Am I the only one wondering why The Record columnist who is supposed to be writing about the woes of commuters --in cars, buses and trains -- continues to waste his time, as he does today on the front of the Local section, on the families who live on a private road in Hawthorne or the Upper Saddle River neighbors plagued by drivers speeding toward their salvation?
Since John Cichowski took over the Road Warrior column at the end of 2003, he has done everything in his power to avoid writing about the sorry state of some of the buses and trains operated by NJ Transit, and the despicable treatment of some bus riders who must take decades-old contraptions on several local routes, including the Nos. 780, 770 and 756. What's his excuse? What does Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes, the head of the assignment desk, have to say?
This is dereliction of duty, especially when the paper's other transportation reporters -- Tom Davis and Karen Rouse -- are just as lazy as Cichowski. They also refuse to ride those unsightly buses -- many of which are used by minorities who can't afford cars -- or even write about some new buses that have appeared on local routes.
It's time for Cichowski to get off his ass and return to reporting -- back out in the streets. Perhaps that will give him a sense of what it is like for the rest of us if we choose to take mass transit. It's also time for Davis and Rouse to get off their asses and act like journalists again.
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Are old journalists all sways this angry? –Spent allot of the parents money at Columbia or at another prestigious college or university and you didn’t get the job you wanted? Spent most of your life reporting on other people’s life’s failures or achievements?
ReplyDeleteDid you ever strike out and do something without risk? You spent a portion of your career at the Record and you sat there like a mope.
You were more concerned if the microwave oven was available to cook your stinky dinners
You and other “copy editors” would not even help co-workers with an obvious problem and blame it on the computer system.
On the contrary: I think it's time for you to shut the fuck up. I've worked with these people, and I've seen the blood, sweat and tears they've given to their craft. I've seen John Cichowski stay late into the night. And don't even try and touch Tom Davis. He's more of a reporter half-asleep than you were in your prime.
ReplyDeleteGo away, Victor. Slink back under the rock you came out from under.
Take your lies and half-baked theories with you.
Or continue to publish this claptrap and ask yourself why no one bothers to comment.
Michael would've been extremely disappointed by your behavior. I'm glad he's not around to see this.
Sounds like you also worked at The Record, but you are giving a real slanted version of what the news copy editors did, or were allowed to do. I'm not sure what you are referring to in the last paragraph. Even if I am old and angry, I don't see you defending the lousy journalism being practiced at the paper today. Also, for many years before I left there, I ate dinner at home before I reported to work, because the dinner hour had been eliminated, so I wasn't fighting over a microwave.
ReplyDeleteWho exactly is Anonymous referring to? I went to Brooklyn College and the journalism school at the University of Missouri, which was free to out-of-state graduate students like me. I also worked as an investigative reporter at two papers before I cam to The Record, where I also spent 10 years as a star reporter and then free-lanced for the Food section from 1999-2008.
ReplyDeleteHey, Jerry D, I comment on this claptrap all the time, and I wouldn't miss a day of it. And John Cichowski may be one of the hardest working columnists on the staff -- make that one of the most conscientious workers, in that he doesn't mail his column in -- but he still is thoroughly misguided in the scope of his column. As I recall, at least one of his three columns a week consists of giving a couple of questions to a DoT administrator and letting her answer them. He doesn't, as Victor rightfully points out, pay any attention to mass transit.
ReplyDeleteAnd "Anonymous," I was one of those "other" copy editors, and I always busted my ass to help reporters, and believe me they needed a lot of help -- you among them, I'm guessing. Trouble is the idiot assignment editors often got in the way. "I didn't write that," a reporter would say, and then the assignment editor would go backchannel to the copy chief and ask why the assignment editor wasn't contacted first.
The Record had/has the most fucked-up communication system I've witnessed at any of the major papers where I worked. It also had one of the best copy desks in the nation, one that even achieved stability and low turnover the last five years I was there, while the toxic management of the paper drove it into the sewer.
I guess this is a good time to mention that Jerry DeMarco, when he was an assignment editor, liked to jazz up his reporters' copy, usually after they went home for the night. If a home invasion story said the victim struggled with the intruder, Jerry wouldn't hesitate to make it a "violent struggle." I recall seeing that in a story I was editing and called the reporter to see if the victim was injured and required treatment. She said she never used the word "violent" in her story.
ReplyDeleteCorrection to one of my comments above: I wrote for The Record Food section from 1999 to 2006, not 2008.
ReplyDeleteIs there a bigger hypocrite out there than JerryD?
ReplyDeleteI'll check around.
ReplyDelete