The Record's Local section cheats Bergen, and editors promote lots of unhealthy food

PASSAIC COUNTY NEWS: Local, the section of The Record containing municipal news, was filled with Passaic County stories on Dec. 11, cheating readers in Bergen County, where the newspaper flourished for more than 110 years and where the majority of readers live. Instead of a guide to what was inside the section, an ad appeared above the masthead.

PATERSON DATELINES: Renovation of Lambert Castle on Garret Mountain in Paterson led the Local section on Dec. 11.

MORE PATERSON NEWS: A second Paterson story appeared on L-1 on Dec. 11. The 2 other stories on the Local front were about Ridgewood and Leonia schools.

Writers don't appear eager 

to steer us to healthy choices

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- On Dec. 11, The Record published yet another local news section that cheated Bergen County readers.

Even before the newspaper was taken over by Gannett in 2016, The Record's owners decided publishing a single Local section would save them hundreds of thousands of dollars in newsprint costs every year.

The decision to fold separate Bergen and Passaic sections condemned the majority of readers, who live in 70 Bergen County towns, to slog through story after story about Paterson and the rest of Passaic County, even as Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood news went missing.

And so it was last Wednesday:

CLIFTON NEWS: On Page 2L, a story reported Clifton planners were to hear a proposal for 300 "housing units." A second story on the page reported the "rescue" of a deer "with a plastic pumpkin stuck on its head," according to the headline.

THE TOWN, NOT THE DEPARTMENT STORE: The big news leading Page 3L was from Bloomingdale, the Passaic County town, not the department store in Hackensack. 

WAYNE, PATERSON AND ESSEX COUNTY NEWS: The rest of 3L included a photo essay on a model train display in Carlstadt, more news about Paterson, a fire in Wayne and the homicide of an unidentified "minor" in Newark.

MINOR KILLED: The story on the homicide contained few details. 

PATERSON POLITICAL NEWS: The story on a school board member in Paterson seeking a City Council seat has absolutely no redeeming value for Bergen County readers. "Redmon" and "Jackson" aren't recognizable names in a headline for Bergen readers.

UBIQUITOUS WEATHER PHOTO: Even the weather photo on Page 6L, the fourth page of local news in the section, was taken in Paterson, which is closer to The Record's newsroom in Woodland Park than Hackensack, Fort Lee and other Bergen County towns. So, covering Passaic County saves Gannett even more time and money, but robs Bergen readers.

Pushing sugar, mystery meat

The same Dec. 11 edition of The Record included a Better Living section cover story by the fashionably slim food editor, Esther Davidowitz, and food writer Rebecca King with a hard sell on "desserts to pick up for the holidays."

The story on "deliciously gooey, royally luxurious, beautifully presented" desserts certainly came as a shock to diabetics or other readers who are watching their intake of sugar and butter -- both of which can clog heart arteries -- not to mention eggs and whipped cream.

How many of the 13 bakeries listed are advertisers or potential advertisers to which Davidowitz and King are sucking up?

Davidowitz wrote "The 7 Best Dishes of 2019" in the December 2019 edition of (201) magazine, also published by Gannett's North Jersey Media Group.

Four of the 7 dishes included meat, but Davidowitz is silent on whether that pork and beef were naturally raised without antibiotics and other harmful additives.

I hope I'm not the only one who believes food writers shouldn't knowingly or unknowingly promote unhealthy food.

On Dec. 6, the cover story in The Record's Better Living section explored "food options" at Nordstrom, but the writer was sent to the department store in Manhattan, not the one in Paramus, the shopping mall capital of New Jersey.

Read: SUGAR SHOCK: 

Readers are overdosing on desserts