Mounting errors cause John Borg to spin in his grave

One of the attractive properties available on Hackensack's sleepy Main Street, at the corner of Bridge Street, five years after the Borg publishing family abandoned the city. The Record's retail reporter, meanwhile, is probably preparing another story on big-box stores or malls.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Even the Page 1 story declaring the original owner of the Bergen Evening Record a "Bergen County Legend" contains a major error.

The Record's glib front-page headline -- "Indian chief to Mafia don" -- is part fact, part fiction (A-1).

Sure. It got me and other readers to turn the page and plow through the list selected by the county Historical Society.

But actor James Gandolfini only portrayed a "Mafia don."

The "Indian chief" is Oratam, leader of the Hackansacky Indian Tribe (A-8), but the story doesn't mention the chief's profile is prominently featured on Hackensack's official seal.

The official Hackensack seal.

John Borg

Today's story reports that John Borg, originally a stockbroker, "became the owner of the Bergen Evening Record, which 'exposed political scandal, despite kidnap and death threats,' the Historical Society said" (A-8).

Borg was the great-grandfather of Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

One has to wonder whether Stephen Borg will be remembered for cutting costs so relentlessly that he sacrificed accurate journalism.

The befuddled John Cichowski, who has written the Road Warrior column for nearly 11 years, has made more errors than the entire newsroom staff in Woodland Park, and few of them have been corrected.

Since a major downsizing ordered by Stephen Borg in 2008, Cichowski's column has rarely been edited or fact-checked -- despite Production Editor Liz Houlton, who is paid six figures to ensure just that.

Today's paper

Staff Writer Melissa Hayes has become so cozy with Governor Christie she doesn't even tell readers the age of Bridget, "his younger daughter" (A-7).

The Local staff knocked itself out getting all the details of a dramatic rescue by three state troopers who pulled a truck driver out of neck-high water in Overpeck Creek on Tuesday (L-1).

But there is not a word on how driver Lawrence Scherf, 66, crashed and burned his tractor-trailer on the New Jersey Turnpike in Ridgefield.

Was he speeding or did he fall asleep, as have so many tractor-trailer drivers recently?

I chuckled at one detail: "The troopers dropped their leather utility belts and jumped into water up to their necks" (L-3).

Utility belts? Surely, the reporter meant "gun belts."

Pardo and Rieck

The Associated Press writer who handled the obituary of announcer Don Pardo didn't think readers would be interested in how he lived to 96 (L-6).

And what moronic layout editor at The Record decided to bury Staff Writer Jay Levin's light-hearted treatment of cancer victim Jeffrey Rieck lampooning relatives in his own obituary (L-6)?

A famous Hoboken deli didn't last long in this Main Street storefront.

High rents on Main Street, low chances of success.

'No-raises recovery'

The Record's Business editors weren't about to send out reporters to interview workers on what Bloomberg News calls "the no-raises recovery" (L-7).

"Five years of economic expansion have done almost nothing to boost paychecks for typical American workers, while the rich have gotten richer."

That's certainly the case at The Record and North Jersey Media Group, owned by the wealthy Borg family.

Cory Nieves

On the Better Living front, the upbeat story about a 10-year-old CEO from Englewood leaves a couple of questions unanswered (BL-1).

If the fashion-conscious Cory Nieves has been selling hot cocoa, lemonade and cookies since 2009 to help his mom buy a car, why is she working for him and still taking the bus?

And Cory might want to rethink selling cookies, if he just looked around and saw all the kids his age struggling with obesity, a subject The Record has avoided for decades.

Editors should end Road Warrior column now

A shortage of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains and buses, speeding drivers and lax enforcement of traffic laws are just three of the many pressing commuting issues ignored by Road Warrior John Cichowski, who continues to churn out inaccurate and exaggerated columns three times a week.

Today's Road Warrior column amounts to little more than Staff Writer John Cichowski's well-disguised correction of his first, wildly exaggerated  column on the pedestrian bridge over Port Imperial Boulevard in Weehawken that was published only 4 days ago.

