Rehabilitation of Paterson

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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?

Governor takes back seat to Yankees

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After Tuesday's upset and with a new governor-elect girding himself for a battle to lower property taxes, you'd think The Record would give the whole front page to that story today. You'd be wrong. Instead, Chris Christie is squeezed down to the bottom of the page to make room for the Yankees winning the championship.

The former Hackensack daily likely intends the sports story to distract us from our daily tribulations and to bring a ray of sunshine into the lives of hundreds of thousands of North Jersey residents laid off during the recession, including the paper's many experienced staffers who were shown the door.

On Page A-2, you'll find three corrections of local news stories from the crack staff.

In the Local section, the drought continues on municipal news from diverse Teaneck, Englewood and Hackensack, but there are stories from several predominately white towns. And we learn that residents of Woodland Park rejected changing the town's name back to West Paterson, so The Record, which has moved printing and most staff out of Hackensack, is stuck with Woodland Park, where it is now headquartered (though there is no mention of that in the story or on Page A-2, where 150 River St. in Hackensack is still listed as where the paper is "published").

As usual on most Thursdays, there is no food coverage in Better Living, despite the paper's promise to readers to publish food news "every day" after the Food section was folded.

That's it for commentary on "The Trusted Local Source," the paper's new marketing slogan.