Page 1 delivers a big dose of hype

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Fort Lee is known for its high-rises.

If reformers need ammunition to dismantle all of those corruption-prone local governments, they'll find plenty of it in Fort Lee's inability to develop a gateway near the George Washington Bridge -- despite 45 years of trying.


Here we go again, according to The Record, which leads Page 1 today with a breathless description of the latest proposal -- two 47-story luxury residential towers. 


This is a hard sell.


The headlines exaggerate the impact on Fort Lee, which is already known as a borough of high-rises, many of them perched on the Palisades:

Going to new heights

Two 47-story luxury towers would remake Ft. Lee

If they ever get built, the buildings won't "remake" Fort Lee, but they might finally change people's perception of its bungling government officials.

I can't think of a stronger North Jersey front page, but Editor Martin Gottlieb forgets he is no longer at The New York Times and ruins it with a large A-1 photo of Rick Santorum praying with pastors, making readers wonder what ever happened to the separation of church and state.

There are three stories about Governor Christie inside the main news section (A-3,  A-4 and A-6), so why does the A-1 blurb refer to only two of them?


Poor training

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes has commissioned so many news stories and columns blaming the victims, when pedestrians are killed by NJ Transit trains, she actually thinks a new safety device at a single station is news (L-1).

The major element on the front of Local makes clear a Bronx family was at fault for the fire that heavily damaged the Bergenfield home they had planned to move into this week.

There's news from Englewood, Teaneck, Leonia and other towns, but Hackensack news is conspicuous by its absence. 

Did the City Council on Tuesday introduce the solar-panel regulations reported extensively on Monday's Local front? Your guess is as good as mine.


In a tailspin

Why did Sykes think Columnist Mike Kelly could add anything new to the debate over the "dysfunctional" and free-spending Port Authority (L-3), which is the subject of an editorial today after a number of Page 1 exposes in recent weeks. 

The Kelly column begins: "Isn't math a wonderful thing? More importantly, let us all praise that noble mathematical device -- the calculator."

He begins the column that way because he has nothing to say. 

How juvenile and boring. And as I've said 20 times before, his unflattering column photo makes him look as if he has been released from a halfway house for the mentally ill.