News taking a back seat to politics, restaurant promotions

The front page of the Daily News. Philip Affuso of Ridgewood wrote a letter to the editor of The Record today, predicting the Republican Party, with Donald Trump at the head of the ticket, will meet "a crushing defeat in the general election" and may also lose control of the Senate and House (A-10).

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The front page of The Record today reflects the media's obsession with politics and sensationalism instead of news.

The idiotic Associated Press story splashed all over Page 1 describes Donald Trump as "a political outsider," not the hate monger who has rallied millions of racists to his cause (A-1).

Now that the two parties' presidential nominations appear to have been decided, what will The Record and other news media write about until the November election?

When Governor Christie dropped out of the GOP race and threw his support to Trump, every major New Jersey daily except The Record called on him to resign.

Should we expect an avalanche of boring columns from Staff Writer Charles Stile -- one of the governor's biggest boosters -- analyzing Christie's chances of becoming Trump's running mate for hate?

Newark murder

The headline over a follow-up to the murder of a white college student, who lived in off-campus Newark housing, uses two words from Christie's reaction, calling the death an "extraordinary tragedy" (A-1).

Editor Deirdre Sykes assigned four reporters to work on the story, as if minority Newark residents don't die in robberies or drive-by shootings nearly every day thanks to a police force that is unable or unwilling to protect them.

The story never explains why Joseph Micalizzi's life is worth any more than those unnamed victims.

Sykes and her gullible reporters also swallow Christie's B.S. that the slaying is "an extraordinary tragedy, not only for this university's community but also for us as a state and for me as a father" (A-6).

His son is graduating from Princeton, so how is the Micalizzi murder a "tragedy" for Christie? 

Local news?

After weeks of coverage, the big local news today is the suspension of Wyckoff Police Chief Benjamin Fox, who allegedly condoned racial profiling in a 2014 email (L-1).

North Jersey's home-rule communities seem to have their fair share of bad police chiefs, led by Hackensack's Ken Zisa.

Yet, The Record took no interest in the Zisa family's new political initiative, Team Hackensack, which backed two of the winning candidates in the April 19 school election.

'Hamilton' and Paterson

The Broadway musical "Hamilton" may have been nominated for 16 Tonys, but does the show touch on Alexander Hamilton's role in setting up the nation's first planned industrial city that later became Paterson, known as "Silk City" for all of the mills that were powered by the Great Falls?

Readers have no clue from today's coverage on the Better Living front (BL-1).

The editors also knock themselves out promoting the return of Park & Orchard, an Italian-American restaurant in East Rutherford (BL-1).

But readers might be experiencing sticker shock, with pasta dishes priced at $22 to $29 -- more than at many restaurants in Manhattan. 

Chef is out

And why should readers care about the employment problems of Adam Weiss, who left as executive chef of Due, an Italian-American restaurant in Ridgewood (BL-2)?

Weiss is best remembered for advice that sent many readers' blood pressures soaring, even if they weren't watching their intake of sodium as recommended by American Heart Association:

When he was working at Due, an overweight Weiss mocked using only one teaspoon of salt per gallon of pasta water.

"No," he insisted in a September 2014 interview with The Record. "It has to be salted like the ocean, because when you drain it you want the salt to adhere to the pasta."

What nonsense. Many home cooks don't even salt pasta water, knowing the sauce they use already has plenty of sodium.