After 7 months in obscurity, editor emerges with a rosy tale

A photo of Dan Sforza, managing editor of The Record, from his Twitter page.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers get a rare look at how The Record's newsroom works in today's story about the "Miracle on the Hudson" by Managing Editor Dan Sforza.

Sforza has had a long career at the newspaper -- as the Englewood reporter, transportation reporter, assistant head local assignment editor; and, since late January, as "managing" editor.

What he's been doing for seven months isn't known.

Today's story on A-3 is an upbeat tale about how "The Record's team of reporters, photographers, editors, graphic artists and designers jumped into action" in late afternoon on Jan. 15, 2009, after "a plane had hit the water" of the Hudson River.

Noting "our newsroom had dealt with its share of plane crashes" -- including the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center -- Sforza recalled that staffers wondered, "Could anyone survive?"

Reporters and photographers were dispatched to both sides of the Hudson, he says.

But Sforza doesn't explain why the dramatic A-3 photo of the US Airways Airbus -- floating on the water with passengers standing on the wings -- carries an Associated Press credit, and didn't come from one of The Record's staff photographers. 

On Thursday in Hackensack, I took NJ Transit's No. 165 Turnpike Express to Manhattan, and found myself aboard an old bus whose rear brakes screech loudly at every stop.

Demonizing transit 

Nor does he tell you anything about the low quality of the day-to-day coverage when he was reporting and editing transportation stories.

More than 20 years ago, Sforza was the reporter who wrote two front-page stories on "highways of the future" while ignoring screeching brakes and loud engines on NJ Transit commuter buses.

Those buses are still in use, and their rear brakes still screech loudly at every stop.

As an editor, Sforza went on the warpath against the extension of NJ Transit's light-rail service to Englewood and Tenafly. 

Sforza did lead the reporting that kept the Port Authority from allowing 737 jets to land at Teterboro Airport.

But he and every transportation reporter after him has ignored Hackensack and other communities that are plagued by noisy business aircraft that use the airport.

Christie's emails

Today's lead story is about Governor Christie's use of personnel emails to conduct government business and to retaliate against Democrats.

A judge sided with North Jersey Media Group, which is seeking "a range of records," including emails sent around the time of the George Washington Bridge lane closures in 2013 (A-1).

The GOP bully, his idol Donald J. Trump and other Republicans spend most of their time attacking Democrat Hillary Clinton on her use of emails.  

Today's front page

Sadly, high school football gets better Page 1 play than Staff Writer Scott Fallon's profile of oceanographer Alan Blumberg under a terrific headline:

"Come hype or high water, he called it"

Ad nauseam coverage of the 15th anniversary of 9/11 continues unabated, with stories on banking (A-1), local ceremonies (L-3) and pop culture (BL-1).

In Sunday's Travel section, delivered with today's paper, jet-lagged Travel Editor Jill Schensul discusses how "terrorism" has changed flying, as if she is the only one who has boarded a plane in the last 15 years. 

Local news?

The Local news section delivered to Bergen County residents carries four stories from Paterson (L-1 and L-2), a story from Clifton and a photo from Woodland Park (both on L-2). 

For some reason, the profile of environmentalist Tim Eustace, an assemblyman and former Maywood mayor, was pushed back to one of the obit pages (L-5).

Eustace, the new chairman of the Assembly's Environment and Solid Waste Committee, is treated like a freak, because he has solar panels on the roof of his home and an electric car in the driveway.