Page A-2 correction contains an error

Jersey menace: On Friday afternoon, a moron from Saddle Brook, N.J., backed his crew-cab pickup truck into a space at a service area on the Massachusetts Turnpike, stopping less than an inch from the rear bumper of the Toyota I had parked there.

You can't make this up: A correction on A-2 of The Record today sent readers to the wrong page in search of the repaired story.

The correction told readers the wrong photo was published on Friday's L-5 with an obituary for South Hackensack Police Chief Frank Furbacher, and directed them to the correct photo with the full obituary "on Page L-6."

But the story is on L-5 today. LOL. 

On Thursday, NorthJersey.com promoted the Road Warrior column, but misspelled "Valentine" as "Velentine."

Two corrections on A-2 today are among 5 published in the past week, but many other errors were never acknowledged.

Where is 'Queen of Errors'?

Even though Liz Houlton was promoted to the six-figure job of production editor several years ago, she appears to have failed miserably in getting her copy editors and proof readers to catch mistakes or at least avoid introducing error into stories, photo captions and corrections.


Proof readers should be catching errors on pages they review on the computer screen, not watching the David Letterman show on TV.

For many years, Houlton ran the paper's features copy desk, and earned the title of "Queen of Errors" for all the mistakes that got past her cursor.
 

"The Nose" opens in Hackensack. Police responded on Thursday, when a man bled profusely from his nose in front of Starbucks. The man got into an ambulance.

Editor Marty Gottlieb doesn't seem to care that errors have piled up on Page 1, in the Road Warrior column  and throughout the paper in the year since he left The New York Times to take over the Woodland Park newsroom.

The unprecedented slopinesss undermines the credibility of the paper.

Today's paper

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, have patented the use of gee-whiz, non-fatal accident photos as filler in the Local news section, and they are submitting this novel approach for a Pulitzer Prize.

Today, apparently for the first time, such a photo is used as filler in the A-section (A-4).

In a letter to the editor, Catherine Cahill complains The Record has never mentioned how hard Superstorm Sandy hit the middle class in Moonachie (A-13).

That makes sense. The paper also tirelessly promotes Governor Christie's anti-middle class agenda.

Friday's paper

What is the connection between Sandy damage to NJ Transit rail cars and locomotives, and the agency sending four employees to New Orleans to prepare the bus and rail system for the 2014 Super Bowl in the Meadowlands (A-1)?

Until Sandy, The Record virtually ignored mass transit in favor of intense, car-centric coverage in the Road Warrior column, which recently published boasts from male drivers about all the blow jobs they received in lover's lanes.

Can there be anything more boring than the three political stories about Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Sen. Robert Menendez that appear on Page 1 today and Friday?

Stop the presses

Friday's Road Warrior column on red-light cameras is filled with distortions, according to a concerned reader of The Record:

"The Road Warrior's failing crusade to promote red-light cameras -- based on distortions, misinformation, key relevant omissions and cherry picking of contradictory facts to support his sadly mistaken conclusions -- continues in his Feb. 15 column.

"His report on the Assembly Transportation committee meeting on Feb. 11 contradicts local and national news reports about reasons for the meeting and what actually took place.

"It certainly is NO coincidence that the Road Warrior cherry picks statistics to support his baseless claims and conclusions in support of the red-light cameras, which have turned out to be more of a money maker for municipalities rather than addressing safety.

"The Record management should STOP the Road Warrior from continually misreporting news about red-light cameras and advocating for these cameras with baseless or senseless claims."

To read the full e-mail, go to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Seeing red 


Reviews go on a diet

In Better Living, The Record's slimmed-down restaurant review no longer has room to inform readers of important information, even if the editors were inclined to do so (BL-16). 

In his lukearm appraisal of Palmer's Crossing in Tenafly, Bob Probert doesn't say whether the hotel restaurant's $22 fried chicken is drug free or whether the $25 salmon is farmed or wild.

The Mercedes-Benz SUV, right, damaged the sedan at 24 Hour Fitness in Paramus.

Jersey-style parking

You can escape New Jersey, but not all the morons with a license who fancy themselves parking wizards.

Last Monday, I took a photo of a Mercedes-Benz SUV that had  been backed into a space so crookedly it damaged the car in the next space.

On Friday, I experienced deja vu all over again in Massachusetts, where a workman from Saddle Brook came within less than an inch of damaging the Toyota Camry I had parked in a turnpike service area lot.

I had just finished a smoothie from a food counter called Fresh City, which adds lots of ice cubes to the fruit and yogurt listed on the wall menu, then charges nearly $5 for the watered-down drink.

I had parked the Camry as far away from the door as possible, but sure enough, a pick-up had been backed to within less than an inch of the Toyota's bumper.

The driver and his companions walked up just as I was trying to see if the truck had hit the car, and I asked if he had damaged the Camry.

No, he said, it's called "judging" and "using the mirror," though it was clear he couldn't possibly see the rear of the car in any mirror.

He pulled away, and I couldn't find any damage. That's dumb luck, not "judging." 

Toll charges

One thing I noticed in Massachusetts is how cheap the turnpike is, compared to its counterpart in New Jersey.

A trip of roughly 5o miles cost only $2.10 there, around $8 here.

In New York State, the Tappan Zee Bridge is $5, but the thieves at the Port Authority demand $13 to cross the same river from New Jersey.

Like New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut have no shortage of drivers who speed and tailgate, and, like us, little enforcement of highway traffic laws.

A blood sport

In Connecticut, tailgating and driving 80 mph on the narrow, winding Merritt Parkway is considered a sport. 

Friday afternoon's rush hour was a nightmare, with a 7-mile delay on Route 91 south through Hartford followed by an accident that closed at least one lane.

After the sun set, thousands of commuters choked the Merritt Parkway north, blinding me and other drivers on the southbound roadway.

The rush-hour congestion is familiar to anyone who commutes by car in New Jersey.

Yet Road Warrior John Cichowski ignores all of that, preferring to report on sex in cars and people who met on buses.