Bergen County? Where is that?

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The Record's front page today focuses on news of Passaic and Essex counties, so I guess nothing that happened in Bergen County yesterday amounted to much. Can't you just see clueless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes licking her chops as she added these items to the news budget?

"Hey, look at all this local news. Ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho, ha, ha, ha (eventually merging into a shriek that rolls across the Woodland Park newsroom). Aren't we having fun covering every town but Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895?"

Publisher John Borg (1922-48) and Editor Donald G. Borg (1932-75) must be turning over in their graves, and if this news blackout keeps up, former Publisher Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg may meet an early grave.


How hard is Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado laughing? Sykes apparently has told her to pursue the Police Chief Ken Zisa story like a bulldog, and not to cover Hackensack schools, development, municipal government, City Council meetings or anything else that really matters to residents.

A major correction appears on A-2. The news copy editor who edited the A-1 road deaths story Friday reversed the percentage drop in the headline, writing 32 percent instead of 23 percent. The copy desk supervisor didn't catch the mistake.

There is no correction of the biggest head on Page 1 Friday -- "N.J. college towns seek student fees." The towns are seeking the money from the schools themselves, not the students.


Isn't it embarrassing when readers write letters about issues the crack editorial staff missed? Two letters on A-9 today raise an alarm about cuts in state library finding -- a subject I haven't seen discussed in the news columns. Hey, Deirdre, wake up.


You know the assignment desk was on weekend mode and couldn't produce enough local news just by looking at the size of the huge photo soaking up space on the front of Local today. 

On L-6, Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano reports the Leonia school board did just what she said they would do in a story on Tuesday. Good going. If you don't have any news, just write the same story over and over again to fill space.

Check out L-7 -- the mayhem page. Three of the victims are elderly (two of them drivers). To the assignment editors, they are just three unrelated stories, among hundreds the paper has carried, not the launching pad for a project on the challenges facing older drivers and pedestrians.

I'll bet the 42-year-old driver who ran down an 81-year-old woman with fatal results on Thursday in Norwood doesn't even receive a summons. I hope the old woman's relatives sue the inattentive driver for all she's worth. It's too bad readers can't sue Sykes and her minions for such abysmal local news coverage.