Will River Street be vacant for 2 more years?

Since The Record left 150 River St. in Hackensack, this marker has resembled a tombstone for local journalism. Now, Bergen County is leasing 540 parking spaces in the old Record lot from the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group.

This is one of the trucks and other pieces of equipment parked in the NJMG-owned lot near the U.S.S. Ling, generating more income for the Borgs.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

After Publisher Stephen A. Borg abandoned the Hackensack headquarters of The Record and North Jersey Media Group in 2009, city officials anxiously awaited word of redevelopment.

The Borgs were rumored to be flirting with Wal-Mart for one of its super-duper stores peddling low-quality food and other goods, and paying its workers slave wages.

But that fell through and, in June, NJMG announced that about 20 acres along River Street would be sold to a developer who promises to build hundreds of luxury apartments, retail and even a hotel.

A bad deal

However, nothing apparently will change until at least July 2015 and expiration of a $777,660 lease for 540 parking spaces at 150 River St.

Bergen County will use those spaces to provide free parking for jurors, attorneys and others during construction of a Justice Center and parking deck on the old parking lot opposite Pep Boys (Sunday's L-2).

But this is a bad deal for taxpayers in Hackensack and the county:

Besides paying NJMG more than three-quarters of a million dollars for the spaces, the county will give up tens of thousands of dollars in parking fees generated by the old lot.

In 2010, the publishing company -- which prints The Record of Woodland Park, Herald News, weeklies, (201) magazine and other publications -- paid these property taxes to the city of Hackensack: 

• 150 River St. -- $628,560 

• 80 River St. -- $36,084 

• 76 Bridge St. -- $12,238

The 2-year delay might give Hackensack officials time to figure out where to put schoolchildren from hundreds of new apartments on River Street, as well as a new residential building on State Street that is under construction.

Chris and Sandy

The lead story in The Record today reports that Governor Christie is funneling more Sandy aid to lower-income residents (A-1).

That's a real slap in the face to other low- and moderate-income residents in New Jersey, where Christie has tried and failed to abolish the state Council on Affordable Housing, and use $142 million in housing funds to balance his mean-spirited budget.

Leave it to readers

The GOP bully can do no wrong, according to The Record's editors, but readers like Bruce de Lyon of Dumont know better:

In a letter to the editor (A-11), De Lyon notes Christie has presidential aspirations and is "looking to firm up his standing with the extreme right of the Republican Party."

Contrary to being able "to work with adversaries," Christie cut state education aid "across the board" and "vilified teachers as 'drug mules' and public workers as the reason for the state's problems," says De Lyon, a retired superintendent of schools.

Readers in a funk

Editor Marty Gottlieb waste a huge amount of front-page space today on another silly piece from sports Columnist Tara Sullivan, the paper's own vagina monologue.

The sub-headline notes a "homer helps lift Yankees out of their funk."

Who will lift readers out of their funk?

Junk food on wheels

Certainly not the paper's food writers, who have been pulling out all the stops to promote a conclave of food trucks at Overpeck Park on Wednesday afternoon (Better Living cover).

Lots of unhealthy food will be offered -- strange, considering the main sponsor is Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck.

One of the trucks, Bacon on Wheels, appears to be offering fatty pork filled with harmful preservatives, antibiotics and growth hormones.

Maybe the hospital is trying to fill empty beds by luring unsuspecting people to the food trucks in the park. The trucks are  barred by many towns.

Fine food?

Food Editor Esther Davidowitz wrote today's cover story, claiming the mobil food vendors serve "fine food" and are "the rage ... in the new-rage-every-minute foodie world."

And that's just the first paragraph. 

Davidowitz, whose online photos appear to show a fit woman in her 60s, actually uses the phrase "like, duh," in her article.

More sloppy editing

Another food article -- the STARTERS feature on Pier 115 Bar & Grill in Edgewater -- was poorly edited.

Freelancer Joyce Venezia Suss describes a "miso Chilean sea bass featuring beer-battered cod fillet" (BL-3).

That's two fish in one dish, but the restaurant said today the specialty contains only oven-roasted Chilean sea bass -- which experts say is overfished and high in mercury.

Is cod on the menu?

Second look

Road Warrior John Cichowski appeared to be promoting NY Waterway ferry service in his column on Sunday.

But in his first paragraph, he associates the ferry with a sinking ship by comparing commuter Holly Wilson of Cresskill to actress Kate Winslet in "Titanic."

LOL.

Ung is back

Elisa Ung, The Record's restaurant reviewer, has ended an extended leave with a post on the Second Helpings blog about a new Italian restaurant in Midland Park.

