Frank R. Lautenberg puts Christie, the Borgs to shame

U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg was a vocal advocate of building new Hudson River tunnels to expand NJ Transit rail service. Contrast that with Governor Christie, an enemy of mass transit who killed the project, citing his overweight wife's complaint she would have to walk too far to connect to Manhattan subways.

One thing the editors of The Record carefully avoid in today's comprehensive coverage of U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg is any comparison to Chris Christie, the worst New Jersey governor ever.

Nor do you see any mention of how Lautenberg, who died on Monday, used his wealth to serve the public, as opposed to the Borgs, who have put personal gain ahead of their flagship newspaper's service to local readers.

More politics

Of course, Editor Marty Gottlieb devotes most of Page 1 today to politics -- a sure turnoff for readers -- and took a couple of coded potshots at Lautenberg.

In Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson's appraisal, the senator's career "epitomized liberal politics" (A-1).

"Lautenberg was a reliable -- some might say predictable -- Democrat," Jackson reports, casting a partisan shadow over the senator's work to better the lives of the middle class (A-7).

The real Christie

Christie's many failures are exposed in a letter to the editor from Paul White, a Ridgewood resident who takes issue with a column praising the GOP governor from Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, the mouse that roars (A-8).

White says Christie "has made his image by insulting and bullying," and has accomplished little that is positive while waging war against women, the working poor and the middle class.

Lautenberg's death also is the occasion for a cartoon  from Jimmy Margulies, whose work has been appearing only on Sundays since Publisher Stephen A. Borg let him go to cut costs (A-8).

This is certainly not among Margulies' best work.

More appropriate would have been a Jersey Mount Rushmore with Christie cast in the role of dynamiting Lautenberg's image.

More gimmicks

Meanwhile, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, produce a low-quality Local section that relies on the same gimmicks they've been using for years to mask their laziness.

Five of the six elements on the Local front are Law & Order coverage, and the central photo is an overly dramatized auto collision (L-1).

L-3 also is mostly Law & Order stories, and a second accident photo -- a pedestrian hit by a car -- is used as filler at the bottom of that page.

The caption describes a late-model Subaru as "a station wagon," a term that hasn't been used by the automotive industry in decades.

Sykes and Sforza also reprint a story about Hackensack bonding to pave streets and improve pedestrian safety from the weekly Hackensack Chronicle (L-2).