Death of Mahwah DPW chief may be related to his obesity

You don't find bike lanes or room for joggers and walkers in many Bergen County towns with narrow, antiquated street systems. These digital signs were set up Wednesday on two-lane Sussex Road in Teaneck, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Anyone who saw the March 21 photo of an obese Ed Sinclair in The Record's Local section isn't surprised Mahwah's public works chief died unexpectedly on Thursday at 57.

And readers weary of the lazy, incompetent local assignment editors also aren't surprised the cause of death -- "a massive heart attack" -- is being reported today by Cliffview Pilot.com, not the Woodland Park daily.

In effect, Sinclair dropped dead.

See: 'Our hearts go out to family'

Obesity news

Sinclair, who was fired by the mayor and reinstated by the Township Council, got a lot of coverage in The Record, but not the kind that may have helped him with his health problems.

Even as some of The Record's own editors struggled with obesity, coverage of the epidemic has been sporadic and routine.

And the paper's chief food writer, restaurant critic Elisa Ung, gets paid to explore her own obsession with artery clogging desserts, and other unhealthy food -- just the kind that can lead to a heart attack.

Ken Zisa

One thing is clear from today's Page 1 follow-up on former Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa's claim to the top job in the city's Police Department (A-1).

Zisa, part of a family dynasty that ruled the city for decades and ran it into the ground, will be spending a lot of time in civil and criminal courts, and racking up tens of thousands of dollars in additional legal fees.

No matter what happens to Zisa, who faces a second trial on an official misconduct charge, lawyers always win. LOL.

But Hackensack readers are angry The Record continues to allow Zisa to dismiss all of the lawsuits filed against him by police officers as "baseless" (A-6).

By one estimate, the suits cost the city $13 million to fight and settle.

Among other allegations, they cited retaliation against officers who exercised their First Amendment rights, "that Zisa used his office for financial and political gain, and [asked] city cops to back his candidacy in legislative races and other candidates in public and union offices" (A-6).

Weak journalism

Road Warrior John Cichowski, already the laughing stock of younger newsroom staffers, has another weak column today on all of the utility work in Hackensack, Maywood and other towns (L-1).

The detours aren't much of a problem for any driver with a navigation system in their car or on their smart phones.

The real problem is the sad condition of many streets and roadways after they are dug up and crudely patched by PSEG's $1.2 billion "Energy Strong" project.

Call this latest Cichowski column "Journalism Weak."

County steal

Hackensack readers and taxpayers likely will be upset by the upbeat story on the Local front, describing a campaign by Bergen Executive James Tedesco to "brand" county government (L-1).

The county will spend tens of thousands of dollars to put the county seal on uniforms, cars, letterheads and Web sites, Tedesco says.

Gee. Wouldn't it be nice if the tax-exempt county government did more to help out the city it calls home with programs and other in-kind contributions?

The same could be said for two other tax-exempt entities that use city services: Hackensack University Medical Center and Fairleigh Dickinson University.
   

Christie-friendly editors do great P.R. for GOP bully

A trailer parked on East 85th Street in Manhattan shows the value of copy editors and copy editing. When North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, lost sight of that simple fact during a major downsizing in 2008, the quality and accuracy of its flagship daily began to decline noticeably. That slide continues, as A-2 corrections show, but they are only a fraction of the actual screw-ups.  

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie has always done a masterful job of public relations to hide the sad state of the Garden State, and today, he is aided and abetted by The Record's editors and reporters.

Once again, the staff of the Woodland Park daily, including Columnist Charles Stile, desperately parse every word of the GOP bully's State of the State address for a definitive sign that he'll run for president in 2016 (A-1, A-6 and A-7).

Christie champion Stile called the speech "an early draft of a Christie for President campaign mailer" (A-1).

Toliet paper would be an appropriate material for such a mailer in view of all the bullshit Christie has used to bury New Jersey residents in the past five years.

Staff Writers Melissa Hayes, John Reitmeyer and Dustin Racioppi don't waste any time spinning Christie's speech, using the first paragraph of their lead Page 1 story to parrot "a pledge to veto any income-tax increases." 

Instead of breathing a sigh of relief, New Jersey's middle class knows the Democratic-led Legislature has never tried to raise their income taxes, but that Christie has repeatedly vetoed a tax surcharge on his millionaire supporters.

The main headline has readers shaking their heads as they stare at a familiar photo of the Assembly chamber in Trenton (A-1):

"Christie's bigger stage"

Readers have to turn to A-7 for the truth, as reported by Staff Writer Christopher Maag:

"Roads are crumbling. Bridges are falling. And New Jersey's fund to fix those problems is out of money.

"But Governor Christie did not address the state's transportation crisis ..., saying only that New Jersey has a 'world-class transportation system.'"

And an editorial on A-8 manages only mild criticism of what the writer calls Christie's lack of leadership.

More corrections

Two more embarrassing corrections on A-2 today give readers the impression the paper has fired all of its copy editors, and that six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton is a miserable failure at her job.

Houlton supervises the copy desk, where reporter's and editor's grammatical and factual errors are supposed to be caught and corrected.

But copy editors have always been regarded with contempt, and it shows in the final product.

Are you Charlie?

More Page 1 coverage of the slayings of Paris cartoonists continues to focus on satirical images of the prophet Muhammad (A-1).

What you won't find in mainstream coverage is the opinion of people of color who live in France, as expressed in The Maroon Colony:

"I’m not Charlie for several reasons: Charlie Hebdo for many people of color in France, particularly in Paris, that don’t benefit from mixed or proximity-to-White French- privilege is extremely racist. It’s a particular brand of French racism and xenophobia sheltered under the grey tent of “satire”. It’s belittingly. It’s demeaning. And it’s a larger, published example of the explicit forms of aggression that many people of color in Paris live with, daily."

Judicial nominees

The obit page seems an odd choice for a story about 11 lawyers who have been nominated for state Superior Court, including nine for Bergen County (L-6).

The story doesn't say whether the nominees have to contribute a lot of money to Christie or his party.

Driver re-training?

Does County Executive James Tedesco need a refresher course in how closely to follow another vehicle?

Tedesco was driving an unmarked Bergen County police vehicle on Tuesday evening when he struck the rear of another vehicle on Route 17 north, part of a "chain-reaction accident" involving four cars (L-2). 

The county executive should get points for car pooling to Trenton for Christie's State of the State speech with his chief of staff, Michele DiIorgi, but the story doesn't say where they were going when the accident occurred in Rochelle Park.

They won't kill you

Staff Writer Steve Janoski's story on so-called superfoods is another example of why you should never rely on the media for medical or nutritional advice (A-1 and BL-1).

None of the superfood packages I've seen claim to cure disease or "ward off cancer," as the reporter says.

But Janoski fails to report that quinoa, chia seeds and other so-called superfoods do have one big advantage over the animal fats you'll find in meat and dairy products.

They won't clog your arteries and kill you. 

Even the headline is offensive:

"Getting real about 'superfood' love"