Why is this on the front page?

Image by birdphone via Flickr

Aren't we all sick and tired of the belly aching by Ridgewood residents opposed to the expansion of The Valley Hospital (photo)? This controversy is more than two years old, and there have been numerous stories about it, yet here it is again today on Page 1 of The Record of Woodland Park.


Were the editors desperate to put something -- anything -- on the front page? Did they ever play similar protests over the expansion of Hackensack Medical Center on A-1? What's so special about the Ridgewood protest? Is this journalism by demographics?


The news copy editor probably thought the headline was really clever: "Hospital expansion called a health hazard." And the reporter actually quotes residents alleging years of construction will expose children to "potential hazards." One hallucinating protester refers to Ridgewood as "our little village." Can't you hear the violins?


I can think of several construction projects in Hackensack on school routes (there is no busing in the city). What about the hazards Hackensack kids walking to school are exposed to? Don't black and Hispanic kids count in the eyes of the editors?


Another headline on Page 1 appears to suggest teachers are stalking the state education czar. Was this head intended to be ominous?

Teachers track their target

Some observers would suggest it's the teachers who are the targets of state aid cuts and pension reform.

In Local, there are detailed stories on two trials in Superior Court, Paterson, but none on cases in state court in Hackensack. For another day, news of Hackensack , Teaneck or Englewood is missing, likely due to the incompetence of the assignment desk under Deirdre Sykes. But there is a long story on a murder in Butler -- outside the paper's circulation area.

For at least the fourth year, Food Editor Bill Pitcher has prepared his annual guide to grilling -- which appears today in Better Living -- and for at least the fourth time, he omitted any mention of how processed meats, such as hot dogs, and charring food have been linked to cancer. Good appetite.

Failing to deliver local news

Image via Wikipedia

If you are an editor at The Record of Woodland Park, you never have to explain why there is so little local news in the paper day after day -- certainly not to the Borgs, who pay little attention to the newsroom as they dream of untold riches from the sale of their former Hackensack headquarters and surrounding land.


Can't you just see North Jersey Media Group President and Publisher Stephen A. Borg waking up each morning in the $3.65 million Tenafly mansion he bought with a company mortgage? Do you think he walks down his driveway to fetch The Record or does he even get the paper delivered to his estate?


What about his big sister, Vice President and General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan? She doesn't see the paper unless she goes to her office on Garret Mountain.


Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg? I doubt he goes out every morning to pick up the paper from his East Hill driveway in Englewood. Can the marginalized NJMG chairman even bend down to pick it up? Maybe he sees it in Hackensack, where he is holding down the old fort with a few reporters and the computer folks, surveying all the new, unsold Toyotas in the parking lot.


So, if you are Editor Frank Scandale (his news policy is to front page all sports stories and many sex crimes) or head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes (her news policy is to ignore Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck), it's likely you never get a call from the Borgs or anybody else about why a daily newspaper that made its reputation on covering local news is doing such a poor jobs of informing readers about what is going on in their towns.


Instead, as in today's Local section, readers get a lot of court, crime and accident news, plus one of those international custody battles that newspaper editors seem to love so much but that always read alike -- just substitute the name of the foreign country where the kids are living.


Nine candidates running for council in Teaneck, one of the most progressive and diverse communities in Bergen County? Sykes shoves it to the back of the Local section, and strips it of any information on whether the candidates are tax-weary Orthodox Jews, like the ones who tried to take over the Board of Education in the April school election.


Hackensack news? Another lawsuit filed against suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa -- this one from one of the two cops who allege he ordered them to cover up the real cause of the accident involving Zisa's  then-girlfriend. The chief's legal troubles have been reported in detail for close to a year -- to the exclusion of almost all other Hackensack news. Englewood news? Nothing.

At least on Page 1 today, to his credit, Scandale highlights more state aid cuts -- these affect legal services for battered women and others in Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties -- but the coverage of Governor Christie's budget rampage has been piecemeal. What's called for is a standing front-page element detailing the cuts and how they affect everyday life in North Jersey.

The Borgs are more concerned about image, not local news, such as the image Stephen Borg wants to create by changing the paper's slogan to "The Trusted Local Source" from "Friend  of The People It Serves." He must have come up with that fiction while enjoying an expensive wine at the Englewood wine bar in which he and his sister are investors. Recently, they claimed NJMG is proud of the "responsible journalism" it practices.


I am sure they are not fooling readers.

(Photo: The Hackensack River in Teaneck.)