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| The Record today reports the homeless are "invisible" in Bergen County. |
Editor Marty Gottlieb blew a decent front page today by wasting space on who won the redneck-and-racist vote in the GOP presidential primaries in Alabama and Mississippi.
The three North Jersey stories on Page 1 of The Record are compelling reading, but forgive me if I don't have the patience or compassion to slog through 30 inches of text on an 82-year-old homeless man with emphysema who continues to smoke and almost blew himself to smithereens.
Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes apparently ordered Staff Writer Stephanie Akin to neglect her reporting on Hackensack and pull the story together, but who is the editor kidding by calling Bergen County's homeless problem "invisible"?
It's "invisible" from the Garret Mountain newsroom where Sykes and her lazy, incompetent minions spend all their time with their heads up their well-padded posteriors.
Homeless beat
But for many years before Publisher Stephen A. Borg abandoned Hackensack, the large number of homeless who walked that city's streets almost amounted to a beat, and the problem merited the building of a large shelter between Costco Wholesale and the county jail.
Why insult Bergen County readers by pretending The Record's editors exposed homelessness?
Two local obits
Below the patch story, there is a terrific piece by Jay Levin, the local obituary writer, on a party former Rutherford Councilman and Ramsey teacher Alan "Big Al" Note threw himself before he died.
Levin has another good local obituary on the front of Local -- Helga Newmark of Hackensack, the first female Holocaust survivor ordained a rabbi (L-1).
Readers of Road Warrior John Cichowski's column today may be surprised to learn he has a 95-year-old father, who isn't named for some strange reason (L-6).
Cichowski has only shown contempt for older drivers -- who cause numerous accidents, killing and injuring others -- refusing to compile a list of classes and other programs to help them improve their driving skills.
So the 82yo smoker with emphysema who nearly blew up a neighborhood when he ignited the oxygen tanks in his car with a cigarette was evicted from his discounted Airport Motel room on Route 46 after that story was published.
ReplyDeleteHope they're proud of themselves.
They framed it today as "yet another example of the daily challenges facing people like Kowalski, the invisible poor living in affluent North Jersey."
They said he's been through three nursing homes and tossed from other places for various reasons. On top of that, they went after a local hospital for not allowing a reporter into the guy's room.
The nursing homes are private businesses. The hospital is a private business. Their houses, their rules. Same with the motel.
After reading about the papers, plastic bags and clothing between the bed and the furniture, as well as the overpowering stench of Newports -- not to mention the immense danger posed by a smoker with oxygen tanks -- motel ownership took action.
WAY TO GO, RECORD. YOU GONNA TAKE CARE OF HIM NOW? OR, HAVING DONE YOUR DAMAGE, DO YOU JUST WALK AWAY?
What gets me is that, with me, you have a single person weighing the potential ramifications and and reaching a decision -- sometimes right, many times wrong. With them, there's an entire chain of command, from reporting to publishing -- mini groups, as well as a large group, to discuss and consider what goes where.
As much as they want to claim they're a company with various moving parts, in the end the organization behaves as a collective. Their motives, their morals, are suspect, at the very least. In pursuing their idea of human interest, they continue to neglect the collective.
Sad, but true.
ReplyDeleteIn Jerry We Trust.
ReplyDelete(if we wanted our lives to end up like his.)
Nah. Stay miserable, angry, gutless...
ReplyDeleteTell you what: Come to my FDU continuing ed lectures, or attend an indie pub trade assn meeting, and we can take a walk afterward.
I can tell you about my latest conquests.... Heh heh...
Jeez....