Editors miss the mark on home-rule reporting

Jitneys such as this one heading to Manhattan relieve the pressure on NJ Transit, which doesn't provide enough rush-hour bus or rail seats for North Jersey commuters.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor


Mike Kelly pushes a lot of words around on The Record's front page today without coming close to answering some of the biggest questions about local police departments:

What exactly does the chief of a small department do, and why do we need nearly 70 of them in Bergen County alone (A-1)?

When The Record's Local section runs stories about a string of house burglaries, readers in such wealthy towns as Tenafly know what the chiefs don't do.

So, isn't it a good idea to empty the office of police brass and get them out on the street in Englewood Cliffs and other towns, where they can try to stop burglaries and enforce speeding laws?

But Kelly, aka "The Shit-Eating Grin," beats the subject to death, relying on one of the silliest comparisons I have ever seen:

"Think of this as the law enforcement equivalent of a restaurant with too many cooks and not enough waiters to serve the food."

No. Think of this as a columnist who long ago ran out of steam, and has been reduced to rewriting news stories.

Elderly and dead

Another front-page story today continues The Record's portrayal of the elderly as so demented they wander off for days -- or end up confined to a long-term care facility (A-1 and A-9).

The Record often ignores vibrant seniors who are living full lives until they die.

Still, I searched Local in vain today for an expanded obituary of a noteworthy North Jersey resident. In fact, I haven't seen one in several days.

Assuming Staff Writer Jay Levin is on vacation, why do the editors simply sit on their hands instead of assigning another reporter to write a local obit?

God knows, readers can't figure out why the Borgs are paying some reporters whose bylines are as rare as blue moons or why head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes keeps making excuses for them.

Help for obesity

The Better Living section today picks up more of Local's slack with a cover story on where families can get help for their obese children (BL-1).

Now, the paper should publish a story on where its obese editors can go for help.

The section also appears to have ended "STARTERS" -- a feature on new restaurants -- and substituted a streamlined column called "NOW OPEN" (BL-1)

Today's piece on Fiona's Restaurant in Midland Park is by Staff Writer Sachi Fujimori, whose straightforward reporting is far better than the hard sell of free-lancer Joyce Venezia Suss.

Dunkin' cops surrender to house burglars

In some North Jersey towns, these are among the basic tools for fighting a wave of house burglaries.

Can anyone find even a single word on the front-page of The Record today on what police departments in North Jersey are doing to prevent house burglaries?

Did you find any mention in the elaborate photo and text package of roving undercover or plainclothes officers or prosecutors and sheriffs setting up a pawn shop to catch the suspects red-handed (A-1 and A-8)?

I don't know whether the two reporters whose bylines appear on Page 1 are inexperienced or seasoned.

But Editor Marty Gottlieb, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza should know enough not to be duped into presenting an elaborate justification for why police cannot stop or even solve a lot of these crimes.

Before noon today, I saw a Leonia police SUV stationed a block away from a slowly moving funeral procession of fire vehicles in Bogota, and at least one of the officers was drinking coffee from Dunkin' Donuts.

Talk about reinforcing a stereotype. 

What, me worry?

Gottlieb is downplaying a looming budget crisis, relegating another story on Governor Christie's position to A-3 today.

The Democrats' Assembly majority leader, Lou Greenwald, D-Camden, is quoted as saying:

"Everything is falling down around this governor and he's incapable of recognizing he is protecting two-tenths of 1 percent of the population" -- a reference to the GOP bully's refusal to approve an income-tax surcharge on millionaires.

Bad headline

The worst headline of the day appears on the front of Sykes' Local section:

Englewood school protest returns

Prompting many readers to ask themselves, Return from where, vacation?

Readers must pitch in 

That headline and a photo on L-3 today may be part of Sykes' and Sforza's focus on participatory journalism, which attempts to engage the reader in what little local news appears in the Woodland Park daily.

The L-3 accident photo, taken around 10 p.m., shows lights and a lot of first responders standing around.

Readers are asked to send in what else they can see in the photo in the hope of winning lunch with Sykes and Sforza in the cafeteria.

A similar contest is being held for the business photo on L-8 that is missing a caption. 

On L-6, a brief describes how three burglars attacked an Englewood woman in her Jones Road home.

Hackensack news? It's on vacation, and readers are hoping it returns soon.

When police chiefs hang out at donut shops

Englewood Cliffs built a municipal building after rejecting the police chief's request to operate out of the nearest Dunkin' Donuts.

The lead story on Page 1 of The Record today -- reporting "the latest surge" in North Jersey house burglaries -- contains not a word on what, if anything, the police are doing to prevent those crimes.

The eight reporters -- and an unknown number of editors -- who worked on this piece quote police brass or detectives in several towns, but they put the onus on homeowners.

