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| Commuters seeking an alternate route to the George Washington Bridge this morning gridlocked Woodland Street and Palisade Avenue in Englewood. |
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
Jerry DeMarco, onetime breaking news editor at The Record, is working as managing editor of Hackensack Daily Voice, part of a website that covers towns in three states.
Daily Voice.com calls itself a "local news organization."
"Our town-based reporters cover the most important local news, sports and information in each community we serve."
This afternoon, Hackensack Daily Voice sent out an email alert that a lockdown at two Ridgewood schools had been lifted.
Police had determined that a student who reported seeing a man with a gun outside the Travell School was mistaken.
North Jersey.com, The Record's online news site, didn't have the story.
Daily Voice.com also covers towns in Passaic County.
On Cliffview Pilot.com, "About Us" reports the Law & Order news site DeMarco started after he left The Record is "now part of Daily Voice."
Today's paper
Stories on floods in South Carolina and Russia's aggressive moves against Syrian rebels appear on Page 1 today under the masthead and banner:
"North Jersey's Trusted Source"
Also on the front page today, a headline over a brief is a brain teaser that puzzles many readers (A-1):
"Inmates to be freed
once deemed threat"
Actually, the opposite is true.
The story reports they are being released only after officials determine they no longer are a threat to others (A-7).
Local news?
Don't look for much local news in Local today.
As usual, local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza load up the section with lots of Law & Order news and photos, as well as news about the police (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).
On L-1, a story reports the opening of a new five-story, 650-space parking deck near the Bergen County Courthouse "ends an arrangement the county had ... with North Jersey Media Group, which publishes The Record."
Bergen County leased 540 spaces at 150 River St., onetime headquarters of NJMG and its flagship paper, for more than $777,000.
The two-year lease was supposed to have ended this past July.
Second looks
The Record's veteran columnists -- including Charles Stile and Bob Klapisch -- are such poor writers, and they get so little editing, it's puzzling that Editor Martin Gottlieb puts their work on Page 1 week after week.
On Wednesday, Klapisch began his front-page column on the Yankees' miserable season this way:
"This was only 10 minutes after the Yankees' season had ended ...."
If that sounded familiar, it's because Klapisch began another Page 1 column in the exact same way on Sept. 24:
"This was back in the early 2000s when Yogi Berra ...."
What a joke.
Unsafe busing
On Wednesday's Local front, a photo shows a commuter in a suit standing on an Oradell Avenue median in Paramus, waiting for a bus, and others walking toward the stop.
But nowhere in the Road Warrior column reporting a ticket blitz against jaywalking pedestrians like these does clueless reporter John Cichowski explain why NJ Transit doesn't move the bus stop to a safer place.
'How disastrous'
Letters to the editors often contain more pointed commentary than The Record's editorials:
Ralph Meyer of Ridgewood notes that in his quest for the presidency, Governor Christie "has vetoed hundreds of bills to appease the Tea Party wing of his party" (Wednesday's A-8).
"We can quickly take a major step toward overriding the irrational vetoes by electing a few more Democrats in the upcoming Nov. 3 Assembly election," Meyer says.
The Record has consistently ignored Christie's vetoes starting in early 2010, when he first took office, and only this year reported they totaled more than 350 -- with not a single override because Republicans who supported the measures fear crossing the GOP bully.
There have been many vetoes since then, but no update in the Woodland Park daily.
Here is a comment from Jeff, a Record reader:
ReplyDeleteI read one of the brief teaser headlines on the left side of the paper today.
The somewhat confusing teaser headline was published on two lines as shown below.
"Inmates to be freed
once deemed threat"
I immediately thought that the headline could have meant that once an inmate was deemed to be a threat to the community or to other prisoners, a government decision was made to free them. Now I know I have seen and heard of a lot of unbelievably stupid and crazy decisions by government officials, but I thought it could not be possibly true (or could it??) that once an inmate was deemed to be a threat to the community or to other prisoners, a decision was made to free them.
After reading the brief teaser synopsis it became clearer and logical about what was happening.
When I went to read the full article, the headline below was a little clearer, but still somewhat confusing.
"Some prisoners being freed were called threats"
That headline could have meant that after various prisoners were call a threat by government or prison officials, they were being freed.
I would think the headline below could have been appropriate with the addition of one word.
"Some prisoners being freed were once called threats" or;
"Some prisoners being freed were once threats"
And talking about stupid and crazy decisions by NJ legislator officials, check out the article in the lower left half of the Opinion page with the headline "Oops, N.J. did it again". After reading what was being proposed by legislators and promoted by the Senate Republican leader, I thought that it had to be one of the stupidest and craziest proposals that I have ever heard in regards to the NJ legislature, and I have seen and heard a lot of their stupid and crazy decisions.
An even more accurate headline for that opinion article could have been:
"Poops, N.J. did it again"