Readers' eyes rolling at the me generation of columnists

Although The Record and North Jersey Media Group left 150 River St. in Hackensack in 2009, the Borg family have made the property pay by charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for parking spaces leased to Bergen County during the construction of a new courthouse and to Hackensack University Medical Center.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers of The Record's Sunday edition are puzzling over the restaurant reviewer's rant about customers who wear too much cologne or perfume.

And those in search of local news can only wonder whether Road Warrior John Cichowski's column about drivers in European cities is his clever way of trying to write off his vacation on his income taxes.

I promise. 

I tried to get into the Page 1 feature story about the Paramus woman who spent 25 years searching for her Canadian birth mother, but it is just too long (A-1).

The top of the front page carries yet another story about the kindness of Gander, Newfoundland, to airline passengers diverted on 9/11 (A-1).

Staff Writer Lindy Washburn, who wrote today's story, actually was sent to Gander only days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America to pretty much write the same account that appears today.

So, that makes two stories with Canadian ties on today's front page.

Is anybody reading the other Page 1 stories -- another Charles Stile column on politics and the 2017 election for governor, or the annual end-of-season assessment of the health of the Jersey shore economy (A-1)?

Ung's rant

Few people live as high on the hog as Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, who has been eating out morning, noon and night on a Record expense account for more than a decade.

So, excuse me if I don't get the point of her Sunday column, The Corner Table, or the problem of servers and customers wearing too much perfume or cologne (Better Living front).

She claims those scents prevent her from tasting the food she is evaluating, but readers can only hope she focuses more on the basics.

On Friday, she awarded 3 stars (Excellent) to From Scratch, a small cafe and market in Ridgewood, despite shockingly high prices, unprofessional service and cramped seating.

For example, she loved a bronzino fillet served with an eggplant-tomato gratin, even though at $30, you'd pay more than at restaurants serving the whole fish.

Mind on vacation

Staff Writer John Cichowski is back from a vacation with the breathless news that drivers in small European cities are more polite and don't lean on their horns, as we do in New Jersey (Road Warrior on L-1).

Of course, he could make the same observation in downtown San Francisco during the rush hour.

But as an opinion columnist, Cichowski fails to provide any leadership in the impasse over funding the Transportation Trust Fund, and for that reason, he is of absolutely no use to North Jersey commuters.

AvalonBay tenants do a slow burn as investors celebrate

An aerial shot of the inferno that destroyed all 240 apartments in the Russell Building of the AvalonBay development in Edgewater on Jan. 21, 2015. Former tenants are still fighting for compensation.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Nearly 19 months after the Avalon at Edgewater apartment inferno filled TV screens and front pages, former tenants are still waiting for compensation even as investors celebrate higher profits and dividends.

The Record's front page today reports that tenants' lawsuits are "still in the discovery stage and it could take more than a year before they go to trial or are settled" (A-1 and A-6).

Staff Writer Nicholas Pugliese focuses on such frustrated former tenants as Marina Rubinstein and husband Fedor Zakharov of Fort Lee, shown in a Page 1 photo with their dog.

However, the reporter doesn't address weak tenant-protection laws; lax building codes that allow AvalonBay to use cheap, lightweight wood construction that does little to stop fires; or lawyers who will walk away with at least a third of any damages tenants recover.

At the end of 2015, AvalonBay Communities -- the nation's second-largest exchange-listed apartment real estate investment trust -- owned or had interests in 285 apartment complexes with nearly 84,000 units in 11 states and the District of Columbia.

AvalonBay now has a total enterprise value of $31 billion, according to REIT.com's Anna Robaton.

Trump aide, ally

Today's A-1 story about wacko racist Donald J. Trump focuses on campaign manager Paul Manafort, and on the continuation page, a related story reports ally Rudy Giuliani's senior moment on 9/11 (A-5).

The New York Times reported handwritten ledgers found in Ukraine show $12.7 million in undisclosed payments to Manafort from a pro-Russia party. 

Manafort, who is guiding Trump's hate-filled White House campaign, denied any wrongdoing.

In an Ohio campaign stop on Monday, Trump said he would bar any immigrant who doesn't believe in the U.S. Constitution "or who support bigotry and hatred" (A-1).