You'd think the overpaid police chiefs got together at their favorite Dunkin' Donuts to orchestrate their quotes, deflecting attention away from the poor job they are doing to stop the burglaries.

Chief nag

Cliffs Chief Michael Cioffi is typical in blaming the victims for not being vigilant: "The problem I have is people don't set their alarms. They figure they're home, everything is OK."

Geez. If a homeowner in Englewood Cliffs or any other town can't feel safe in his own house, that's a sad commentary on the effectiveness of the police.

Copping out

Are the cops doing anything innovative to stop burglaries? 

For example, are the police masquerading as workmen and driving through neighborhoods of high-end homes in an unmarked van to catch the culprits?

What about detectives in unmarked cars posing as Realtors to find burglars before they break down doors? 

Questionable

You'd think that eight reporters, plus head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, would have answered those questions.

You'd think Editor Marty Gottlieb would have noticed the story he picked for the top of the front page had holes big enough for several of the Woodland Park daily's Mercedes-Benz delivery trucks. 

And although Sykes' Local section has had several recent stories about house burglaries in Tenafly, the borough where Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives isn't mentioned in today's piece or shown on an A-6 map.

Joke is on us

On A-3 today, Englewood reporter Melissa Hayes seems to have been assigned full time to cover Governor Christie's "Jersey Comeback" stand-up routine. 

The deep partisan divide caused by the no-tax positions of Christie, the Tea Party and other rabid conservatives is buried on A-5 today.

Margulies mocks first lady Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign by portraying President Obama's efforts to revive the economy as a dessert (A-10) -- another bizarre comparison from The Record's mad cartoonist.

Can readers impeach Margulies?

Greedy lawyers

On the Local front today, Staff Writer Kibret Markos keeps readers in the dark, as usual, about how much of a $6.3 million verdict for botched surgery will be going to the lawyers.

The headline says "$6M" and the first paragraph of the story says "$6 million," but on L-6, the award is given as "$6.3 million." 

Reporting lapses

Today, I see the same bylines in Local and on A-1, even a single reporter's multiple bylines, making me wonder about the staffers whose names I rarely see as the days, weeks and months roll by.

Are they being protected by Sykes, Sforza and other editors as they collect their paychecks under false pretenses?

Is it something they learned from Sykes and Sforza, who have contributed little to the local news operation in the past decade?

Where is the Hackensack and Teaneck news today or stories from many other towns? The only Englewood news is an obituary of Shirley Passow, a civic-minded resident (L-3).

Sykes and Sforza still needed big photos of a minor fire and accident to fill L-1 and L-3.

From hunger

On the Better Living cover, it's hard to understand how Staff Writer Bill Ervolino missed Balthazar Bakery in Englewood in his "North Jersey's World of Bread."

Balthazar's artisanal, preservative-free products are found in thousands of homes, as well as at hundreds of Manhattan and suburban restaurants.

Balthazar is simply better than all of the other places he mentions.

 

A rare case of heads-up reporting

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Of all the issues The Record could report from Washington, the editors pick the obscure deaths of 13 sailors in Libya.

After reporting thousands of house burglaries in recent years, The Record finally examines the weak laws that has one investigator "arresting the same guys over and over again."


The editors routinely miss or don't bother with the big picture, leaving readers to wonder how this case of heads-up reporting came about.


It's likely the lazy assignment desk under Editor Deirdre Sykes had nothing with do with it. So, maybe we can thank a relatively new reporter, Staff Writer Rebecca D. O'Brien, who wrote today's Page 1 story.


Or, maybe the impetus came from Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who has watched burglaries in Tenafly getting closer and closer to his McMansion -- a $3.65 million jackpot.


D.C. circus


With another strong story on A-1 -- the African-American observance of Kwanza --  why did Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson waste readers'  time with an effort to repatriate the remains of 13 sailors who died in Libya in 1806?


Jackson has sat on his hands all year as Tea Party Republicans have paralyzed  Congress. Is this how he spends his time, looking for the obscure and irrelevant to report and ignoring the big story in front of him?


On L-1, another apartment fire claims a single victim (a 62-year-old Dumont man who lived alone), and reporters forget to ask whether the victim was a smoker.


Reversing course


Better Living food writers continue to increase coverage for the home cook, bringing back a standing feature of the Food section folded by Borg after he took over as publisher in 2006.


The section was folded -- despite the obesity epidemic and the need for more, not less, reporting on food.


On F-1 today, readers will find the "Shopping Corner" -- what was called "No Cooking Tonight" when Patricia Mack was putting out the Food section.


After Mack was hounded out of her job by then-Features Editor Barbara Jager, the new food editor, Bill Pitcher, focused coverage on restaurant and chefs. 


The new food editor, Susan Leigh Sherrill, said in a speech recently that she had been told to ramp up coverage for the home cook, though she didn't say who gave the order.