It's time for Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record to end the Road Warrior column, which continually violates the high standards of accuracy newspapers demand of their reporters.

Errors galore

I'm not talking about typos, the many math errors Cichowski commits or how he often contradicts himself from one column to the next.

Wednesday's Page 1 column intentionally created a transportation crisis that didn't exist, and strongly suggested that pedestrians were being injured or killed crossing Port Imperial Boulevard to reach the NY Waterway ferry. 

Nothing could be farther from the truth, as today's L-1 column sheepishly admits on L-6.

Even Friday's Road Warrior column on the first traffic signal installed in Ringwood carried an L-1  photograph that directly contradicted Cichowski's claim that "no more than 7" cars backed up at the new light.

See the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers, which discusses historical, mathematical and other errors in the Ringwood column:

Road Warrior keeps on lying to readers  

Dead stories

Today's front page keeps on beating dead horses.

Three of the four main element are follow-ups to stale controversies involving the allegedly dishonest Assemblyman Robert Schroeder, LG Electronics' high-rise plan for the Palisades and Big Data.

Cliff notes

Coverage of LG amounts to little more than endless reporting of who is in favor and who is against the South Korean electronic giant's headquarters plan in Englewood Cliffs.

Today's A-1 story quotes an angry Mayor Joseph Parisi Jr.

Isn't it time for The Record's editors to research lawsuits and talk to neighbors of other corporate developments to uncover what borough officials might have done in the past in their desperate bid for ratables?

More guesswork

The fourth main story on A-1 today is about a "serious incident" in Leonia that keeps readers guessing from beginning to end.

Sadly, the story amounts to a shameful admission by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes that she and her staff have so few sources in that town they have to wait for press releases to tell readers the full story.

Times veteran has been a colossal failure

At 12:30 p.m. Friday, Euclid Avenue in Hackensack was covered with only slush, to the relief of residents who feared driving on streets that hadn't been cleared by city public works plows.

Editor Marty Gottlieb, the Times veteran who took over The Record's Woodland Park newsroom in January 2012, has failed miserably on improving local-news coverage and accuracy.

Gottlieb hasn't even tried to apply the high standards of The New York Times' copy desk to fact-checking, headlines, photo captions or news writing.

As recently as Friday, the front page carried an inaccurate and insensitive headline:

"Suffering of Japan's 'comfort women' honored" 

Of course, the women who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military during World War II weren't Japanese, but from Korea, China and other countries, and could never by any stretch of the imagination be called "Japan's comfort women."

Covering up mistakes

Compounding the error is the lack of acknowledgement by Gottlieb and Production Editor Liz Houlton, who publish two unrelated corrections on A-2 today.

An L-2 story today reports on the dedication of a second memorial to the victims at the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, and thankfully, Friday's error wasn't repeated.

And who could forget the boneheaded streamer at the top of Page 1 announcing that Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-Paterson -- not Bill Parcells, a former Giants coach -- had been inducted into the pro football Hall of Fame?

That error proved to be a national embarrassment.

'Queen of Errors'

Instead of bidding farewell to Houlton, who is in charge of the clueless copy desk and the paper's proof readers, Gottlieb fired award-winning cartoonist Jimmy Margulies, allegedly to cut expenses.

That disappointed many readers and the staff, who seethe with anger and resentment over Houlton getting a promotion and six-figure salary after she established a reputation as the "Queen of Errors" as head of the features copy desk.

Here is a comment to Eye on The Record:

"I miss the drawings of editorial cartoonist Jimmy Margulies in The Record. He brought a local and state perspective to skewer the politicians and bring about commentary on social issues. The replacement cartoons haven't matched his skills. This week alone, I believe all the cartoons focused only on the sequestration. Maybe since the NY Times has no editorial cartoonist, Marty Gottlieb saw no need for one in-house at his new domain?"

