New leaf at 'Eye on The Record'

Fans of  "Eye on The Record"  point out that I have deteriorated into a lot of  name-calling while exposing the shortcomings of editors and reporters at the former Hackensack daily.

I will try to be more constructive in the future, though the editors will always be lazy and incompetent in my book. There is no other way to describe so-called journalists who have been around for decades and who have fooled the Borg family into keeping them on year after year.

Three come immediately to mind: Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, Tim Nostrand and Jim McGarvey, who have been shuffled from one to job to another or in McGarvey's case, left the paper and returned, only to prove what a poor performer he is. In his latest incarnations, he has resorted to shouting at his reporters to motivate them.

The relative newcomers, Frank Scandale and Frank Burgos, lead a newsroom that can't write straight and are about as inspiring as franks and beans -- with all the attendant gas.

This newspaper is all wet

The rag-tag circulation department at  The Record of Woodland Park double-bagged the copy delivered to my home today, but some moron forgot to close the bags, so the paper was soaking wet.

I was still able to look it over, noting with disgust that nearly half the front page was given to airhead reporter John Brennan to describe the new Meadowlands football stadium, and that the lazy, incompetent editors are continuing their royal F.U. to readers by not covering Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood, three of the most important towns in Bergen County. And what about the state's mounting financial crisis? Why doesn't that merit more than a brief  on  Page 1?

On the front of the Local section, we learn that Wal-Mart will be opening a store in Garfield, but the story by Staff Writer Alexander MacInness says nothing about all the employee lawsuits against the Arkansas chain for not paying overtime and other alleged workplace abuses.

Similarly, Robert Torricelli, the disgraced congressman from North Jersey, commands a lot of ink inside the section for representing yet another developer who is lusting after that parcel of land near the GWB in Fort Lee that has been vacant for nearly four decades. Curiously, the story I read on northjersey.com by reporter Merry Firschein yesterday said nothing about his deplorable ethics when he was in office or that he resigned.

I don't mind that Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski today criticizes the selfish drivers who use parking spaces for the handicapped, but in his six years as a columnist, he's ignored NJ Transit's back-handed treatment of minorities who are forced to ride the oldest, most decrepit buses in the fleet, while riders on Manhattan-bound routes get the newest buses. This is truly lazy journalism, aided and abetted by the lazy  assignment editor who gave him the job, Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes. I guess those hapless black and Hispanic local bus riders aren't the newspaper's "demographic."

What about the Sports section? I'm told those editors and writers do a great job, but if you follow automobile racing, you wouldn't know it. I recall searching in vain for a story about driver Jenson Button after he secured the Formula One championship this year. So that's why my Sports section goes right into the recycling bin.

What's wrong with this picture?

The front page of  The Record of Woodland Park today has a lead story on gay marriage, another on school funding and a large photo of  a racist and anti-Semite smoking a victory cigar after a mistrial. Why is this story on Page 1? Is it because over-the-hill Record reporter Mike Kelly was assigned to cover the trial in the city?

On Page A-2, a correction only serves to remind readers about the huge coverage of three families in far off Ringwood on the front page yesterday.

What's wrong with these pictures? More unusually large photos in the Local section tell you the lazy, incompetent editors failed for yet another day to assign any education, development or municipal stories about Hackensack and Teaneck, two of the premier towns in the paper's circulation area. (That's Teaneck Townhip Hall in the photo.)

On the front of Local, there are two photos of  a non-fatal truck accident taking up about half the page and inside, a third of the page is devoted to a photo of a vigil for drunken driving victims. When layout editors have to run photos this big, it means they were screwed by the Assignment Desk, run by Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes.

Also on the front, Englewood reporter Giovanna Fabiano has her fifth story since Oct. 30 about the teachers contract, but she has written nothing about how educators there propose to integrate elementary and middle schools. Of course, Publisher Stephen A. Borg didn't wait around for the solution, moving his family to Tenafly so his children wouldn't have to rub shoulders with blacks and Hispanics in Englewood, where he grew up in a Mac Daddy's East Hill mansion (smaller than the one young Stephen lives in now). Yet his wife Monica is Mexican.

Inside Local, Star-Ledger reporters filed two long Morris County fillers -- on an effort to save Greystone Park Psychiatirc Hospital and a pot trial. These stories would keep out Bergen County news, but there weren't enough Bergen County stories reported and written by Record reporters.

In Better Living, the pudgy, goy food editor, Bill Pitcher, has the nerve to highlight a wire service recipe for latkes made with butternut squash. That's food blasphemy.

View from The Record's news copy desk

Image via Wikipedia

Editor's note: Former Record staffer Aaron Elson posted these comments on the Editor & Publisher blog that reported the existence of  "Eye on The Record."

I always look forward to Victor's "Eye on The Record" blog. As a former copy editor with 20 years at The Record, who was arguably one of their best headline writers, I was "restructured" out of a job in 2008. The Record long ago abandoned its core readership, as Victor rightly often points out.

For the last decade, the copy desk was treated as a second-class department by editors who coddle reporters. I can recall the first newsroom meeting held to introduce Editor Frank Scandale. He emphasized his sense of humor. After that until the day I left, the Record newsroom was the most humorless place I ever worked, including the New York Post during the exodus after it was bought by Rupert Murdoch. 

Come to think of it, in retrospect, that was a pretty humorous time. Does anybody remember the famous front page headline "Baby born without mother!"?

I've told Victor he should break a story now and then, as Jerry [DeMarco] often does, to illustrate The Record's blind eye to its three premier towns of Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck. It would be easy enough to do. He prefers to critique the paper instead. That's okay with me.