A front page full of big losers: Christie, Trump, Tung, Stile

On Friday, a Superior Court judge in Hackensack imposed a life sentence on a Manhattan man who murdered Robert Cantor, 59, of Teaneck on March 6, 2011, for having an affair with his estranged wife.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

How is the backing of the worst New Jersey governor ever supposed to help Donald Trump in his bid for the GOP presidential nomination?

You won't find the answer on The Record's front page, which is devoted today to Trump, Governor Christie and other big losers (A-1).

Christie and Trump have a few things in common, including hate speech -- the governor against Syrian refugees and the billionaire against Mexicans.

Political satirist Bill Maher said a photo of Trump and Christie in Texas looked like a presidential ticket.

"I'm sure Hillary Clinton ... was thinking, 'I'm sure I can make America hate me slightly less than these assholes.'"

The front page of the Daily News. The Record's bland front page labeled the endorsement of Donald Trump as "Christie's new cause," and reported the GOP bully is back on the campaign trail.

Sui Kam Tung

No one except Editor Deirdre Sykes and Staff Writer Allison Pries is surprised at the life sentence imposed on another loser, love-triangle murderer Sui Kam Tung, who shot Robert Cantor, 59, of Teaneck and then set his body on fire in March 2011.

Today's Page 1 story makes no reference to Pries' trashy jailhouse interview, splashed across A-1 on Friday, repeating Tung's hollow claims of innocence, all of which the jury heard before finding him guilty in December.

Tung, 52, who has been jailed for four years, will remain in custody during his defense attorney's futile appeal of the conviction and 68-year sentence.

Charles Stile

The Record's chief political columnist, Charles Stile, makes another desperate stab at describing Christie, a chameleon and dirty trickster who enforced his conservative agenda by executing more than 500 vetoes in the last six years.

How can that loser Stile possibly describe Christie as a former moderate?

Municipal aid

Taxpayers in Hackensack and the state's 566 other municipalities get some bad news today -- Christie's proposed voodoo budget keeps state aid flat for the sixth year in a row (L-1). 

Eight reporters worked on the story, but none answer the question posed by Patricia Murphy on North Jersey.com:

"How has Christie's non-stop record tax cuts, in the billions, for businesses affected the state aid for municipalities?"

The Oscars

Hollywood continues to fail us with films like "The Revenant," "Brooklyn" and "The Big Short" (BL-1).

Historical movies are just fluff, often made to impress other directors.

Sadly, the film industry continues to ignore how the Koch brothers' billions are poisoning elections, the insane political partisanship in Washington, the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, and all the other madness celebrated by the news media.

Second looks

North Bergen became the eighth town in the state to sue a tax-exempt hospital since Christie vetoed legislation last month that would have preserved their non-profit status, according to Thursday's front page.

But Staff Writer Lindy Washburn didn't bother asking officials in Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and Ridgewood why they aren't taking legal action against non-profit hospitals in their towns.

A story that led the Local front on Wednesday dramatizes the ridiculous salaries paid to the nearly 70 police chiefs in Bergen County.

Palisades Park Police Chief Ben Ramos receives $174,557 a year -- just under Christie's $175,000 salary.

In July 2010, Christie placed a cap ranging from $125,000 to $175,000 on the salaries of school superintendents.

But the GOP bully never squawked about the pay of police chiefs, some of whom were making $200,000 or more a year.

The Record just shrugged.

Slaying suspect's life in Heights shows neglect of elderly

Once again, Center Avenue and Main Street in Fort Lee became a traffic nightmare on Monday -- squeezed down to one lane -- but this time crews weren't tearing up the street, installing pipes or utilities, and crudely patching the surface until the next project. After two or more years of work, Main Street is finally being repaved.

The new surface at Main Street and Anderson Avenue in Fort Lee.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Let's put aside how the lazy, incompetent editors at The Record turned a 3-minute court hearing into the lead story on the Local front today.

John C. Wisse, 83, a homeowner in Hasbrouck Heights, appears to be another old person who has been neglected by the media and government officials (L-1).

According to his neighbor, Wisse didn't have the "assistance of relatives or a home-health aide," and another neighbor brought him meals.