Sykes, Sforza rule

On local-news coverage, Gottlieb has allowed head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, to shift the focus from such diverse communities as Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood to Tenafly, Ridgewood and other wealthy towns.

This week's spurt of news from Hackensack (four stories in as many days and today's delightful A-1 story on the clock tower at the Johnson Public Library on Main Street) appears to be a fluke.

Gottlieb, who is in his mid-60s, seems to have taken the job at The Record to ease gently into retirement, leaving the status quo intact.


Today's paper 

Sloppy editing continues on A-3 today in the lead paragraph of a story on the sentencing of a woman with multiple sclerosis.

The first paragraph says she "was wheeled into court on a hospital bed Friday was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of her husband."

This would have worked with the word "who" inserted before "was wheeled into court," or the word "and" instead of "was" in "was sentenced to 40 years."

The Local section today is one of the few without a filler photo of a rollover or other non-fatal accident, allowing readers to enjoy the skills of photo staffers Carmine Galasso, Don Smith, Tariq Zehawi, Kevin R. Wexler, Danielle Parhizkaran and Viorel Florescu.

Accuracy isn't a priority at (201)

Image via Wikipedia
Actor John Travolta misses Baumgart's.

The glossy (201) magazine -- Publisher Stephen A. Borg's pet publication -- appears to be as poorly edited as The Record of Woodland Park.


Three embarrassing corrections appear on Page 20 of the February 2012 issue.


But the whopper appears on Page 66 of the current "BEST OF ISSUE."


This is the magazine feature where readers are polled on the best restaurant food in Bergen County. For the first time, celebrities are asked for their picks.


On Page 66, a photo of Englewood native John Travolta appears next to a quote from him:


"When I shoot Gotti, I'm going to go back to Englewood and stay there. I'll go to Baumgart's. I'll visit Palisades Avenue and the malls in Bergenfield. Home will always be home."


When is the last time Travolta or the editors of (201) have been to Bergenfield? And that should be "Palisade Avenue," not "Palisades."


Allowing readers to vote on the best restaurants is unreliable.


That's how, in polling for the Best Mexican Restaurant, the Americanized food at Blue Moon Cafe gets picked over the authentic, made-from-scratch fare at Rosa Mexicano in Hackensack (Page 62).


And that's how, in polling for the Best Barbecue, the crappy meat at Cubby's BBQ Restaurant triumphs (Page 63).


The magazine is filled with upbeat stories about wealthy Bergen County residents, and the women who appear in ads and articles often have artificially enlarged lips or breasts.

'We cover Hackensack'

Image via Wikipedia

"What does that guy mean?" head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes says to one of her minions, as her laughter starts rolling across the Woodland Park newsroom. "Of course, we cover Hackensack."

"Oh, do we cover Hackensack! Didn't I have a bunch of reporters investigating a former Hackensack detective [Michael Mordaga] for almost three years? Don't I have Monsy [Alvardo, the Hackensack reporter], Shawn [Boburg] and Jean [Rimbach} chasing another great story?

"I mean," she says, chuckling, "look at A-1 today [in The Record]. "Hackensack is all over the front page!" (Does her computer still carry the name tag: "Deirdre 'Laughs A Lot' Sykes"?)

Indeed, the big snowstorm photo on Page 1 today shows an unidentified man walking in none other than Hackensack, although the street isn't identified. For the second big storm in a row, a pedestrian in Hackensack was featured on the front of the former Hackensack daily (after the Feb. 6 storm, it was an unidentified woman walking on Main Street). But the map under today's photo omits snowfall totals in River City. Now, that's coverage.

On A-2 today, two more corrections appear -- three corrections and one clarification in three days. The paper's accuracy is questionable and damages its credibility.

Except for a lawsuit reported in Local today, there is no other Hackensack news in the paper.

Did anybody get to the end of the Food Editor Bill Pitcher's tedious, two-star review in Better Living of a bar and steakhouse in Midland Park? Who made dinner reservations there for tonight?