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| The Record's food editor shops at Whole Foods Market, but doesn't pass along advice to buy beef without harmful antibiotics, growth hormones and animal byproducts. |
Three of the four stories on the front page of The Record today are rehashes of new and old debates -- on gay marriage, foreign policy and a silly football game.
And the off-lead story on President Obama and Mitt Romney is not even a real debate.
The so-called confrontation was fabricated by McClatchy Newspapers, where bored reporters and editors look for any way to liven coverage of the deadly dull presidential campaign.
Marty Gottlieb, the Times veteran who took over The Record's newsroom at the end of January, sure knows how to cruise into retirement.
Today, Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily has what editors call a "good mix" of stories, but the result is a page so dull, readers' eyelids grow heavy and they start flipping pages, looking for news they can use.
Phony caption
For amusement -- at the expense of the paper's inept copy desk under Production Editor Liz Houlton -- check out the photo with the story on Catholics and gay marriage at the top of Page 1.
Three students are shown with their mouths closed as they stare into the distance, but the caption says they "are discussing Archbishop John J. Myers' statement."
More lazy reporting
On the front of Local today, it's too bad slow-moving Staff Writer John Cichowski confines himself to writing the Road Warrior column from the comfort of his home or office.
Today's laughable effort focuses on a Camden County woman and photo licenses that he must have rewritten from an earlier wire-service story (L-1).
The so-called commuting columnist has been at it for 9 years, yet he's written little about the lack of speeding enforcement on roads and highways, and the other side of that story, the lack of basic road-safety training for drivers and pedestrians.
Ignoring basic safety
Monday's Page 1 told the sad story of Matthew Killen, 25, an aspiring surgeon from Wood-Ridge, whose life was cut short Sept. 7 on a Tennesse highway, where he was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer.
The account sounded familiar -- Gabrielle Reuveni, 20, of Paramus was killed in July by a pickup truck in the Poconos, where she was jogging on the side of the road.
Sadly, both victims failed to observe basic safety rules:
Killen apparently didn't look in his car mirrors to see if a truck or car was approaching before he stepped out of his vehicle onto a dark roadway, and Reuveni might still be alive if she was jogging toward traffic.
There have been other fatalities like these in recent years, but Cichowski and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes can't be bothered to report on basic road safety.
Where's the good beef?
On the Better Living front, don't miss Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill's recipe of the week -- a dish from a Japanese farm-food cookbook (BL-1).
On BL-2, you'll find the recipe and "Susan's tips," based on a shopping trip for ingredients to Whole Foods Market.
But Sherrill doesn't tell you the whole story. For some reason, she doesn't recommend using beef shoulder that was raised without harmful antibiotics and growth hormones.
In fact, naturally raised beef shoulder steaks were on sale recently for $5.99 a pound at Whole Foods in Paramus.
You probably didn't intend to come across as totally callous, but is "blaming the victim" really necessary in your commentary? I say no. Let the young people R.I.P. and may their families one day be able to laugh again.
ReplyDeleteAgain, the editors are to blame for not taking the opportunity to educate readers about basic road safety, especially when they run stories on young people whose lives are cut short.
ReplyDelete