Readers should brace for Ung's multiple orgasms over all of those artery clogging desserts she loves to sample at restaurants.

It's a bird, a plane, a shovel -- uh, shuttle

The Record's news copy desk apparently is unaware that Dwight Morrow High School, above, was named after a famous person whose first name was Dwight and whose last name was Morrow. A bad photo caption hyphenates the name.

Older readers scrambled to find their magnifying glasses in order to see the small objects in the sky in today's Page 1 photo.

The Record's editors and the editors at The New York Times ran a nearly identical front-page photo today of the space shuttle Enterprise soaring over the Manhattan skyline on the back of a 747.

Wowee! Gee-whiz. Would you get a load of ... what?

A second photo on A-10 appears to show the Statue of Liberty giving the finger to the 747 pilot.

As the A-1 photo demonstrates, Editor Marty Gottlieb, who spent many years at The Times, didn't fall far from the tree.

Chris who?

Then, Gottlieb squandered the A-1 lead position on Chris Olsen, the moron who refused to suspend Wayne high school players arrested on aggravated assault charges.

Does anybody care what happens to Olsen?

Unbearable


Another gee-whiz photo on A-1 -- of a lighter-than-air bear -- comes all the way from Boulder, Colo., making readers think Denver Post alum Francis "Frank" Scandale didn't get shit-canned as editor last year.


Bridge to big profits

On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, a story and photo updates the rebuilding of the Court Street Bridge between Hackensack and Bogota.

The story makes no mention that completion of the project in May is the final piece needed to make North Jersey Media Group's 20 acres on River Street attractive to such big-box retailers as Wal-Mart.

The bridge would provide a second access route to and from major highways. 

More bad errors

Production Editor Liz Houlton's error-prone news copy desk has been having a field day (see correction on A-2).

On L-2, a photo caption incorrectly hyphenates Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood.

And a much bigger photo on L-3 -- apparently needed to fill space that would normally be taken up by local news -- also carries an incorrect caption.

There is no "Main Street" in Leonia, but the main street is Broad Avenue. 

Hackensack news is missing in inaction again today.

Slanting the news to please a wealthy publisher

Image via Wikipedia

The Record's story on the Wal-Mart sex-bias case reads the minds of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Did State House Bureau staffer John Reitmeyer cover the same legislative hearing on Governor Christie's new budget as other reporters?

One news outlet quoted state Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff as saying Christie won't sign a budget that contains a tax surcharge on millionaires.

But you have to plow through Reitmeyer's Page 1 piece in The Record today and turn to the jump page (A-8) before he even mentions such a tax, and he does so only in paraphrasing one of the Democrat lawmakers who have been battling the governor.

Selling out to Wal-Mart

I watched two major TV news reports Tuesday night on the sex-bias suit against Wal-Mart, a Record advertiser -- CBS and PBS -- and neither predicted how the Supreme Court will rule on the plaintiffs' request for class-action status.

But in an A-1 brief , L-1 refer and the major piece on the first Business page (L-7), Editor Francis Scandale chose a slanted Associated Press story sure to please Wal-Mart, other wealthy business owners and his multimillionaire boss, Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

The AP reports the high court "appears ready to block" the lawsuit. Compare that to The New York Times, which reports the court "appeared closely divided" during legal arguments Tuesday.

As if The Record's slant isn't bad enough, the sub-headline is totally inaccurate, saying the justices are expected to "block claim of sex discrimination," even though that issue is not before the court.

Newsroom sex-bias

The spin on the Wal-Mart suit is no surprise coming from Scandale, who, with Features Director Barbara Jaeger, paid $70,000 a year to a new, 30-something male food editor in 2006, thousands of dollars more than the woman he replaced -- a respected food journalist who had 10 times his experience. 

Shouldn't the Port Authority spend $1.8 billion no longer needed for a new rail tunnel on improving mass transit -- not on the road and bridge repairs demanded by Christie (A-3)?

Huh?

Can reporter Karen Rouse, who covers transportation meetings and surveys, balance her checkbook? On A-8 today, she reports turnpike toll collectors "average about $65,000 a year ... but that could be cut to $10 to $12 an hour if the agency goes private." 

An editorial dismissing some residents' aesthetic objections to solar panels on utility poles doesn't mention these are the same people who have buried relatives with cancer and other diseases linked to North Jersey's notorious air pollution (A-20).

On L-6, in head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Staff Writer Nick Clunn reports on a debate over building apartments next to "a 10,000-mile-long [gas] pipeline" between New York City and the Gulf Coast.

Surrounded by wolves

Don't miss the touching tribute to readers, editors, even his wife at the end of the Your Money's Worth column, which Staff Writer Kevin DeMarrais started 17 years ago March 27 (L-8).