Presumably, it's OK for citizens like Trump to base their entire GOP presidential campaign on "bigotry and hatred."

As for that moron Giuliani, he completely forgot that 9/11 occurred in 2001, when George W. Bush was in office and he was mayor of New York (A-5).

"In the 'eight years before [President Barack] Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States,'" Giuliani said Monday in Youngstown, Ohio, where he promoted Trump's national security plan.

Leonia's Keystone Kops

A story on the Local front doesn't explain why it has taken Leonia Police Chief Tom Rowe two full years after a pedestrian death to figure out a way to protect others "at the borough's most dangerous intersection" (L-1).

On Aug. 7, 2014, Leila Kan, a vibrant 60-year-old restaurant owner, was struck in the crosswalk on Broad Avenue and Fort Lee Road, and dragged 71 feet along the pavement by a school minibus "whose driver failed to yield to her while making a left turn."

No police officer was stationed at the intersection to protect Kan and other pedestrians. 

Now, a new "red light phase at Broad Avenue and Fort Lee Road freezes all lights for 26 seconds to permit crossing at the intersection, used by thousands of cars and hundreds of pedestrians each day," Staff Writer Svetlana Shkolnikova reports.

'Cost prohibitive'

The reporter quotes Rowe as saying it would be "cost prohibitive" to post a police officer at the intersection, which is inundated by 15,000 cars a day from Route 95 whenever the George Washington Bridge is backed up.

But the truth came out two weeks after Kan's death in a 2014 Road Warrior column, where Rowe admitted only two of the borough's 17 officers were on duty at the time "and they were handling a domestic call."

Leonia Borough President Gil Hawkins also was quoted, blaming "a weak economy and declining tax base" for the loss of six officers "over the years."

Today's upbeat story doesn't explain why Leonia officials haven't hired more police officers in the two years since Kan's death.

Private concert

Staff Writer Jim Beckerman must have had blinders on when reporting on today's private master class and concert by Miri Ben-Ari, the young, glamorous Israeli-born violinist "and R&B, pop and hip-hop trailblazer" (Better Living front).

Ben-Ari will be stopping at The Elizabeth Morrow School, where her "Symphony of Brotherhood" -- a musical meditation on Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- will be performed on Thursday by 230 student violinists, age 4 to 13.

Isn't that rich? 

I guess Ben-Ari doesn't know or care Elizabeth Morrow is a private school on the East Hill, not far from the city's segregated elementary and middle schools.

Those black and Hispanic children haven't realized the dream of integration more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education. 

Brussels learned nothing from Paris terror that killed 130

Belgian officials say the two men in black blew themselves up at the airport in Brussels on Tuesday, and that they are hunting the man at right. A total of 31 people were killed and more than 250 were injured in the airport blast and a second explosion in the subway.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In the 15 years since 9/11, the United States has spent billions on homeland security and successfully avoided another large-scale terror attack.

In November, an Islamic State cell killed 130 in Paris, and Belgian "counter-terrorism authorities" arrested the last known participant in those terror attacks last week, according to The Record's news services.

Despite all of that, other Belgian-born members of the same Islamic State cell were able to walk into the airport on Tuesday with suicide vests and a suitcase packed with explosives and detonators.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility, saying its members detonated suicide vests both at the airport and in the subway.

Local news

The 145-year-old First Presbyterian Church on the East Hill of Englewood was destroyed in a fire on Tuesday night, North Jersey.com reports today.

But the story in today's print edition of The Record is incomplete, apparently due to early deadlines (L-1).

The editors see no reason to delay the press run for important local news. Hey, let them read it on the Web site, the reasoning seems to be.

Later this morning, Hackensack Daily Voice.com described the church as "ravaged," not destroyed, and a photo showed the walls of the sanctuary intact and the steeple still standing.

In a rare story on Hackensack, the Woodland Park daily reports the City Council on Tuesday night approved a proposed settlement of a lawsuit filed by Anthony Rottino, who was replaced as interim city manager in June 2014 (L-1).

The city would pay up to $250,000 to settle the whistle-blower claim.

