A strong week with a hiccup or two

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An NJ Transit hybrid bus leaving a Newark garage. Have you seen any hybrid buses plying North Jersey streets? 

Today's all-North Jersey front page ends a week of similarly focused editions, though missteps were glaring.


On Page 1, interim Editor Douglas Clancy's relied much too heavily on crime news and ran a dude-ranch fire photo from Parksville, wherever the hell that is in New York State.


Focus on dead


And the A-1 story localizing the end of America's war in Iraq saw the assignment desk inexplicably focusing on the parents of dead soldiers, not on the relatives of those who are coming home for the holidays.


Poor editing by assignment and Editor Liz Houlton's news copy desk continues, even for front-page stories.


Just look at today's account of a star-crossed cop who acted out a classroom lesson; got arrested for overturning an all-terrain vehicle, allegedly while driving drunk; and was seriously injured (A-1).


The Gaeta family


Why in God's name wait until the last paragraph to tell readers Midland Park Police Officer Joseph B. Gaeta, 31, is the son of Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Gaeta, who was crippled in an automobile accident at 20 (A-6)?


The elder Gaeta, now deceased, was a passenger in a car that hit a utility pole.


The younger Gaeta also crashed into a pole in 2006 while answering an armed-robbery call, "leaving him with a gash in his head that required 60 stitches," the Woodland Park daily reports (A-6).


God bless the artist


The Record's layout rules lock in every editor to running a big color photo with the most prominent A-1 story, and the actual placement of stories and designation of headline sizes are decided by a graphic artist.


So that's how you get Page 1 stories that should be running in the Local news section, like today's judicial reprieve for a congregation that had been barred from its church (A-1).


And that's why another embarrassing loss of millions in federal education money gets shoved back to A-4. It seems the Christie administration was denied $60 million in early childhood program funds; last year, it blew $400 million in the same contest.


God bless, Chris


It's hard to know why Clancy didn't think this was a front-page news, though he may be trying not to embarrass Governor Christie, who has slashed state aid to public schools and favored the opening of more charter schools.


The A-10 photo of a double-decker hybrid bus in London might have North Jersey readers wondering whether NJ Transit has any hybrid buses -- a question that hasn't occurred to the paper's transportation and environment assignment editors.


News of advertiser


Why run a nearly 10-inch story on a new CEO for Montvale-based Mercedes-Benz USA on the Business page (A-12) -- unless Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg is trying to cut a deal for his next Merc? 


The executive, Stephen Cannon, was a member of the Mercedes team in Stuttgart that developed the gas-guzzling M-Class SUV.


Nothing happened


A story on sleepy Northvale appears on the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local, though you won't find any Hackensack news anywhere in the section.


Nothing actually happened in Northvale -- unless you count the mayor asking the borough engineering firm "to analyze ongoing remediation efforts at the former TECT/Danzig site on Livingston Street for a report to be prepared before the council meets next month," according to the lead paragraph.


Sykes and her minions were so desperate for local news they had to run not one but two big photos of a Little Ferry fire captain being sworn in on L-3. 


A story about contract negotiations between Mahwah and its teachers reports "progress," but no actual settlement (L-3).


This is really scraping the bottom of the news barrel, but it's what we've come to expect from the supremely lazy Sykes and her sub-editors, all of whom appear to be asleep at their computers.