Worst transportation reporter?

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 Most experts agree that more mass transit is the solution for traffic congestion in North Jersey and that buses, trains and light rail aren't expected to pay their own way. But not so-called transportation reporter Tom Davis of The Record of Woodland Park, which on Page 1 today publishes its third negative mass transit story in six months.

 Davis is probably the worst transportation reporter The Record has had in the past two decades, and that's saying something, in view of Dan Sforza's elegies on highways of the future that he wrote -- instead of reporting on the quality of train and bus service -- when he was a transportation reporter.


Sforza may now be Davis' assignment editor, which would go a long way in explaining why the latter selectively reports on the debate over extension of light rail into Bergen County. Davis, in today's piece and in an article in December, portrays light rail as negatively as possible -- completely omitting all the positives. He must think readers are fools.


It's only in the last paragraph of today's story -- on Page A-12 -- that he finally acknowledges no transit agency in the United States was ever set up to make money. So why does almost his entire story make such a big deal of light rail's financial losses?


Under Editor Frank Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, the former Hackensack daily seems to have appointed itself as taxpayers' watchdog. While ignoring coverage of Hackensack, Englewood and other major communities, these editors and their obedient reporters have been drumming a relentless beat -- teachers make too much money, cops make too much money and, now, mass transit loses too much money. 


In Better Living, the only food news appears to be a Chicago Tribune piece on biscotti and mandelbrot. What did $70,000-plus Food Editor Bill Pitcher do, take a three-day weekend? Does anybody miss Restaurant Reviewer-on-Leave Elisa Ung's Sunday column, which often amounted to little more than free advertising for a restaurant owner or chef?

How much longer can Travel survive as a section with barely any information readers can use to negotiate arcane airline rules, find the best deals possible and select decent hotels? 

The Record on the Road -- photos of travelers holding the Travel section -- is such a waste of space. The only thing of substance in the section today is a column by the klutzy travel editor, Jill Schensul. Let's hope the paper paid for her 15-day trip to Europe or was it one of those cushy, free familiarization trips the travel industry is notorious for lavishing on writers? 

Is that all there is to Travel? During the obesity epidemic, Publisher Stephen A. Borg, in his wisdom, folded the Food section, but kept Travel. That must be the "responsible journalism" espoused by North Jersey Media Group from its mountain-top headquarters.