Christie would go to war with Russia in skies over Syria

Two images from the Aug. 6 GOP debate are said to show Sen. Paul Rand's eyeroll, right, as Governor Christie delivered "a saccharine line about how 'the hugs I remember are the hugs that I gave to the families who lost their people on September 11th,'" The Nation.com reported.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The first successful terrorist attack in the United States in 14 years was enough for The Record and other news media, along with Governor Christie, to strike fear into the hearts of Americans.

And Christie claimed at Tuesday's GOP debate he would shoot down Russian planes if they violated a no-fly zone he would unilaterally impose over Syria, according to The Record (A-6).

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky countered:

"If you're in favor of World War III, you have your candidate," Paul said, putting the threat in the same category as Christie's poor judgment in the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal (A-6).

Still, Record Columnist Charles Stile ignored much of that, eager to report in his very first, slanted paragraph that Christie "stood apart from the rest of his rivals as the lone candidate who had hunted down terrorists" (A-1).

Broken record

In his desperate bid for the White House, Christie reacted to the November terrorist attacks in Paris by talking about his experience as U.S. attorney for New Jersey after 9/11.

After the San Bernardino attack early this month -- the first successful act of terrorism since 9/11 -- he hasn't mentioned anything else, especially not how his mean-spirited budgets have struck terror into the hearts of New Jersey's middle class.

Keep Syrians out

The Record's otherwise upbeat coverage today also is the first time since Christie vowed in November to bar all Syrian refugees, even widows and orphans, from New Jersey that he is reported saying he would bar all Syrians from the rest of the country, too.

That echoes Donald Trump's wanting to bar all Muslims from crossing our borders.

Stile and The Record's editorial page haven't denounced Christie as a hate-monger or a bigot or someone who sounds exactly like all of the maniacs who have persecuted Jews throughout history. 

Instead, the paper's local editors reluctantly assign reporters to interview Syrians and other Muslims in Passaic County to show how peace-loving they are, as a front-page story by Staff Writer Hannan Adely declared on Tuesday.

Cantor murder

The guilty verdicts in the slaying of Robert Cantor of Teaneck matter most, but The Record's coverage of the love-triangle case has been filled with flawed headlines and other sloppy work, as readers can see again today (A-1).

The big, black headline is almost as bad as the one that ran on the day the jury got the case:

"Execution or puzzle?"

Today, the A-1 headline basically says a "killer" was found guilty of "murder."

"Love-triangle killer

guilty of murder"

But there is a bigger problem that was missed by six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton, aka "The Queen of Errors."

Photos on both A-1 and A-6 claim to show Cantor's relatives "reacting" or "listening" to the verdicts.

But the one on the continuation page (A-6) shows a son-in-law standing next to the victim's widow and sister instead of seated apart from them, next to Cantor's daughter (A-1).

Did the judge allow the son-in-law to stand up during the reading of the verdicts or was the second photo posed after the verdicts were read?  

Local news

In Teaneck, officials rezoned land next to railroad tracks to allow AvalonBay to seek approval for a 248-unit apartment development (L-1).

In effect, the Township Council is saying that ratables are more important than the safety of tenants.

They would be living near what The Record calls "volatile" oil trains in a building prone to the same kind of quick-spreading fire that destroyed AvalonBay's Edgewater complex in January.

And people who buy shares in AvalonBay, a real-estate investment trust, will be laughing all the way to the bank with a reported 14% return.

The Local front today carries two Passaic County stories that are of little interest to Bergen County readers (L-1).

Meanwhile, the Hackensack news embargo continues.

Editor's note: After publication, this post was edited to eliminate dated material from The Nation.com, and to correct the photo caption. The images are from the GOP debate on Aug. 6, not the one held in Las Vegas on Tuesday night.

Borg family's interests trump civility at public meetings

Richard E. Salkin speaking at Tuesday night's City Council meeting in Hackensack. Salkin doesn't identify himself as the attorney for the city's Board of Education, which is allied with the Zisa family and the local Democratic Party that lost the 2013 municipal election. A frequent critic of the current council, he is usually quoted in The Record without that title, the same "anonymity" the paper accords to members of the losing council slate.

