Misnamed column should be terminated

Commuters do the Jersey Scramble during rush hours at Penn Station in Manhattan. On Friday, people ran to catch the 8:07 p.m. Trenton express, moments after the track number appeared on waiting-room screens. When will the system be expanded?

If readers doubt Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski is merely running in place, take a look at today's lame effort on funeral processions (Local front).

Cichowski was hand-picked by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes to take over The Record's so-called commuting column in late 2003 from Jeffrey Page, the original Road Warrior.

It was modeled on a column in The Washington Post, but the title is all wrong: 

A "road warrior" is a business traveler who spends much of his or her time away from home.

Commuters need help

Anyway, in recent years, the column has been of little use to North Jersey car, rail and bus commuters, and should be ended.

No one would be sorry to see the befuddled Cichowski retire, and the paper can return to reporting on commuting problems in news stories, such as the one next to his L-1 column today ("Signaling a change").

The paper also owes it to commuters to pay much more attention to the strained bus and rail systems operated by NJ Transit, and what the Port Authority can do to help. 

Sunday news drought

For a Sunday, Editor Marty Gottlieb failed miserably in delivering North Jersey news on Page 1.

A non-fatal bus crash? An inane sports column on the Orioles? The media's desperate attempt to drum up interest in the presidential race?

About the only interesting story is the main element on how irresponsible adults continue to put their children at risk of injury or death in football games (A-1).

Dissing Hackensack

Local continues a moratorium on Hackensack news unrelated to disgraced former Police Chief Ken Zisa. 

Besides wasting its money on Cichowski, The Record also is squandering the salary paid to its full-time restaurant reviewer.

Spoiled food coverage

Why pay Staff Writer Elisa Ung to find terrific restaurants, if her Sunday column is going to solicit the opinions of ordinary people on the best versions of "classic dishes" (Better Living cover)?

Chewy fried calamari? Who cares? Fried squid gives seafood a bad name.

Another failed columnist

On the Opinion front, readers are smacking their foreheads over the second column on a South Jersey woman who was asked not to smile too broadly for her driver's license photo (O-1).

Cichowski, the confused Road Warrior, wrote this column a couple of weeks ago.

Now, here comes another failed journalist, Mike Kelly, whose own column photo -- with its shit-eating grin -- isn't anything to be proud of.

And what does word-pusher Kelly mean here?

"We have grown accustomed to new rules, most of which we accept with a quiet measure of taciturn inevitability."


Traveling music

The Travel section today delivers what readers want most of all from Editor Jill Schensul: 

Tough, consumer-oriented reporting on travel issues, such as today's examination of renting vacation apartments (T-1).