Readers wonder what's next for market, their newspaper

Drivers lining up for gas at the Costco Wholesale station in Wayne, where regular was selling for $2.09.9 a gallon last week. Cheap gas has encouraged more speeding and aggressive driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, Garden State Parkway and other highways.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

If you're going to devote all of Page 1 above the fold to the Wall Street "correction," does it make any sense to use the rest of the page to report on Governor Christie's "latest television ad" or even a rapper's free concert in Paterson?

Readers encounter more of Editor Martin Gottlieb's news judgement from hell today.

Christie lost ground after the first big debate among the GOP presidential hopefuls, yet his struggling campaign remains front-page news in the Woodland Park daily.

Columnist Charles Stile and Staff Writer Melissa Hayes have been doing masterful public relations for the GOP buffoon, who has spent more than half the year out of state on party business (A-1 and A-3).

Wait till next year

Are readers really paying that much attention nearly a year before the Republican National Convention on July 18-21, 2016, in Tampa, Fla., or are the media cranking up sensational coverage just to make the race seem close?

The Democratic National Convention is scheduled for July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia.

On the Opinion page today, Columnist Catherine Rampell of The Washington Post calls all of the candidates from both parties "deadbeats."

Referring to Christie, Rampell noted "New Jersey has undergone nine credit-rating downgrades and ranked 44th in private sector growth" (A-9).

Yet, Christie is promising "blockbuster economic growth" when he is president.

I guess that is as credible as his campaign promise to cut property taxes after he became governor in 2010.

Motion practice

Gottlieb is so desperate today he is running a long story on motions filed in the corruption case against U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (A-5).

Defense attorneys usually file a blur of motions for two reasons: It boosts their legal fees and hence their outrageous profits, and postpones the inevitable. 

A second story on legal maneuvering appears on the Local front, where the law firm Christie hired at public expense is fighting a subpoena for computer data in connection with the George Washington Bride lane closure sandal (L-1).

WNYC-FM's "The Christie Tracker" puts the total cost of Bridgegate -- billed to "taxpayers and tollpayers" -- at $11.1 million.

Local news?

A long story on a new principal for an elementary school in Woodland Park, not far from the newsroom, has readers wondering whether the local assignment editors, Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, lost the directions to Hackensack after they moved out in 2009 (L-3).