Wisse, the suspect in the slaying of his tenant in a two-family house, "walked hesitantly into the Hackensack courtroom," and didn't even speak, Staff Writer Allison Pries reports.

His not-guilty plea in Superior Court was entered by attorney Robert Galuntucci, but there's no word in the story on whether the lawyer lowered his usually hefty retainer or hourly fee to represent Wisse.

Dissing the elderly

The Record has confined its reporting on the elderly to those dying slowly in nursing homes or the seniors who mistake the gas pedal for the brake pedal, sending their cars into buildings or other people, often with fatal consequence.

Local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza love it when an elderly man goes off his rocker, grabs a gun and kills one or two other poor schmucks.

That gives the lazy pair an excuse to sensationalize the coverage of such cases, and continue to neglect the hard-hitting municipal reporting readers are looking for.

And Editor Martin Gottlieb, who is in his mid-60s, hasn't shown any concern over the large number of senior citizens suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's disease, and the North Jersey programs for them.

Paterson news

Also in Local today, five major stories on Paterson show that Sykes and Sforza continue to do a better job covering Silk City than Hackensack (L-1 and L-3).

In fact, almost the entire local-news section today is filled with court or police news.

Front page

Readers welcome more local news on Page 1, which Gottlieb often treats like a regional edition of The New York Times, where he once worked (A-1).

But Sykes' and Sforza's local-news section has so little depth you can see what happens when Gottlieb takes stories about Franklin Lakes and Palisades Park, and runs them on the front page, as he does today.

Local devolves into a section filled with court, police and fire news, and accidents, robbing property tax payers of the scrutiny they hope the Woodland Park daily would give the officials running their towns.

A-2 correction

Today's correction refers to a four-paragraph story on Saturday's L-3 reported and written by Stefanie Dazio, the overworked police reporter, who does most of her work by telephone.

The story misstated the Old Tappan address "where a car involved in an accident was found and the identity of a suspect," according to the correction.

Dazio had five bylines on Saturday. Today, the Local section workhorse has three bylines and a credit line.

'Governor FedEx'

An editorial today calls Governor Christie's proposal to track immigrants who overstay their visas like FedEx packages as "both impractical and repugnant" (A-8).

The editorial mentions that Samantha Smith, the spokeswoman for Christie's presidential campaign, is the daughter of FedEx founder Fred Smith.

But in reporting the story, The Record and other media haven't asked Christie whether -- in the unlikely event he wins the GOP nomination and election -- he would award a sweetheart contract to FedEx to convert package-tracking technology into immigrant-tracking technology.

A reader, Carl A. Singer of Passaic, says in a letter to the editor he'd like to see a FedEx tracking number on the GOP bully to know "when he's actually in New Jersey doing the job he was elected to do" (A-8).

But WNYC-FM has been tracking Christie for many months, and all Singer and others have to do is click on the following link to find out whether the governor is in the state he was elected to serve:

The Christie Tracker

Editor pairs bums with princes

Revealed: What Governor Christie scrawled on a piece of paper crammed into the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, where he supposedly prayed.

Readers of today's front page in The Record get to choose from the lesser of two evils -- suspended Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa and globetrotting Governor Christie, who continues to eat his Israeli hosts out of house and home.

Zisa -- part of the family that has controlled Hackensack for decades -- is being tried on charges of official misconduct. In addressing the jury, the prosecutor lumped in Zisa with "rulers and despots" (A-1).

But the story, by Hackensack reporter Stephanie Akin, says the "trial threatens to put a black mark on the legacy of a family that has been influential for deacdes."

What 'legacy'?

Where have Akin and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes been?

Hackensack residents long ago put a black mark on the Zisa family, which, in addition to the errant police chief, has supplied two mayors, two city attorneys and a deputy police chief.

In fact, Zisa's cousin, Joseph Zisa, is the current city attorney.

Late last year, the weekly Hackensack Chronicle badly beat the Woodland Park daily when it reported the city paid Joseph Zisa's law firm more than $500,000 in legal fees to defend the chief from police officers' lawsuits.

