Image via WikipediaPage 1 of The Record of Woodland Park is telling us today that a bid for a Super Bowl at the new Meadowlands stadium in 2014 is more important than our kids' education now. I see Super Bowl and think Toilet Bowl.
The editors are telling us a tedious story on highway workers who can cash in vacation and sick days should concern us more than the possible layoffs of thousands of teachers. By comparison, the newspaper's own vacation and sick-day policies were a slap in the face when I was a news copy editor there.
No matter what story Staff Writer John Brennan works on, he sounds like he is doing public relations for the subject -- whether it's Jayson Williams, who killed his limo driver after a night of drinking, or the Jets and the Giants. Today, he is true to himself -- 99.6% public relations man and .4% journalist.
I can't get too excited about employees for an agency that doesn't use tax money who decide to work, then cash in unused vacation and sick days. At The Record, if you didn't use sick days, you'd lose them, and the newsroom had an antiquated system for requesting vacation time.
At one time, the paper offered $100 to any employee with a perfect attendance record. After a few years, the reward ended and the number of workers taking mental-health days soared. Even today, some reporters manage to write one story a week -- or in the case of Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, an average of one story a year -- and the editors don't seem to notice or care. Rimbach is said to be a favorite of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, the newsroom's clucking Mother Hen.
For many, many years, one of my colleagues on the news copy desk fell asleep regularly and had to be awakened to write headlines. He also came in late 20 minutes every day, claiming he was delayed by traffic, but it was clear he didn't leave the house until 5:30 p.m., the start of his shift. He wanted to be paid for his commute, but in the process, he worked two weeks a year less than the rest of us. Another colleague edited three or four stories a night, while the rest of us did 10 to 15, yet the slacker was given supervisory duties.
The place was so dysfunctional and short-staffed that when I wanted to go on vacation for three weeks or more, I needed special permission from Editor Frank Scandale. If my early November birthday fell on the same day as the general election, I had to get special permission to celebrate with a night out.
The A-1 story on teacher layoffs reports that Englewood handed out 88 this week. Surely, fewer teachers will improve education in the segregated elementary and middle schools the paper has ignored for years. The story makes no mention of layoffs in Hackensack.
Inside Local, there are education stories about Dumont and Ringwood, but when was the last time a Hackensack education story appeared?
A story on the election Tuesday of a new mayor in Paterson -- which usually is covered far better than Hackensack -- apparently was delayed for a day.