The five-member City Council with City Attorney Thomas P. Scrivo, left, and City Manager David R. Troast, front.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Borg family's progress on selling 19.7 acres near downtown Hackensack to a developer dominates The Record's Local news section today.

Staff Writer Todd South, who covered Tuesday night's City Council meeting, wrote a story that ignores unanimous passage of an ordinance governing public comment.

The "Rules of Order" were introduced on Nov. 25 after critics of the council -- principally those who lost the 2013 municipal election -- launched one abrasive attack after another against officials for just about every hire and proposal they made, including a downtown performance space.

Many of the attacks were reported in The Record without identifying the critics as Zisa family allies and members of the local Democratic Party, which lost the 2013 municipal election to a slate of reformers led by John P. Labrosse Jr., who is now mayor.

The weekly Hackensack Chronicle reported what happened at a Nov. 10 council meeting The Record didn't cover:

"Another incident in which the First Amendment right was brought into question took place at the Nov. 10 council meeting, when resident [and Board of Education Attorney] Richard Salkin, who is a vocal critic of a number of the council members, in particular of councilwoman Rose Greenman, referred to her as a "sociopath."

"This allegation drove Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino -- who was presiding over the meeting in the absence of the mayor -- to say she will not tolerate name calling.

"I'm not going to tolerate that," she said. "Address people with respect, that's all I ask. We are respecting you, respect us back."

Profit motive

The 150 River St.  parcel and adjacent property is the former headquarters of North Jersey Media Group and its flagship daily newspaper, The Record, which prospered in Hackensack for more than 110 years.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg abandoned Hackensack in 2009, moving The Record's newsroom to a nondescript office building overlooking Route 80 in Woodand Park.

A few years earlier, Borg moved the printing of The Record and Herald News to a printing plant in Rockaway Township, and ordered a major downsizing of the staff in 2008. 

Those two decisions seemed to set into motion a precipitous decline in the quality of editing and reporting at a newspaper still referred to as "The Bergen Record."

The 19.7 Hackensack acres are expected to fetch $20 million or more.

City study

On Tuesday night, the City Council approved a study to determine whether the NJMG parcel should be declared as an "area in need of redevelopment," a designation that could entitle any developer to tax breaks for up to 30 years, The Record reports (L-1).

The lead paragraph of the story says the property, two blocks east of Main St. in Hackensack, is 20 acres, but the second paragraph calls it a "19.7-acre site."

Labrosse, the mayor, said any development would have to include a walkway along the Hackensack River and a park where the USS Ling submarine is tied up on NJMG property.

Hackensack's Venice

A Walmart Super Center was rumored for the 19.7 acres a couple of years ago, and then gazillionaire Fred Daibes of Edgewater proposed a mixed-use residential and retail development, but that fell through.

Apartments wouldn't seem suitable for what former employees recall as a property prone to frequent flooding that claimed the cars of more than one staffer.

I can recall one storm that surrounded the 150 River St. building with so much water the managers pressed into service newspaper delivery trucks to pick up employees from higher ground a block away.

See a previous post:

Borgs prepare to screw Hackensack again

CIA torture

It's hard to tell who is more upset by the CIA's "brutal interrogation program" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on America (A-1).

Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the harsh interrogation techniques a "stain on the nation's history."

But the media are playing up incidents that occurred more than a decade ago before reforms instituted by President Obama.

Could CNN and other media outlets really be upset they've been denied sensational YouTube videos of CIA operatives decapitating suspected terrorists?

Reporters ignore long-suffering bus commuters

The Port Authority provides a clean, comfortable enclosure for NJ Transit customers waiting for the No. 165 and No. 166 buses at the agency's midtown bus terminal in Manhattan, above. The four fold-down, spring-loaded seats are thinly disguised torture devices banned by the Geneva Convention.

The terminal has finally gotten what it has needed for years: A listing of all bus departures with route number, time and, most important, the platform number where the bus can be boarded. Platforms change, especially late at night. A ticket clerk said the Bus Terminal Interactive Map, which has a touch screen, was installed about a month ago. I saw two of the three in the terminal, but none for commuters using the main entrance on Eighth Avenue.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The Record's transportation reporters, including Karen Rouse and Road Warrior John Cichowski, believe NJ Transit bus riders are the lowest of the low.