Bowing to Christie

For the second day in a row, Staff Writer Mike Kelly reports Christie's visit to Israel as if the GOP bully is a head of state --  not a governor who is doing his best to destroy the middle-class way of life in the Garden State (A-1).

Christie's visit is billed as a trade mission, but Israeli officials who have invited him to dinner complain the governor, first lady Mary Pat and three of their children hog all the falafel, schnitzel, hummus, pita bread and whatever else is on the table.

The governor keeps on asking when the beer and pizza will be served.

Poor Ireland


Why the Irish Catholic family didn't go to Ireland for Easter eludes many readers. If he is on a trade mission, he has so far struck out in attracting more Israeli businesses to New Jersey.


The editors and many staffers, including Kelly and Charles Stile, climbed into bed with Christie after he was elected, and their positive stories about the governor amount to so many journalistic orgasms.


In a related development, reporters have learned what Christie wrote on a piece of paper he crammed into a crevice in the Wailing Wall, where the rotund governor prayed the other day, prompting a New York Post headline: "The Whale at the Wall."


Christie asked for divine guidance on the sexual positions he could use to avoid suffocating all the journalists who are cozying up to him.


Weird front page


It's weird enough that Editor Marty Gottlieb juxtaposes Page 1 stories about two bums, Zisa and Christie, with two princes, a fallen Marine from Waldwick and Jersey rocker Bruce Spirngsteen.


But would you get a load of the thumbnail photo showing Kelly's phony, shit-eating grin less than 2 inches away from the thumbnail photo of a smiling Marine Staff Sgt. Joseph D'Augustine, who was killed in Afghanistan last week.


Of the four stories on Page 1, the reporting and writing by Allison Pries on D'Augustine coming home "a hero" was the most effective. And the photos were really moving.


'Coming home' echo

But the editors really dropped the ball on the Springsteen story, failing to remove a first-paragraph reference to the singer coming home to New Jersey -- right next to the story and reference to the dead Marine coming home.

Also, the reporter must be too young to know that Springsteen used an unknown Courteney Cox in the 1984 music video, "Dancing in the Dark," which showed him pulling her onto the stage to  dance with  him -- her first step to stardom.

In the lead paragraph of today's Springsteen story, the reporter makes reference to a "young girl on stage to sing with the band," but when she brings it up later, the girl is not named and there is no reference to Cox (A-6).

More screw-ups


On A-2, there are three corrections, including the mislabeling of photos showing two African-American men on trial in Paterson on attempted murder charges. 


It's clear that to the editors, all black men look alike.


On Monday, a front-page story on tougher license renewals was a waste of space, because drivers face that only every four years.


But a Road Warrior column today merely rubs sand in readers' wounds (L-1). 


Now, Staff Writer John Cichowski is, in effect, saying "never mind" to anyone over the age of 47, because they will be able to renew their license by mail starting in July -- without documentation.


F.U. to Hackensack


With Akin off covering the Zisa trial in Hackensack, Sykes and her assignment-desk minions have been unable to come up with any other news about the city.


But stories from Bogota, Englewood and other towns in recent days have explored their school budgets in greater detail than the short piece on the budget for Hackensack schools that ran a couple of weeks ago.


Sykes still needed a big photo of a minor accident on Route 4 to fill her Local news section (L-6).  

Two editors discuss the Local News budget

Image by Let Ideas Compete via Flickr

Some Allendale residents argue curbside garbage pickup lowers property values.

A layout editor who had to fill six pages in today's Local section sat down Monday with a flunky from the desk run (into the ground) by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.

"We really have a strong lead for the section. Get this. A guy admitted five bank robberies, but he surrendered at the wrong police station. Isn't that a hoot?"

The layout editor breaks out in a cold sweat, "That's your lead?"

"Then, we've got Stile calling the 4.4% property tax hike in North Jersey last year "a blot" on the first year of the Christie administration, and explaining it exceeds the 3.3% increase in the last year of Corzine."

The layout editor: "That's good. I thought you might give me Chick's 15th column on roof snow this winter. What about municipal news? My uncle lives in Hackensack and asked me about the budget and tax rate."

