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

In Trump, we got an Emperor With No Brains, but news media still humor him

Essex County kicked off the 41st annual Cherry Blossom Festival at Branch Brook Park in Newark today, above and below. The event has blossomed in recent years, adding entertainment, demonstrations of Japanese cultural traditions and vendors selling everything from bonsai trees to barbecue.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Did you see the one-on-one TV interview with President Trump, who enthused about a piece of chocolate cake he was served moments before telling his interviewer about a missile attack on Iraq?

The reporter was taken aback, but corrected the president, as she would her doddering uncle, reminding him the cruise missiles were launched against Syria, not Iraq.

Early reports quoted officials saying Syrian warplanes were destroyed by the April 6 missile strike, which was in retaliation for a deadly chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people.

But later it came out that none of the missiles hit runways, allowing the Syrian government to resume the attacks the next day.

Of course, Trump was mocked on the Internet for the chocolate-cake reference, but I didn't see much push back in the news media, including The Record of Woodland Park. 

Now, Trump appears intent on bringing us to the brink of a nuclear confrontation with North Korea.

This is a president whose grasp of world affairs, economics, health care, the environment and so many other issues is infantile.

He acts as if he is still running "The Apprentice."

Entertainment at the Cherry Blossom Festival included the James Moody Jazz Orchestra, teens who have dedicated themselves to learning the art of jazz under the auspices of the New Jersey Performing Arts Cener.

Other events included demonstrations of how to wear a kimono and how to prepare sushi.

Vendors set up their tents on the parking lot of the park's welcome center.

The media

On NorthJersey.com, Columnist Mike Kelly's reaction to all the madness in Washington is to hit the road with a photographer "to assess President Trump's first 100 days in office," which includes "a report on how divided our nation is now."

That sounds like old news to me, but none of his interviews with "ordinary people" in four states has hit the print edition yet.

On Page 1, Staff Writer Paul Berger brings us yet another report on the region's rail system, which he insists is "at a breaking point" (1A).

This is basically a regurgitation of Berger's story on the front page just three days ago.

And the big photo of wrong-way Amtrak CEO Charles Moorman looking out the back of a train is barely distinguishable from the one that ran on Thursday's 1A.

Where was The Record's outrage in 2010, when Governor Christie unilaterally canceled work on two Hudson River rail tunnels, which were scheduled to be finished next year?

Saturday's lead story quoted former Vice President Joe Biden taking a swipe at the GOP thug for shutting down the project, noting, "There's still purgatory."

Local news?

What was a story about Quest Diagnostics' 50th anniversary doing on the Local news front on Saturday?

Inside, there were two especially bad headlines:

"Paterson
man accused
of posing as 
cop in court"

No. The suspect posed as a sheriff's officer during an attempted robbery, not while in court. But he did appear in court to face the charges on Thursday.

"Ringwood woman wanted
for disposing of body found"

Actually, the woman was "found and arrested," according to the lead paragraph of the story, so the headline should have said:

"Ringwood woman held
in disposal of dead body"

Malik Williams

An editorial today claims a lump sum payment of $180,000 by Bergen County, Garfield and two police officers means Malik Williams "is finally put to rest," according to the headline on 2O.

On Dec. 10, 2011, Williams, 19, who was black, was shot five times by two white police officers who fired a total of nine rounds inside a garage where he was hiding -- a shooting that "still seems unjustified," The Record's editorial board says.

But the news story and editorial never report whether the Williams family will get all of the $180,000.

Under court rules, the family's lawyer is entitled to a third or more of the settlement -- or at least $60,o00 -- so that would leave only $120,000 for the survivors, including his girlfriend and young son.

Bergen news?

Seven news stories from Passaic County appear in the Local news section delivered to Bergen County readers today.

Inexplicably, the closing of a Wayne restaurant is reported on the first page of the section (1L).

One of the 7 Bergen stories in the section reports on deer-population control in Saddle River, a wealthy suburb that has successfully limited the number of blacks and other minorities living there (7L).