Isn't it time to put 9/11 anniversary below the fold on A-1?

A large delivery truck parked in front of Giant Farmers Market prevented this No. 165 NJ Transit bus from stopping at the curb to discharge passengers on Main Street in Hackensack at around 1:45 on Thursday afternoon. But when the truck pulled away, the bus driver didn't move, forcing three people carrying plastic bags to run to the door and board.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Given the mess our absentee governor has made in New Jersey and all of the other problems in the region, the nation and the world, the horrors of 9/11 are a distant memory.

As such, the anniversary of the attacks on America shouldn't  be played so prominently on Page 1 of The Record.

That's especially the case with the hackneyed Mike Kelly column on the 14th anniversary leading the paper today -- a rewrite of every story the veteran reporter has done on the ceremony at the old Twin Towers site. (A-1). 

Victims' photos? 

And readers wonder why Production Editor Liz Houlton continues to insist on running a dated thumbnail column photo of Kelly flashing what looks like a shit-eating grin.

Editor Martin Gottlieb and his minions could have honored 9/11 victims from North Jersey far more effectively by replacing all of the Law & Order filler in the Local news section today with their thumbnail photos (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

Some of the victims' photos could have started at the top of the front page, demoting Kelly's tedious column to below the fold, as well as in place of the story on the legislative probe of the George Washington Bridge lane closures, an investigation that has gone nowhere in two years. 

Migrant crisis

After weeks of covering the refugee crisis in Europe, The Record and other media finally are paying attention to how little the United States has been doing (A-1).

But instead of focusing on the vibrant Syrian community based in Paterson, Gottlieb chose a wire service story for the front page today with inserts by Staff Writers Hannan Adely and Melissa Hayes that appear deep on the continuation page (A-8).

Adely reports "the first wave of Syrians moved to New Jersey a century ago," but doesn't bother telling readers they were overwhelmingly Christian, unlike the refugees now fleeing the civil war in Aleppo and other cities in Syria.

She also doesn't say how many refugees have been welcomed by the Syrian community in Paterson, Prospect Park, Wayne and nearby towns.

Adely may have reported those numbers in previous stories on the Syrian community, but Gottlieb, Houlton and other editors shouldn't expect readers to remember them.

Cuban food

Based on the meals I've enjoyed at Casual Habana Cafe on Main Street in Hackensack, I'm looking forward to trying the second Casual Habana, which was rated 2.5 out of 4 stars today (BL-16).

Sugar-obsessed restaurant critic Elisa Ung sought comfort in the unhealthiest food on the menu -- three artery clogging desserts -- after she ran into unprofessional service at the New Milford restaurant.

Some of her other choices, such as bacon-wrapped dates and pork-belly chicharrones, also are unfortunate given the restrictive diets followed by tens of thousands of her older readers.

But Ung was mistaken in saying Chef-Owner Benito Rivero "wanted to go beyond Cuban sandwiches" for his second and much bigger restaurant.

Rivero did that years ago in Hackensack, where many creative dishes and drinks are served alongside his Cuban classics. 

More of the same old blah, blah, blah

A window at Barneys on Madison Avenue. Fashion Week in Manhattan is coming to a close today.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Compared to his previous efforts, there's little discernible difference in Mike Kelly's front-page column today on the 12th anniversary of 9/11.

In more than two decades of trying at The Record, Kelly has never developed a distinctive voice or the strongly opinionated point of view readers look for in a columnist.

If it wasn't for the outdated thumbnail photo, complete with shit-eating grin, the Kelly column reads like another, long news story (A-1).

His awkward writing is evident in the first paragraph of today's piece, when he has Tom Acquaviva of Wayne standing "in silence for a few humid moments."

A bad smell

A "few humid moments"? Kelly's phrases are indistinguishable from farts.

The paragraph ends with "the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, which most of us know as Ground Zero."

"Most of us" is a reference to reporters and the media, who adopted the phrase in 2001 and argued over whether it should be written with capital letters (The Record) or lower case (The New York Times). 

It's no wonder that more than a decade ago, news copy editors on River Street in Hackensack -- weary of Kelly's bad writing -- had to be ordered by their supervisors to edit his long, boring columns and slap on a headline.

Inside transit

Another Page 1 story today amounts to the same old blah, blah, blah about the incompetent administrators at NJ Transit (A-1).

But The Record's office-bound editors and reporters  continue to ignore the mass-transit agency's basic failing where the rubber meets the road: 

It's inability to provide enough rush-hour bus and train seats for commuters, aggravated by Governor Christie's anti-public transit policies.

Bergen corruption

The off-lead today -- new federal charges against Joseph A. Ferriero, onetime chairman of the Bergen County Democratic Party -- explains why even many Democrats helped put a Republican county executive in office (A-1).

Unfortunately, Ferriero allies were the power behind the Zisa family regime in Hackensack for many years, and still have their hooks into the city's Board of Education.

