'I'm not going to be governor in 2014'

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How did everyone miss this?

On Tuesday, in the last paragraph of a Page A-6 story on Governor Christie, Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson quotes him as saying he won't be governor in 2014 -- the year he would begin a second term. 

So does that mean he won't be running for governor again in November 2013 or that he'll seek to unseat President Obama as the conservative juggernaut of the Republican Party? There's no clue in Tuesday's paper or today's paper -- or even any comment from The Record on his statement.

In Washington for a meeting of the National Governors Association, Christie:

1. Told Katie Couric to shove her Times/CBS News poll results, showing that a majority opposes his efforts to cut the benefits of public employees.
2. Accused Obama of "playing politics" when he told the governors to play nice with public workers.
3. And commented on the president's so-called flexibility on health care reform.

"I'm not going to even be governor in 2014, so the fact that he's offering flexibility in 2014 is really of no moment to most governors who need to balance their budgets this year," Christie told Jackson.

The Woodland Park daily didn't even report the Times/CBS News poll results or Christie's comments about it and Couric, anchor of the CBS Evening News.

Fat of the land

The big news on Page 1 today is a report on how immigrants are healthier than native New Jerseyans when they arrive, but the longer they stay, their diets get worse, they smoke and drink more and they are less physically active.

Is that a commentary on North Jersey's dog-eat-dog mentality or on how the features staff bombards readers with stories on cookies, cakes, artery-clogging desserts and crappy hamburgers? 

But I liked the headline: "Arrival of the fittest." 

Too bad the news copy desk and its supervisors, Liz Houlton and Vinny Byrne, only manage a great headline every couple of months or so.

Dial-a-typo

The features copy desk again missed an incorrect phone number for a fund-raiser listed in Friday's A la Carte column in Better Living, according to a correction on A-2 today. 

Maybe the copy editors have lost their phone privileges in a cost-cutting move and can't call numbers in stories they are editing to check their accuracy. 

'The steamroller'

Another column praising Christie's style appears on A-11 today. 

James Ahearn, a former managing editor, concludes the governor has the Democratic-controlled Legislature boxed in on drastic cuts to public employee benefits in return for doubling property tax rebates.

"He will be one-up on them, one way or another," Ahearn says.