"Hackensack? This is now The Record of Woodland Park. Deirdre says we left the place behind years ago. Besides, we can't find Monsy [Alvarado]. OK. for L-2 we have health-care news, because we can't generate enough local news for that page.

"Also on L-1, we don't have any Fair Lawn or Edgewater municipal news, but we've got a student from the former talking to an astronaut and the funeral of the mayor from the other town."

The layout editor. "I hope these mayors keep on dying off or I don't know what I'd put on L-1."

The assignment editor: "L-3 is your continuation page from the Local front, plus fire and court news from Passaic County. We can't find Kibret [Markos]. Then, you've got three pages of death notices with two expanded local obits and the obit of a jazz drummer. That's it. Another great section."

Flooding editorial

An editorial on A-10 today asks readers to accept what they can't change: Flooding is "a fact of life." Just like readers have to accept Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin glossing over decades of official inaction.

Unpublished correction

Staff Writer Allison Pries, who covers Allendale, reported in the lead of her story on L-6 last Thursday officials are again considering the elimination of "side-yard garbage pickup," even though a few paragraphs later, she quotes the mayor on "rear yard" and "curbside."

A subsequent story and an editorial today (A-10) urges the town to end rear-yard pickups.

Didn't we see this coming?

Image via Wikipedia

The Borgs and other wealthy North Jersey families breathed a sigh of relief today, learning from The Record of Woodland Park that Governor Christie won't renew higher taxes on the rich. The rest of us got slammed with big cuts in his budget message to the Legislature, but are we really surprised?

If you lived through the administrations of Tom Kean and Christie Whitman -- or Ronald Reagan's -- you know Republicans are sworn enemies of environmental regulation, unions, diverse public schools, mass transit, public health-care programs and the Public Advocate, among others.

You won't see this in The Record, which seems to be firmly in Chris Christie's corner, though a Page 1 column yesterday and an editorial today warn the former federal prosecutor to tone down his tough talk lest he totally alienate Democrats, who control the Legislature.

Another thing you didn't see in Christie's speech or the former Hackensack daily was an attack on home rule, the incredibly inefficient system of local government that inflates property taxes. Are any of the executive orders he issued going to lead to cuts in those taxes? Homeowners aren't holding their breaths.

As I predicted yesterday, people who don't own cars or who rely on local buses get a royal F.U. from pompous Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski and in news coverage of the snowstorm's aftermath. No matter how many big stories head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes tackles, she always screws up. Inevitably, the copy is late and riddled with errors and major omissions. And she was the one who promoted the lazy Cichowski to columnist.

"Bunkering down"? It's right there in the lead paragraph on the front of Local under the byline of Staff Writer Alison Pries, formerly a clueless clerk in Business. Is that supposed to be a play on the words "hunkering down"? Or something everyone on the inept assignment and news copy desks missed?

The online Urban Dictionary defines "bunker down" this way:

"A term morons use, particularly when bad weather is afoot, to which they confuse the meaning of 'hunker' with. Bunker is a noun, yet hunker is a verb, thus while the words sound similar, when thought of in their linguistic context, one is blatantly wrong."

 The rest of the lead graph about storm cleanup isn't great news writing, either. Way to go, Sykes.

Sykes and her incompetent minions have always thought you cover a big story by throwing as many reporters and photographers at it as possible -- about 20 yesterday, maybe 40 the day before. But what inevitably happens is that everyone runs around gathering way too much information, and much of it never gets used. That alienates staffers who don't see their quotes in the paper and cheats readers and news sources. Then, the editors give the job of writing the story and blending the material to a relative novice such as Pries.

For example, the section of Pries' story on downtowns trying to "regain momentum" completely omits Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other important towns. In fact, there are only quotes from one merchant in Tenafly, which happens to be where Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives in a $3.65 million mansion, courtesy of a North Jersey Media Group mortgage granted months before big staff cutbacks.

Does The Record have to do the same story about drivers reserving parking spaces with furniture after every major storm? How about writing about the plight of local bus riders who have to cross dangerous snowbanks in front of their uncleared bus stops? Doesn't Sykes remember how she fell heavily and was injured in The Record's Hackensack parking lot after a similar storm? My recollection is she was trying to get over a snowbank.