They have routinely avoided reporting about local and Manhattan bus service for years or the long-suffering riders who have had to endure creaking coaches, packed buses and long lines at the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

They also have ignored complaining letters to the editor, so it was a surprise to see Editoral Page Editor Alfred P. Dublin devoting part of his opinion column to conditions at the terminal (Friday's A-19).

But Doblin's main focus was contrasting the aging terminal with the new marble concourse of the World Trade Center's PATH station, and he ran a photo of a leaking ceiling for emphasis.

Not that bad

That photo is misleading. I took the No. 165 bus to have lunch in the city on Friday, and the main public spaces are clean and in good condition, with a variety of food and coffee concessions, and a connection to the city subway system.

And you can't beat the senior round-trip fare of only $3.80.

The real problems are the cramped enclosures at platforms where riders board buses, forcing almost everyone to stand in lines that can stretch down escalators and around lower levels.

And for many years, until touch screens listing buses and platforms were installed about a month ago, occasional terminal users often wandered around searching for the departure point of their New Jersey-bound buses.

Shouldn't the Port Authority be encouraging commuters to take the bus, given mounting traffic congestion at the Hudson River crossings, and improve conditions at the terminal?

This photo was taken during rush hour on a Friday night in the summer of 2012 at the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal, where the line from an upper-level platform stretched down an escalator to the second level, above. 

Taking the bus

On Friday, I was lucky to get a No. 165 Turnpike Express in Hackensack, and reached the Manhattan terminal in under 30 minutes. 

My return on the 1:40 p.m. No. 165 local to Oradell (from Platform 212) was torture. Passengers filled 46 of the 49 seats.

I asked the driver about letters to the editor, complaining about long lines at the terminal during rush hour, and he said he didn't know what caused them.

The trip stretched to 1 hour and 40 minutes, thanks to Ridgefield Park police, who closed one lane of Route 46 for a house construction crew, adding at least 20 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The scheduled travel time to Main and Anderson streets in Hackensack is under an hour.

Earlier, on Boulevard East, the driver passed stops requested by three passengers, telling two women who were together, "At least it's downhill [to the stop he passed]."

Buses jockeyed with several private jitneys, often referred to as the "Spanish bus," which provides seats to and from the city riders can't find on NJ Transit.  

In bumper-to-bumper traffic on Route 46, the driver of the No. 165 cleaned his nails, and then stopped to pick up two passengers standing about 50 feet apart, even though I saw no bus-stop signs near them.

Later, he allowed a man who said he had no money to board.

Today's paper

The death of Wallington Fire Capt. Gregory Barnas has gotten a tremendous amount of coverage since he died on Feb. 28, including Friday's Local front, where a headline referred to a "hero's funeral"; nearly all of Page 1 and all of A-6 today.

Today's edition carries a front-page column by Mike Kelly, whose first sentence is puzzling:

"Big funerals say a lot about small towns." Really?

Putting aside whether Barnas is or isn't a "hero" for going out to fight a restaurant fire -- then falling off the roof and dying -- none of the coverage addresses long-standing concerns of residents in towns with volunteer firefighters. 

Town officials shortchange residents by not having professional firefighters, such as those in Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood. 

The Record reports today that Barnas, 57, also was a full-time captain with the Jersey City Fire Department, and a member of the fire department in Waymart, Pa., where his family has a vacation home (A-1).

Wasn't he stretched a little too thin?

At the Ninth Avenue end of the bus terminal in Manhattan, a memorial to firefighters and police officers who died responding to the 9/11 attack on America, above and below.

'Human depravity'

Today's Local section relies heavily on Law & Order news (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6), meaning Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza couldn't find legitimate municipal news to fill all of that space.

Another in a series of accident photographs, showing a car door or doors that were removed to reach an injured driver, appears on L-2.

The most riveting story is the sentencing of a troubled 22-year-old Cliffside Park man in the brutal rape of two sisters, 9 and 11 years old, in 2012 (L-1).

Don't miss this line from Staff Writer Kibret Markos, who I would guess is exaggerating:

"Even in a courtroom accustomed to stunning accounts of human depravity, this one left many in the audience with gaping mouths" (L-1).

