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Paramus was the focus of a front page story in The Record on Wednesday.
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Retired NJMG employees receive
notice of pension plan shortfall
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
HACKENSACK -- Paramus residents must have swelled with pride when they saw a story about their borough on The Record's front page.
But Wednesday's "exclusive" report, which covered more than half of Page 1, had nothing to do with borough affairs.
Staff Writer Melanie Anzidei, the retailing reporter, was raving about a plan to turn the region's biggest shopping center into "something Paramus has never seen, a brand-new downtown" with luxury apartments "a stone's throw from their [residents'] favorite stores."
Passaic County news
But there was plenty of local news inside Wednesday's paper -- if you lived in Passaic County or were interested in sensational trials, crime or crashes.
Since Gannett Co. took over The Record of Woodland Park in July 2016, news of the towns in Bergen County, where the majority of readers live, has been harder and harder to find.
Stories from Paterson, Wayne and other Passaic County towns, as well as crime reports, often crowd out Bergen news in the paper's Local section, as they did on Wednesday.
No editorial
The 12-page Local section included only three and half pages of news and feature stories from Bergen and Passaic counties.
The rest of the section was devoted to obituaries, Business and Opinion, though no editorial appeared.
Readers have responded by abandoning the print edition and NorthJersey.com in droves, as Gannett's annual report revealed:
The absence of a daily editorial or two also is puzzling.
More Passaic news
The Local section a week earlier, on April 26, was led by a sensational trial, but the headline had readers scratching their heads:
"Sting's court docs
reveal graphic talks"
The reference wasn't, as many undoubtedly thought, to Sting, the English musician, singer, songwriter and actor.
Instead, the reference was to a tri-state dating app sting that led to the arrest and Hackensack trial of 16 alleged sexual predators from three states.
Five Passaic County stories appeared in the section.
Pension plan
The North Jersey Media Group pension plan for employees and beneficiaries is now called the Fourth Edition Inc. Pension Plan.
A notice I received in the mail said the funded percentage of the plan as of Jan. 1, 2019, is 73.24%.
"Since the funded percentage of the plan is below 80%, certain restrictions apply," the notice said, but "if you are retired or a beneficiary currently receiving payment from the plan, you will not be affected."
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This feature about a poetry reading in Paterson was one of three stories from Silk City that appeared on Page 3L of Wednesday's Local section along with a story from Wayne, below. Much of the Paterson news is credited to the Paterson Press.
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