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| Jeremy Lin |
I question why the editors led The Record today with a sensational murder case instead of the governor's budget address, but came away impressed with the exhaustive reporting by at least six staffers.
At the same time, the Page 1 story of the Monday afternoon slaying should have been in the paper Tuesday. Instead, the lazy assignment desk run by Editor Deirdre Sykes took its sweet time assembling the sordid tale.
After reading all of the interviews with doormen, witnesses and others in North Jersey and Queens -- plus soaking up details of the Fort Lee crime scene -- I wonder why none of that was done for another sensational case.
Since the fatal police shooting of Malik Williams of Garfield on Dec. 10, the Woodland Park daily has published numerous stories that struggled to go beyond the prosecutor's press releases.
It took the family's lawyer and an independent autopsy to reveal that police shot the 19-year-old man twice in the back.
Could The Record's lack of effort in the Williams case be explained by him having been an African-American suspect who ran out of police headquarters and hid in a garage?
And did the editors knock themselves out in the Fort Lee case because the couple involved -- Charles J. Ann and Aena Hong -- are Korean?
Only Sykes and Editor Marty Gottlieb know the answers to those questions.
Indeed, if you're not a sports fan, you might think coverage of the Ann-Hong case is just an extension of the media hysteria over Jeremy Lin, the Chinese-American professional basketball phenom.
And if you're not a sports fan, the so-called Linsanity only conjures up all the negatives about China -- from human rights violations to the hundreds of thousands of American jobs exported to that country to the attempted suicide of workers in the plant that makes the highly praised iPhone.
The Page 1 news story on Governor Christie's proposed budget seems straightforward enough, but would you get a load of the upbeat editorial on A-8 -- it could have been written by the GOP bully's spin doctors.
The headline over the editorial:
Happy days
Christie's budget increases spending
What mindless drivel from Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin.
Nowhere will readers find any discussion of the relentless increase in property taxes since Christie took office two years ago as the governor successfully shifts the media's short attention span to his proposed income-tax cut.
A photo with the editorial shows Christie extending three fingers on his right hand. Appropriately, one of them is the middle finger.
Light-headed
There's Hackensack news on the front of Sykes' Local section for a change today, but Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to beat a dead horse with another column about "Tanker Turn" -- a sharp curve that has proven to be the undoing of many lead-footed tractor-trailer drivers (L-1).
What continues to mystify readers is what this turn has to do with the commuting issues Cichowski is supposed to deal with.
Utility pole news
The lead story on the Local front continues to explore all of the official objections to the proposed extension of light rail to Leonia, Englewood and Tenafly, where Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives.
Sykes' assignment lackeys have yet to ask reporters to interview officials and commuters in the towns that have had light-rail service for many years.
The assignment minions worked overtime on Tuesday, judging from the photo on L-3 today -- the latest installment of utility pole news. It's hard to believe this was the only photo available for that page.
Welcome back. According to The Record, nothing happened while you were away.
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