More errors

As the corrections on A-2 demonstrate once again, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, her minions and Production Editor Liz Houlton create problems as well as missing them.

Houlton's copy editors have completely given up trying to ensure accuracy in the Road Warrior column, according to a concerned reader:

"In his Wednesday column, the Road Warrior continued his epic inability to correctly report and provide any valid assessments on the problems and delays in completing the Route 17 Summit Avenue exit, which finally opened on Sept. 9.

"Road Warrior only explained there were 'additional work issues' involved in the delays and repeated that the only obstacle over the last 5 months was due to activating a traffic light.

"Yet, I was able to find out from NJDOT and contractors about other specific utility and ramp work that also caused the delays.

"Road Warrior is repeatedly befuddled by math, counting and calendars since he repeatedly got the number of days it took to finally activate the traffic lights wrong.

"Why was the Road Warrior unable to get more explanations, better information, and any completion date if the DOT and contractors provided me with all of that?"

To read the entire e-mail to Houlton, Editor Marty Gottlieb and management, go to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

When will Road Warrior's light go on?

The best and worst of tributes to 9/11 victims

On Tuesday night, the new World Trade Center was the focus in lower Manhattan. The lighting on the building seems incomplete and we can only hope it is temporary.

By Victor E. Sasson

Editor

Today's front-page photo in The Record shows firefighters in Wayne reverently touching a piece of steel from the World Trade Center towers that fell on Sept. 1, 2001.

A story with the photo reports that volunteers on Tuesday helped weed flower beds at the New Jersey Veterans Memorial Home in Paramus -- ahead of the Sept. 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance (A-1).

Most readers can identify with those scenes a dozen years after an attack on America destroyed the Twin Towers across the river from North Jersey, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Pigs on Hogs

Now, look at the photo on the Local front of a bunch of bearded, overweight slobs on motorcycles, members of the Renegade Pigs Motorcycle Club, entering a cemetery in North Arlington (L-1).

The photo caption says the Pigs rode Hogs into the cemetery "to pay their respects" to a fallen Port Authority police officer, a member of the club, who was killed on 9/11.

Undoubtedly, some members of the club are former police officers.

They deliberately modified their Harley-Davidson motorcycles to make them as loud as possible and disturb as many people as possible, knowing cops will give them a pass on violating anti-noise ordinances.

Don't you just love the Nazi helmets worn by many of them? What's that lone African-American doing there?

A cemetery is an appropriate setting. Their motorcycles are loud enough to wake the dead.

The Hudson Riverfront 9/11 Memorial in Weehawken was dedicated in 2011.

 

Better than sex
 

And for anyone who couldn't get a seat on a bus or train to Manhattan or who got stuck in a massive traffic jam, don't miss the earth-shaking news in today's Road Warrior column on the Local front.

Staff Writer John Cichowski -- aka "The Addled Commuter" -- continues to mine the obscure and irrelevant, and ignore the commuting mess that affects the majority.

No Cichowski column would be complete without ridiculously inappropriate quotes from his adoring fans, who get such a kick out of seeing their names in print.

"Oh, my God! It's so exciting!" one woman "gushed."

She was referring to the activation of a traffic light on South Summit Avenue in Hackensack, suggesting she hasn't had an orgasm in decades.


 

Now, here's a local chef worthy of celebration

For the print oriented, signs are impossible to ignore, including this one in the men's room of a business in Allendale, above, and another on the West Side of Manhattan, below. Thanks to Rosh Hashana celebrations, there were fewer traffic jams and more seats on NJ Transit trains on Friday. 

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

I read every inspirational word of today's Page 1 story in The Record about Darryl Dela Cruz, a chef  who will be teaching former drug addicts and the homeless in Paterson skills they can parlay into a steady kitchen job (A-1).

Since Publisher Stephen A. Borg folded The Record's Food section in 2007, there have been few such stories, but lots of mindless promotion of so-called celebrity chefs and their restaurants.

I recall in 2009, Staff Writer Elisa Ung purportedly gave readers an inside look at the launching of Bobby's Burger Palace in Paramus, praising the use of "chef's quality" beef. 

But in truth, Chef/Owner Bobby Flay was intent on ignoring the welfare of his customers and using low-quality Certified Angus Beef raised on antibiotics and growth hormones to fatten his bottom line.

Ung is still at it, breathlessly reporting on Friday's Better Living cover that the new owners of the Saddle River Inn "take ambitious risks."

But her review doesn't bother saying whether the $42 filet mignon or the $45 sirloin are naturally raised.

More 9/11 lies

Today's front page is weighed down by a Mike Kelly column that appears to kick off the paper's 9/11 anniversary coverage (A-1).

A few photographs would suffice to update readers on the long-delayed opening of the 9/11 Museum, not the thousands of words pushed around by "The Shit-Eating Grin."

A second 9/11 story on today's Better Living cover skillfully ignores the most shameless day in the history of the newsroom on River Street in Hackensack (BL-1).