I'll give him a pass -- in view of how he's a lone voice for the consumer among too many reporters and editors at the Borgs' Woodland Park daily who have long ago sold out to Christie, wealthy advertisers and other special interests.

'What's all this crap?'

Image via Wikipedia

 
After nearly 18 months of just subscribing to and reading The Record and noting its sudden decline in quality, I've given up expecting anything special. So when my wife went out to the driveway and returned with a heavy plastic bag today, I muttered, "What's all this shit?"

At least the front page carried three hard-news stories, but there were lots of advertising inserts, a special advertising section and other junk to recycle. Page A-2 carried three corrections of  staff-written stories. Thursday's correction of a Wal-Mart story placed North Bergen in its correct county, Hudson.

Were all the news copy editors out to lunch? How about the slots, who supervise and check the work of the copy editors?

Is it enough to run wire service stories without editing them intelligently? The Page A-18 story today on invasive Asian carp ignores the logical question: Why aren't they caught and eaten, especially in view of all the demand on food pantries these days? Or are the Great Lakes so polluted that they render this tasty fish inedible?

On the front of the Local section, Road Warrior John Cichowski squanders yet another column, this one about Route 80 construction delays for eastbound motorists who e-mailed him.

But he is probably also responding to the bitching and moaning from colleagues in the Woodland Park newsroom who now face delays of up to an hour to reach their Bergen County homes, in keeping with the upsurge in coverage of Passaic County traffic woes after the paper abandoned  Hackensack this year. Indeed, reporter Monsy Alvarado, who is supposed to cover Hackensack,  has completely ignored the many recent street closings that have played havoc with Main Street traffic, especially when schools let out.

Also in the Local section for a change are two stories each about Hackensack and Englewood, but strangely, all four stories involve current or former municipal employees -- a favorite subject of  the local reporters, who do their best to avoid talking to residents and reporting on quality of life issues.

In Better Living, it's puzzling to see a review of Hacienda in Paterson, a restaurant  I wrote about several years ago, because four people could eat there for $50, including tax and tip. This Mexican restaurant gets only two stars and isn't the kind of place you'd expect to see so-called fine-dining reviewer Elisa Ung.

The restaurant health inspections column again is incomplete. The paper seems unconcerned that some towns, including Wyckoff, are apparently withholding fines and ratings.

The Record of Woodland Park, 12/10/09

Does anyone know why the paper insists on running a column by Christie Whitman after it has been shown time and again how dishonestly the former governor deals with her own serious missteps in office. A letter to the editor today notes: "It was her own administration that played shell games and helped put us and our grandchildren into the deep debt we're in now."

Except for police news and a sentencing, you'll find no coverage of development, education or quality of life in Hackensack, Englewood or Teaneck, the three most diverse communities in Bergen County.

This newspaper is all wet

The rag-tag circulation department at  The Record of Woodland Park double-bagged the copy delivered to my home today, but some moron forgot to close the bags, so the paper was soaking wet.

I was still able to look it over, noting with disgust that nearly half the front page was given to airhead reporter John Brennan to describe the new Meadowlands football stadium, and that the lazy, incompetent editors are continuing their royal F.U. to readers by not covering Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood, three of the most important towns in Bergen County. And what about the state's mounting financial crisis? Why doesn't that merit more than a brief  on  Page 1?

On the front of the Local section, we learn that Wal-Mart will be opening a store in Garfield, but the story by Staff Writer Alexander MacInness says nothing about all the employee lawsuits against the Arkansas chain for not paying overtime and other alleged workplace abuses.

Similarly, Robert Torricelli, the disgraced congressman from North Jersey, commands a lot of ink inside the section for representing yet another developer who is lusting after that parcel of land near the GWB in Fort Lee that has been vacant for nearly four decades. Curiously, the story I read on northjersey.com by reporter Merry Firschein yesterday said nothing about his deplorable ethics when he was in office or that he resigned.

I don't mind that Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski today criticizes the selfish drivers who use parking spaces for the handicapped, but in his six years as a columnist, he's ignored NJ Transit's back-handed treatment of minorities who are forced to ride the oldest, most decrepit buses in the fleet, while riders on Manhattan-bound routes get the newest buses. This is truly lazy journalism, aided and abetted by the lazy  assignment editor who gave him the job, Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes. I guess those hapless black and Hispanic local bus riders aren't the newspaper's "demographic."

What about the Sports section? I'm told those editors and writers do a great job, but if you follow automobile racing, you wouldn't know it. I recall searching in vain for a story about driver Jenson Button after he secured the Formula One championship this year. So that's why my Sports section goes right into the recycling bin.