Markos then proceeds to describe the rapes in detail on L-6 -- detail that likely wouldn't have been allowed by the editors even a decade ago.

Readers might be asking themselves why they haven't previously seen "stunning accounts of human depravity" in Markos' coverage of the busy Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.

Editors keep on treating photographers like shit

A reflecting pool installed in one of the Twin Towers' footprints in Manhattan.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The 9/11 attack on America -- visible from The Record's building in Hackensack -- was and is the biggest story ever handled by the staff.

Reporters and photographers in the field were competing against the world media.

And the towers of smoke in lower Manhattan were framed in the windows of the newsroom on River Street, where editors worked to put out an extra and then the next day's edition.

Scoops the world

Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin scored the scoop of a lifetime with his photo of three firemen raising an American flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center, advancing the story and offering a glimmer of hope that America was down, not out.

But in Hackensack, the Borg family and the editors let down Franklin by burying his iconic photo on a back page on Sept. 12, 2001, and they are still treating him and the rest of the photo staff like shit.

Dissing Franklin

On A-2 today, the editors run two corrections -- including a fix for a screw-up in a Mike Kelly column  -- but couldn't care less about repairing a major production error on Saturday.

A story on Franklin's 9/11 photo that began on Saturday's Better Living cover ended in mid-sentence, cutting off a quote from the photographer about the meaning of his incredible image to others (BL-3).

Why wasn't the last sentence of his quote run in complete form today, on A-2?

Ambulance chasers

Page A-2 also is where the SHOT OF THE DAY appears.

But the images aren't the best from the local photography staff, as they should be, but from AP photographers in Bangladesh and other far-off  places.

For the past few years, Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi and others have been employed as so many ambulance chasers by the incredibly lazy local editors, Deirdre Sykes, Tim Nostrand and Dan Sforza -- who use images of fender benders and non-fatal rollover accidents as filler.

More 9/11 coverage

Today's 9/11 anniversary coverage appears on Page 1 and the covers of Opinion and Travel.

Editor Marty Gottlieb and Staff Writer Shawn Boburg dredge up a 27-year-old deal on the World Trade Center naming rights (A-1).

Who cares? What does this mean to me?

Boburg completely ignores other Port Authority actions, rubber stamped by Governor Christie, that affect hundreds of thousands of North Jersey residents -- the bistate agency's refusal to expand mass transit and risk losing revenue from exorbitant tolls and parking fees.

More boring politics

In another silly political "ANALYSIS" on the front-page today, are readers expected to take seriously charges from Tea Pot crackpot Steve Lonegan that his opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, is an "extremist"?

Unfortunately for Staff Writer Melissa Hayes and the headline writer, state Sen. Barbara Buono never uses the word "extremist" in describing Christie, the GOP bully (A-1).

Buono says Christie is "anything but" the social moderate he likes to call himself (A-6).  

And as another story shows, Christie simply hates minorities -- poverty in New Jersey continues to grow, especially in Passaic County (A-3).

On Friday, to balance the lead A-1 story on Christie hiding important tax-revenue data, The Record ran another front-page story, an upbeat account about the governor's meeting with  schoolchildren in Monachie.

When asked why he wanted to be governor, Christie didn't compare himself to such predecessors as Jon Corzine, but said "he thought he could do a better job ... than some of the politicians he put in prison" as U.S. attorney (Friday's A-6). LOL.

Wrong tip

On the front of Local today, Road Warrior John Cichowski has a light column about drivers who tip gas station attendants, ignoring all the poor gas jockeys who have been murdered for a fistful of dollars (L-1).

Why is "The Addled Commuter" wasting readers' time again?

The editors didn't think much of the obituary for Franklin Lakes artist Cornelia "Corny" Baker, who died "recently" at 84, demoting it to L-3.

Did layout minion Jim Cornelius, also known as Corny, have anything to do with that?

More on chefs

On the Better Living front, another column by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung ignores challenges faced by consumers and focuses instead on two local chefs' menu ideas (BL-1).

Why is the column called The Corner Table? 

Another screw-up

Did anyone stick with Mike Kelly's rambling column on the naming of the new World Trade Center all the way to the end (O-1)?

