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| Image via Wikipedia Rush-hour buses already were standing-room-only before the Port Authority raised tolls steeply, sending even more commuters to mass transit. The paper cites agency "data." |
If readers thought the departure of Editor Francis "Frank" Scandale would end wasting the front page on sports, they've gotten a good slap in the face with all the coverage of those nine thuggish jerk-offs on the Wayne Hills High School football team.
In fact, high school football dominates Page 1 of The Record today.
Leave it to interim Editor Doug Clancy to beat to death the Wayne football farce. Once a reporter in the Passaic County Bureau, when it was in a Wayne shopping center, he now lives in Pequannock, which borders Wayne.
Meanwhile, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes managed to put an upbeat spin on another front-page story -- reporting Governor Christie has added more than $1 billion in new borrowing to the state's already heavy debt burden.
Unbalanced reporting
Sykes apparently ordered Staff Writer John Reitmeyer to make sure the lead paragraph noted the GOP bully is "borrowing money at a slower rate than governors before him."
Reitmeyer also left until the last paragraph an additional $1 billion-plus borrowed after June 30, the end of the fiscal year.
The reporter notes that since the second $1 billion was borrowed in the current fiscal year, "it will show up on next year's debt report."
So, I guess Reitmeyer is saying he is powerless to add up the numbers until it appears in an official state report.
The story also conveniently omits Christie's refusal to tax millionaires or raise the low gasoline tax to pay for road, bridge and rail improvements. Instead, most of the first borrowed billion went to those projects.
Trash transit
The lead story in Sykes' Local section reports more people are taking public transportation to avoid steep Hudson River toll hikes (L-1).
It's time for the assignment desk to tell the paper's transportation reporters -- including the supremely lazy Road Warrior columnist -- to get off their rear ends, ride rush-hour buses and trains, and report on the quality of mass transit, especially in view of the extra ridership.
And Staff Writer Shawn Boburg, who covers the Port Authority, needs to ask agency officials why they've refused in the past decade to add mass-transit capacity in the traffic-choked region, including a second reverse bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel.
Winging it
Two more Hackensack stories appear in Local today -- another overlong report on a motion in a criminal case against suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa (L-1), and continued cleanup of the pre-Halloween storm (L-3 photo).
That's not exactly ground-breaking municipal coverage, in view of the city's struggling Main Street, its high property taxes and such quality-of-life issues as round-the-clock aircraft noise.
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Newsflash. NJ Transit busses are also standing room only at 11:30 pm. on a weeknight. That's because 3/4 of the scheduled busses never show up. At 11:20 p.m on 12/16, the 166 xpress that was supposed to depart PA at 11 pm was still at Nungesser's, in North Bergen incoming to NYC. Needless to say, the 11:20 xpress was probably somewhere on Pluto.
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