-binding legal maneuvering to get the chief to testify on one cop's suspended and expired driver's license (L-3).

Catching up to 2005-09

Elise Young, a hard-working member of the State House Bureau, leads the paper today with an expose on the reckless Local Finance Board, the supposed watchdog of municipal and county spending. She pored over thousands of pages relating to actions the board took in 2005-09.


Once she convinces readers that these morons have forced taxpayers to cover the increased costs of out-of-control borrowing, she tells us Governor Christie has replaced the chairman and made other reforms.

What about homeowners? 

The big story on the front of Local today reports delays in FAA aid to insulate students from the noise of of aircraft using Teterboro Airport. But the paper has long ignored noise complaints from homeowners who live under the flight paths of both Teterboro and Newark airports. 

Local food coverage

There is none in Better Living today (unless you count the ShopRite ad on the back page). The battle of the cupcake mixes promised on Twitter by Food Editor Susan Sherrill didn't materialize. Did she have the day wrong?

More clunky editing and headlines

Image via Wikipedia

Teterboro Airport has two runways for the noisy aircraft that land there.

The sad story of Ridgewood's Tyler Clementi has spread far and wide, but his family's hometown daily newspaper continues to handle it with the competence of some crappy weekly. The headline over today's third-straight day of front-page coverage in The Record of Woodland Park is as clunky as ever:

"Emotions pour out"

Not only is the headline repeating the obvious, it duplicates words in a quotation printed just above it that came from the family of the Rutgers student, who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22 after his dorm mate outted him in an Internet video. Here is a far better headline:

"Call for compassion"

And for the third day, The Record's coverage contains almost nothing about the Clementi's roommate and a second perpetrator, and no comments from their lawyers or families about just what kind of people they are. The most telling comment I heard came from a student who appeared on television news. She said gay and lesbian students weren't "safe" in their own dorm rooms.

Another A-1 story -- about Palisades Park becoming the first New Jersey town to offer Korean language instruction in public schools -- fails to mention what a sea change this represents. No one at the paper seems to remember the bitter lawsuit Korean merchants filed when the town barred restaurants from staying open 24 hours a day -- a suit that was settled when restaurants agreed to close a few hours each night.

Today's Local section will help you catch up with police and court news you might have missed.  

All Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado could come up with is another story about cops, two of whom were charged with fraud in connection with an accident. One story she hasn't done is whether the quality of policing or public confidence in the department have been affected by suspended Chief Ken Zisa's legal troubles, all the lawsuits filed against him and the occasional rotten apple.

Another story she hasn't done appears in The County Seat, the weekly published by the Zisas, about an after-school haven for children who live in public housing. And apparently she could care less whether Hackensack can follow Teaneck's example and save $250,000 a year by merging the Police and Fire Departments.

Of course, those stories would take a little legwork, something that is discouraged by Deirdre "Loafs A Lot" Sykes, head assignment editor, who apparently spends more time menu planning than telling her local reporters to get out there and cover their towns. There is no Englewood or Teaneck news in the paper today.

Talk about bad editing. If so many lives were saved, why is the story about the runaway jet on L-3?

Nick Clunn's lead states unequivocally that an arrestor bed at Teterboro Airport stopped a jet from running off the end of the runway -- "saving the lives of nine people onboard and countless others on the ground." Countless? Even the business jet that hit cars on Route 46 and then a warehouse in 2005 didn't kill anybody.

Was it Clunn's assignment editor who wrote this fanciful lead paragraph? What about referring to concrete blocks as "a special cement"? Pathetic. What's wrong with arrestor bed? If the reporter or editor stopped spending so much time making things up to hype the story, we might have learned the names of the pilots and the passengers.

Now, will the paper do a follow to supply this information and ask the most important question of all: Was it pilot error, mechanical failure or overloading that caused this latest accident at Teterboro? 

I'm not hopeful. For years, Publisher Greedy Stevie Borg, Editor Francis Scandale and Sykes have turned their backs on residents who live near the airport and their concerns over safety and noise.

Blast from The Record's past: 

Steve Crabill was shopping at Fairway Market in Paramus on Saturday morning. He left the former Hackensack daily 10 years ago for The Star-Ledger, where he is business editor.