Of course, the biggest question is why does "The Shit-Eating Grin" call the tower "1 World Trade Center" when it is described as "One World Trade Center" in Boburg's story on Page 1 today?

These are the kinds of problems that are supposed to be fixed by Production Editor Liz Houlton, the six-figure "Queen of Errors" and supervisor of the copy desk.

But as readers saw on Saturday -- with the fractured quote from Franklin, the photographer who can't get any respect -- the Borgs continue to pay Houlton, despite all the paper's production screw-ups.

Related articles

• It's raining on Christie's Jersey shore parade
• More words, but not always the right ones
• Readers scream, Who the F cares?

More tax cuts for the wealthy, crumbs for the poor

In the City Council meeting room, the Hackensack seal is crooked.

Thanks to sloppy work by editors, reporters and copy editors, The Record doesn't help readers understand how many low-income residents would benefit from an expansion of Medicaid in New Jersey (A-1).

On Tuesday's front page, Columnist Charles Stile mentioned "300,000 ... families," but in a staff-written story on A-6 the same day the reference  is to "300,000 of the state's 1.3 million uninsured."

On Page 1 today, the paper reports Governor Christie will bring "104,000 citizens" into the program next year.

F.U. to middle class

What is clear is that Christie continues to give business-tax breaks to the wealthy, throw crumbs to the poor and screw the middle and working classes in the state.

You won't find any mention of how a modest tax surcharge on millionaires -- which Christie has vetoed at least twice -- would raise $1 billion in sorely needed revenue or what the governor plans to do to boost the economy and job creation.

Yet, today's coverage is so upbeat, and even includes another wildly exaggerated Stile column on the GOP bully's "leadership style," and his chances for reelection and an eventual White House bid (A-6). 

More A-1 errors

More sloppy work by Production Editor Liz Houlton's wrong-way copy desk is evident in Mike Kelly's column on the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (A-1).

The photo caption starts with a typo: "Flower were laid ...."

And sticklers would insist on a comma after the first line of the headline:

Attack overshadowed

but never forgotten  

  

Then, readers encounter a Kelly who fails miserably in an attempt to write a coherent, hard-hitting column, and the reason is clear.

He's has been beating the pathos out of the 1993 attack and 9/11 as if they were dead horses, using them as the basis for numerous, long-winded columns. Enough already.

Mr. Trite

Look at his first line: "The calendar told us 20 years had passed."

As if a talking calendar isn't bad enough, the second paragraph contains a multitude of sins:

A "stoic group of 100 relatives and friends ... huddled in the February chill ... at the patch of landscape known as Ground Zero," and "the terrorist bombing ... that killed six people ... was as real and vivid as morning coffee."

Give me a break. "As real and vivid as morning coffee"? How trite can you get?

At the end of the third paragraph, Kelly mentions the truck bomb exploded on Feb. 26, 1993, and follow that with a quote: "And then 9/11 happens."

Huh? Not "then." It was more than eight years later. 

As usual, he pads his column shamelessly, using six extra words to say "Ground Zero." In Kelly's desperate try to fill space, it's "the patch of landscape known as Ground Zero."

"Landscape"? This man is a tongue-tied hack. 

Where was head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza or whichever assignment flunky sent this disaster to the copy desk for spell-checking?   

Another local snooze

On the front of Local, readers looking for news find another Road Warrior column based on a highway safety "report,"  and a big story about a dog that was shot and beaten in Iraq.

At the top of the page, the Englewood City Council rejects a $674,000 plan to repair the Mackay Ice Arena, which is in a minority neighborhood (L-1).

Hackensack news is conspicuously absent.

But The Record carries yet another story about the Paterson book drive it is sponsoring (L-1).

Laughing at death

Most of the readers of The Record are over 50, and tens of thousands of them take Lipitor and other statins to lower cholesterol and prevent heart attacks.

Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill says grapefruit "is downright dangerous" to statin users, yet she promotes National Grapefruit Month with three recipes for the citrus fruit that include butter, sugar and vanilla bean "creme" (BL-1).

Check out her what-me-worry grin in the thumbnail photo with the "IN YOUR KITCHEN" column.