"The story behind a photographer's iconic image" is the headline over a report on "The Flag," a CNN investigation of what happened to the American flag that was raised over the rubble of the World Trade Center by three firemen on Sept. 11, 2001 (BL-1).

The real story

The Record's story never reports then-Editor Frank Scandale blew it by running Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin's photo of the flag raising on the back page of a section -- not on Page 1, as he was urged to do by Rich Gigli, the paper's photo editor in 2001.

That decision likely killed any chance of Franklin winning the Pulitzer Prize for Photography.

It's no wonder Franklin declined to be interviewed for the CNN documentary.

Today's story reports:

"The photo, published first in The Record on Sept. 12, 2001, subsequently ran on the cover [front page] of the New York Post -- without crediting Franklin -- and the cover of Newsweek. 

To add insult to injury, the story ends in mid-sentence (BL-3), another great job by Production Editor Liz Houlton, the six-figure "Queen of Errors."

In recent years, Vice President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg has spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to sue anyone who uses the Franklin photo -- even with full credit -- claiming violation of the newspaper's copyright.

That's noteworthy, because higher-ups cited the high cost of remaking  the front page on Sept. 11, 2001, as the reason the iconic photo wasn't run on A-1 -- in one of the biggest journalistic blunders ever.

More missing

An editorial on A-11 today reminds readers how The Record has completely ignored the issues in the gubernatorial campaign as it has cranked up the public relations machine for Governor Christie's second term.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, apparently took a 3-day weekend, judging by today's Local section.

Readers looking for local obituaries instead find an incredibly long story about a Hitler bodyguard who escaped the firing squad and lived to 96 (L-6).  

Error addict?

The Road Warrior column on Friday was filled with mistakes, and a concerned reader suggests Staff Writer John Cichowski -- "The Addled Commuter" -- has become addicted to error:

"In his Friday column, the Road Warrior repeatedly and deliberately misquoted a judge and misrepresented clearly stated assessments and facts in a court decision.

"The case was about whether a remote cellphone texter can be held partially liable in a civil suit if a person who read the text while driving caused an accident involving injuries or property damage.

"The Road Warrior introduced a crazy assessment that implied the texter knowingly promoted addictive texting behavior by the driver, even though the plaintiff's lawyer and none of the four judges hearing the case ever raised such nonsense.

"The Road Warrior's misstatements of quoted text from the court's decision is cause for even greater concern that a reporter is unable to do his job and is intentionally misleading his readers.

"The Road Warrior incorrectly reported or made up figures about the National Safety Council 2011 estimate about cellphone-related crashes.

"Some psychiatrists consider excessive and frequent misrepresentations to be addictive behavior.  Is The Record's management encouraging such behavior by the Road Warrior?"

To read the entire e-mail to editors and management, go to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:


Road Warrior can and does tell lies

Related Articles

• Editor should hang his head in shame
• Good riddance to bad rubbish
• Stephen Borg fingered as 'the real problem'
• On 9/11 anniversary, newspaper stumbles

Editors love TV, anniversaries

A 9/11 reflecting pool in lower Manhattan. The stalled museum building is behind the pool, right, and the New World Trade Center is under construction, left.

What would the editors of The Record do without the junk on TV to cover or such anniversaries as 9/11?

In the second day of reports on the "Hell's Kitchen" finale on Fox, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung today claims Justin Antiorio "really represented New Jersey," in the words of the sous chef's godmother (BL-1).

Well, state residents must have sunk pretty low, if an unemployed chef who smokes and curses, and who lost the expletive-filled competition, is all we can find to represent us.

Another trite column

Today also marks another day of covering the 9/11 anniversary, and the editors produce the same predictable stories and Mike Kelly column.

But Staff Writer Justo Batista deserves praise for scooping the national media with a Monday night deal on funding the stalled National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum (A-1).

Even National Public Radio was reporting as late as this morning that a financial dispute had stopped the museum project.

Talented photographer

And look at the gorgeous front-page photo by Staff Photographer Mitsu Yasukawa, who was sent to the 9/11 Memorial in Jersey City (A-1).

But the big news on Page 1 today is a new legislative report putting the state $254 million behind in tax collections, throwing more cold water on Governor Christie's proposed income-tax cut.

Christie -- who unfortunately does represent New Jersey -- denounced the report, continuing to peddle the myth that tax cuts create jobs.

Little local schmooze

The Local news sections today and Monday are more disappointing work from head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her chief flunkie, Dan Sforza.

The last Hackensack municipal news -- a planned streamlining of zoning laws to encourage downtown redevelopment -- appeared Sept. 2.

Even with 9/11 stories to help fill the paper, Editor Marty Gottlieb came up with a real clunker on Monday -- an eye-glazing, A-1 account of tax sharing in the Meadowlands that is of absolutely no interest to anyone outside the 14 towns involved.