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.