Cruz betrays Paterson gun victims

Great Falls in Paterson. © 2004 Matthew Trump (Wikipedia)

Paterson's gun violence is well-known, so why did the Giants' Victor Cruz  -- a Silk City native -- traipse up to the bloodshed capital of Connecticut with the media in tow, and why did The Record's Art Stapleton hang on his every word (A-1 and S-1)?

Did I miss the story about Cruz lending a sympathetic ear to victims of drive-by shootings and other Paterson killings, which have claimed the lives of innocent children, off-duty police officers and others?

Does anybody care what the National Rifle Association will say today about 2o children who were shot numerous times in a Newtown, Conn., school, and did anyone bother reading more than a few paragraphs of the long, speculative story on Page 1 today? 

Fender benders

With Sandy, Newtown and so many other compelling stories to cover, why did Editor Marty Gottlieb run a gee-whiz,  A-1 photo of a non-fatal car accident -- a staple of the desperate Local section editors?

This is yet another instance of an older driver mistaking the gas pedal for the brake pedal -- a serious issue that calls for retraining of senior citizens, not a photo op to make light of their confusion.

Greedy Old Party

Gottlieb leads the paper today with a money grab by greedy Republicans, who continue to fight for tax breaks for the nation's wealthy while slashing by more than half the $60.4 billion requested for Sandy relief efforts by Governors Christie and Cuomo (A-1).

In a deft editing move, Gottlieb made this a partisan issue by mentioning the outrage from "New Jersey's two Democratic senators" in the first paragraph, but not telling readers until the continuation page that loud-mouth Christie had no comment about his fellow GOP morons (A-8).

Jets trump Koreans
 
Given all the attention The Record has paid to North Jersey's growing Korean-American community, you'd think Gottlieb would have run the election of South Korea's first female president on the front page (A-15).

Instead, readers are staring dumbly at another silly sports column by Tara Sullivan (A-1). 

More copy desk screw-ups

Production Editor Liz Houlton's copy desk had fun with the caption on the A-15 photo of Park Geun-hye, South Korea's president elect.

She is seen accepting a bouquet of flowers, but the caption says she is shown "during her victory speech Wednesday in Seoul."

Maybe the microphone was concealed in the flowers.

Houlton's mischievous copy editors really fractured a headline about Newtown, Conn., on Wednesday's A-8. Is this English? Is there a word, line missing?

Community

very visibly

in mourning

 

On Wednesday's L-3, a photo caption about the removal of a tree dropped the word "down." It said "homeowners got permission to cut the 125-year-old tree." 

Corrections or clarifications have been running on A-2 in recent days, including today, but none of the Road Warrior column's numerous errors have been corrected.

Murder and mayhem 

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, needed 8 Law & Order stories to fill fewer than 4 pages of local news today.

Two obituaries of prominent local women, including 101-year-old Nina DiLorio (L-3), are a much-needed break from the monotony of court, police and crime stories. 

Half the story   

In the Signature section today, a cover story on the heyday of Hackensack's Main Street omits any mention of The Record, which had its main office on the street for decades before building a larger headquarters nearby on River Street.

Nor does the story discuss how North Jersey Media Group's wholesale abandonment of Hackensack in 2009 accelerated the street's decline.

Spinning out of control

Whether writing about two wheels or four, the Road Warrior continues to play loose and fast with the facts.

Here is another in a long series of e-mails from a concerned reader to management, appealing for accuracy from Staff Writer John Cichowski:

"Once again, the Road Warrior mistakenly reports misleading and false statements and then further confuses or misleads readers by misinterpreting and misstating the facts. 

The Road Warrior's Dec. 19 column is the 24^th article with problems, starting with his 9/12 column, about which I've notified The Record's management & Road Warrior without indication of any preventive actions to address these problems and very few published corrections.

As per his Dec. 19 column, the Road Warrior continues to be plagued by an inability to correctly state and comprehend facts from published studies that should be the easiest type of reporting based on well-presented statements and facts in these studies, including the Tri-State Transportation Campaign's recent report on the most dangerous roads for bicyclists in northern NJ counties.

A highlight of misleading and false statements & facts are noted below.

The Record or Road Warrior should make appropriate corrections and ensure better coverage of this topic.

