Polishing turds

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Try as they might, the lazy, incompetent editors at The Record of Woodland Park can't hide their desperation when Sunday night rolls around and they have absolutely nothing worthy of Page 1. Then, they scramble to cover their asses and try to find any story with a few photographs they can dress up for its front-page debut.

Today, they grabbed a story that belongs inside Local on a subject the paper long has neglected: recycling. Not only is about recycling, but it's about Paterson and other urban centers, with apparently no relevance to Bergen County. As my dear, departed colleague Michael Thaler used to say about some stories he handled as a copy editor: "You can't polish a turd."

Besides all that, this turd is poorly reported by Staff Writer Meredith Mandell, who normally is a hard worker. But here, she neglects to discuss the financial arrangement between a private collection company and its municipal partner. Does cash-strapped Paterson get any money from the sale of all these recyclables?

The only other story on A-1 today is another gentle handling of Republican Governor Christie, who in less than a month has alienated union members, public schools and teachers, mass transit users and the middle class, while catering to the wealthy and corporations, such as the Borgs and their North Jersey Media Group, publisher of the former Hackensack daily.

I forgot to mention how Herb Jackson, the paper's Washington correspondent, described Christie in his story on A-4 yesterday as admitting "during the campaign he struggled to hold down his weight." Only during the campaign? Not for many years before that as U.S. attorney? And has he really "struggled"? What a hoot.

It's that kind of "public relations reporting" (the reporter wants to stay in the good graces of his overweight subject) that throws cold water on calls by Michelle Obama and others to make ending childhood obesity a priority. The Record's editors have long refused to launch an obesity project that could benefit readers.

For yet another day, today's paper contains no news -- not even police news -- about Hackensack, Englewood and many other important towns.

Three-day weekend for staff

If you thought, after looking at Saturday's edition, the staff of The Record of Woodland Park started its weekend on Friday, today's paper only reinforces the impression. Except for a Michael Gartland story on lavish spending by a non-profit Bergen County agency on Page 1, you'll find barely four inconsequential stories about Bergen towns in the entire paper.

You know there is no municipal, development or education news of Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood -- or many other Bergen towns -- in the former Hackensack daily by looking at Page L-6 and the three, long, wire-service obituaries of people you may have never heard of -- that's what the lazy, desperate, incompetent editors call "filler." You also know it by a brief on L-2 about kindergarten registration in Ramsey -- a waste of precious space for information that goes home in every kid's backpack. Does reporter Allison Pries really think this is education news?

So what do you find in today's former Bergen Record? Stories about the Passaic County Sheriff's Department, a possible festival in West Milford, budget woes in that sprawling township, smoking at a Morris County college and a deer hunt on Garret Mountain -- near the paper's new headquarters. The incompetent editors put a story about three New Milford Eagle Scouts on L-1. Wow. That's real news.

There isn't much in the rest of the Sunday paper, which squanders most of the front page on a stupid football game and the endless palaver over a guard who left his post and a man who entered a secure area at Newark airport to see his girlfriend off. On the front of Better Living, a copy editor must have thought it clever to say: "Where North Jersey chefs go to get their eats on." How ridiculous.

It's hard to believe Publisher Stephen A. Borg can read the paper day after day and not wonder why it consistently fails its Bergen County readers or what the editors and some of the reporters are doing to earn their salaries. When I still worked in the old Hackensack newsroom, other staffers reported that sports reporter John Rowe overheard the wealthy, arrogant Borg say his goal in cutting costs was a news staff where no one made more than $40,000 a year.

I doubt Borg achieved his ridiculous salary goal for the staff, but since he took over and promoted Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Scandale to vice president, The Record and North Jersey Media Group's laughable Web site -- northjersey.com -- sure read like they are being put together by demoralized, low-paid workers.

Crime news is all we've got

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The fatal shooting of a 5-year-old Paterson boy by a 6-year-old is certainly serious, as is a mother strangling her newborn. But they became front page news in The Record of Woodland Park today because the lazy, incompetent editors hope these headlines will sell papers, something the former Hackensack daily has had trouble doing for many years, and because they simply had no better stories for Page 1.

Maybe it was too cold for the reporters to leave their Garret Mountain newsroom. A really large photo of the Wayne mom flanked by her high-priced lawyers -- yes, two lawyers -- at her arraignment is such an obvious desperation move to fill up what once was The Record's premiere page. Now, anything goes.

The tabloid feel of today's paper continues in the Local section, where the full story of the mom's not guilty plea is the lead story at the top of the first page. Below it, half of L-1 is taken up by a report that Hispanics allege an assault at Englewood's middle school was racially motivated.

I would hope this attack would focus attention on segregation in that city's middle and elementary schools -- a subject the paper has gone out of its way to avoid for years, while reporting in detail efforts to integrate the high school. In fact, Staff Writer Nick Clunn, who is not the regular Englewood reporter, completely omits any mention the middle school is segregated. Shame on Clunn, shame on his editor.

A full page and a half of the eight-page Local Section is filled with Paterson or Passaic County news, including a fatal fire with two enormous photos showing the aftermath. The story has absolutely no information about the victim, except her sex. Don't look for any municipal, development, education or quality of life news about Hackensack (map), Teaneck or Englewood, despite their diversity.

In recent months, I have read two detailed stories about Ridgewood's downtown and another about Westwood, but none about these three core Bergen County communities, where a large number of the paper's readers live. Did The Record's pullout from Hackensack hurt Main Street merchants? Your guess is as good as mine.

Focus on Passaic and Morris counties

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Today's edition of  The Record is another clear sign that news coverage has shifted west with the move of the newsroom to Woodland Park from Hackensack.

Half of Page 1 is devoted to a quality-of-life story affecting three families in far off  Ringwood, and there's another long Ringwood story inside the Local section. When is the last time you saw a long, illustrated story about a single Bergen County town on the front page? Or a quality-of-life story about Bergen families?

There are two Paterson stories, one about John F. Kennedy High School, and a Passaic story inside the Local section. When is the last time you read a story about Hackensack High School? Or about the quality of life in Hackensack? Monsy Alvarado, the poor woman assigned to cover Hackensack, ended a two-day streak of  having a story in the paper.

When you count up the bylines of  Star-Ledger reporters and reporters who work for the weeklies owned by North Jersey Media Group, you have to wonder what The Record's reporters are doing. Mostly, they are doing nothing right under the eyes of the lazy, incompetent editors.

The Star-Ledger stories are poorly done and often lack details. Or they seem irrelevant -- mere filler -- such as the story on Page A-4 about gunshots hitting a Morristown family's duplex; no one was hurt. When did the paper still known to many as  the Bergen Record start covering Morristown?