Getting past all the crap on Page 1

Image by expertinfantry via Flickr
An image from the Pearl Harbor anniversary in 2010.

You can just hear illegal immigrants muttering "Shit!" or "Mierda!" as they read the lead story in The Record today: authorities bust a black-market driver's license ring. 


But few illegals read the Woodland Park daily, so why did interim Editor Doug Clancy think this was the best local story he had for the front page? 


Why should the vast majority of readers care about this? Are the phony licenses the reason MVC lines are so long?


Then, under two one-column headlines on A-1, there's the same old story about the mob running the garbage industry, and shocking love-triangle murders -- the latter from The Star-Ledger, not The Record.


Burying real news


Indeed, why did Clancy bury on A-4 the report that Governor Christie is hurting the environment by approving a plan to rely more on natural gas and nuclear power and less on renewable energy -- playing into the hands of his fat cat supporters?


That's Page 1 news.


The best thing on A-1 today is the remembrance of the Pearl Harbor attack -- newspapers just love anniversaries. 


This 70th anniversary story comes alive on A-8, the continuation page, when Staff Writer Jay Levin extensively quotes two survivors, Andrew Myers, 88, and John Walton, 97. 


And the sidebar on how The Bergen Evening Record and competing Passaic Herald-News reported the big story is priceless.


But leave it to Editor Liz Houlton's news copy desk to screw up the Pearl Harbor package with a puzzling headline on a second A-8 sidebar:

An honored vet recalls

family reunion on deck

Huh? "Family reunion"? What the F does that mean? You have to read the story to find out Thomas Mahoney became separated from older brother Raymond on Dec. 7, 1941, and feared he may have been killed in the attack on their ship.


Many hours later, the soot-covered Mahoney brothers came face to face with each other on the deck, so "family reunion" is absolutely the wrong phrase to use in the headline.


Hibernating reporter


Leave it Staff Writer John Cichowski, one of the laziest reporters in the newsroom, to wait until "Older Driver Safety Awareness Week" to write about the challenges facing senior citizens when they get behind the wheel (L-1).


As important as that neglected issue is, there's no relief in sight for hard-pressed commuters, a group Cichowski is supposed to cover.


And head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes is so desperate to fill the columns of her Local news section, she couldn't possibly kill the column, make Cichowski a transportation reporter and order him to write about mass transit and other commuting problems.


The photo on the front the section reports "another rainy day," but there's no explanation for why today is another day without Hackensack news or news of many other towns.