1.  Misleading statement - Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which produced a report ... titled "Most Dangerous Roads for Bicyclists in Northern New Jersey Counties"

CORRECT FACTS - Their report was titled "New Analysis Identifies Most Dangerous Roads for Bicyclists in Northern New Jersey Counties."  The mistakes start with the report's title and continue to get worse.

2.  Misleading false statement and fact - "it chronicled nearly 20,000 collisions over a 10-year period."

CORRECT FACTS - The report chronicled these collisions over an 11-year period from 2001 thru 2011.

3. Misleading false statements - "The report focused on roads that make travel easy for cars, but awful for bikes. Typically, it said, these arterial roads are wide with two or more travel lanes in each direction, travel speeds of at least 40 mph, and little to no bike or pedestrian infrastructure, such as bike lanes or crosswalks."

CORRECT FACTS - The report clearly stated it focused on the dangerous design of ALL types of roads that puts bicyclists in harm’s way.  The report never suggested it focused on arterial roads. The report had one statement that indicated that many of the most dangerous places for bicyclists are arterial roads based on the data.

4.  Misleading false statements and facts - "Among the most dangerous roads for crashes [from 2009 to 2011] were .... Route 505 in Passaic County — mostly Main Avenue in Passaic and Clifton— with 43.  Route 505 in Bergen... was the scene of 43 crashes."

CORRECT FACTS - Among the most dangerous roads for crashes were Route 601 in Passaic County — from Paterson thru Passaic on Main St./Ave. — with 33. 

Route 505 in Bergen was the scene of 40 crashes.

5.  Misleading false statement - "The Tri-State report called for exclusive bike lanes and sharrows — well-marked lanes that bicycles and cars can share — as well as suggestions for better training for both cyclists and drivers."

CORRECT FACTS - The Tri-State report did NOT call for exclusive bike lanes and sharrows and did NOT suggest better training for both cyclists and drivers.  The Tri-State report quoted various municipal officials on the multiple ways various municipalities are addressing bicycle safety, some of which include bike lanes, sharrows, and public safety education about bicycling.  The report NEVER mentioned anything about training.

The Tri-State report DID CALL for "NJDOT, county and municipal governments to prioritize bicycle safety projects in capital budgets and encourages counties and municipalities across the state to adopt Complete Streets policies with clear goals (and funds) for implementation."

6.  Misleading false statement and facts -  "[report] noted that federal transportation funding for the nation fell 30 percent this year"

CORRECT FACTS - The report noted that federal transportation funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects for the nation fell 30 percent for the fiscal 2013 year.

7.  Misleading false statement and fact -  "in NJ, funding for bicycle-lane improvements dropped from 3% of the capital budget [for transportation] to 2.3%"

CORRECT FACTS - The report indicated that NJ funding for all pedestrian and all bicycle projects dropped from 3% of the capital budget to 2.3%.

8.  Misleading statement and fact - "Three counties and 40 towns have agreed to adopt these criteria [for NJ Complete Streets policy]"

CORRECT FACTS - Report indicated more than 40 towns agreed to adopt these criteria.

9. Misleading statement - "But who in our car-centric society wants to be especially reasonable about an idea that would remake our road system to accommodate two-wheelers?"

[Editor's notes: Cichowski completely fails to mention how many of Manhattan's avenues have been remade to accommodate the bicycles of commuters, messengers and food-delivery workers.]

CORRECT FACTS - Road Warrior appears clueless when asking this question, particularly when there is clear information about the groundswell of support and efforts coming from the NJ public, public organizations, state government, counties, and municipalities to remake many of our roads to accommodate two-wheelers. The support and efforts may be slower than some would like, but that is the way most things get done.

NJ DOT has a Complete Streets policy that also promotes the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists in construction and maintenance of new and retrofit road projects that have federal or state funds.  NJ DOT also promotes and provides training for county and municipal officials to implement these policies in their local work.

Three NJ counties and over 40 municipalities, incl. many of the largest cities, have implemented this policy.  I would not be surprised if many of the guidelines from this policy have also been utilized by other NJ counties and towns.

The Road Warrior should know that NJ is far from being a car-centric society based on all of the public and private transportation alternative options that are available, particularly in comparison to other states.

[Editor's note: If the Road Warrior ever left the office, he'd discovered a well-developed mass-transit system that is a victim of its own success, and how traffic-choked highways and Hudson River crossings have reached the point of no return.]