On A-2 today, The Record finally corrected a typo in a headline about the Baha'i faith that ran Monday.

In Better Living, readers get only a partial listing of restaurant health-inspection ratings. For another week, Wyckoff ratings are conspicuous by their absence as is an explanation of why they haven't appeared for many years.

Three-day weekend for staff

If you thought, after looking at Saturday's edition, the staff of The Record of Woodland Park started its weekend on Friday, today's paper only reinforces the impression. Except for a Michael Gartland story on lavish spending by a non-profit Bergen County agency on Page 1, you'll find barely four inconsequential stories about Bergen towns in the entire paper.

You know there is no municipal, development or education news of Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood -- or many other Bergen towns -- in the former Hackensack daily by looking at Page L-6 and the three, long, wire-service obituaries of people you may have never heard of -- that's what the lazy, desperate, incompetent editors call "filler." You also know it by a brief on L-2 about kindergarten registration in Ramsey -- a waste of precious space for information that goes home in every kid's backpack. Does reporter Allison Pries really think this is education news?

So what do you find in today's former Bergen Record? Stories about the Passaic County Sheriff's Department, a possible festival in West Milford, budget woes in that sprawling township, smoking at a Morris County college and a deer hunt on Garret Mountain -- near the paper's new headquarters. The incompetent editors put a story about three New Milford Eagle Scouts on L-1. Wow. That's real news.

There isn't much in the rest of the Sunday paper, which squanders most of the front page on a stupid football game and the endless palaver over a guard who left his post and a man who entered a secure area at Newark airport to see his girlfriend off. On the front of Better Living, a copy editor must have thought it clever to say: "Where North Jersey chefs go to get their eats on." How ridiculous.

It's hard to believe Publisher Stephen A. Borg can read the paper day after day and not wonder why it consistently fails its Bergen County readers or what the editors and some of the reporters are doing to earn their salaries. When I still worked in the old Hackensack newsroom, other staffers reported that sports reporter John Rowe overheard the wealthy, arrogant Borg say his goal in cutting costs was a news staff where no one made more than $40,000 a year.

I doubt Borg achieved his ridiculous salary goal for the staff, but since he took over and promoted Editor Frank "The Fish Stinks from the Head Down" Scandale to vice president, The Record and North Jersey Media Group's laughable Web site -- northjersey.com -- sure read like they are being put together by demoralized, low-paid workers.

Mixed signals

Is there an infrastructure story The Record of Woodland Park doesn't love to splash across the front page? The one about cell towers today is so upbeat and so lavishly illustrated I almost forgot that most of them have long been considered ugly and possibly dangerous in terms of their impact on nearby residents' health.

I almost forgot, that is, until I saw the editorial on Page A-13 today about a cell tower that some Little Falls residents are calling a monstrosity. So how did cell towers suddenly become a prudent and financially sound addition to the municipal landscape or as the headline says, "Towns see beauty in cell towers"? I guess news side was scrambling for a Page 1 story today and had nothing else but this weak effort from Staff Writer Allison Pries. But the people who write the editorials and the residents of Little Falls did their own thing. How embarrassing, especially since Pries' story (deliberately?) omits any mention of Little Falls.


Another embarrassment also appears on Page 1 today, the lead brief about a student assaulted at the middle school in Englewood, with the "full story" appearing on the front of the Local section. Is this the only way the segregated middle and elementary schools in that city can get any attention from the former Hackensack daily? Has the paper's lazy and incompetent editors ever assigned a reporter to detail what efforts are being made to integrate those schools?

Don't look for any real news today from Teaneck, Englewood or Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895 and prospered for more than 110 years until the Borg family, in a bid to preserve their personal wealth, moved printing of the paper and its reduced staff out of River City.

In Better Living, the puzzling phrase "Progressive Dining" is back on a food story about Rutherford's Park Avenue. Newspapers call this a "bug," but it was missing from the last story in this "occasional series" by Staff Writer Elisa Ung. She has never explained what is "progressive" about gorging herself at five or six places in one evening.