Editor runs robotic rewrite on Page 1

Although the dumpsters are gone, not much has changed at The Record's old 150 River St. headquarters in Hackensack since I took this photo on a hot day this summer.

The Record's editors have given us a new breed of reporter who is skilled in rewriting press releases, studies, surveys and reports, and who thinks "legwork" is a dance routine.

Staff Writer John Cichowski -- the so-called Road Warrior -- is one of those office-loving reporters who is almost robotic in rewriting press releases or handouts, as his Page 1 column today demonstrates.

I've read the column twice, and can't find the reason crashes declined dramatically after New Jersey drivers under 21 were required to stick a red decal on their license plates.

Did the law keep many young drivers off the road altogether? Cichowski doesn't say. 

Gave voice to morons 

And the columnist doesn't take responsibility for the many negative columns he wrote about the red decals by giving voice to hysterical arguments from all those moronic parents who opposed the law.

He's been doing the same recently by quoting every lead-footed idiot he can find to blast red-light cameras, which not only cut crashes, but give cash-strapped towns a badly needed source of new revenue.

By putting Cichowski's mea culpa on Page 1 today, instead of leaving it on L-1 where it belongs, Editor Marty Gottlieb gave readers one of the most uninteresting Local fronts in memory.

A trial for readers

As usual, Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, couldn't find any municipal news, so four of the five elements on L-1 today are Law & Order stories, and more appear inside.

It's been more than a month since any municipal news from Hackensack has appeared in Local, and I haven't seen Staff Writer Stephanie Akin's byline recently.

Could she be on vacation or does her absence have anything to do with a lawsuit The Record's parent company filed against the city, seeking unspecified documents? 

Cooking blind

In the most definitive explanation of her role since she became food editor, Susan Leigh Sherrill confesses today that she is in a dither over the stacks of free cookbooks she has to publicize (BL-1).

"So many cookbooks, so little time" is her lead sentence.

Sherrill doesn't explain how giving free publicity to cookbook writers who use butter, heavy cream and other artery clogging ingredients advances readers' desire to eat healthy.