Our next president isn't pictured on the front page today

In Hackensack on Tuesday morning, a man walked his young son across the NJ Transit tracks on Railroad Avenue, a largely residential neighborhood that has lived with passing trains in its front yard for decades. In 2012, a 12-year-old boy walking home from school was killed by a train, but The Record didn't bother asking officials why fences were never put up to protect residents.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie is taking his lies, distortions and mean-spirited policies on the road again in what The Record calls a presidential "campaign trip in all but name" (A-1).

But you can't tell from today's upbeat front-page coverage -- including four A-1 photos of the GOP bully in New Hampshire -- that Christie is damaged goods, a politician who is unlikely to get the nomination, let alone the victory.

And I'll bet there are unhappy workers in dead-end jobs in the Woodland Park newsroom and all around the country who would vote against Christie just to avoid having to wait until they are 64 to retire early.

Today's Page 1 story is written by Melissa Hayes, the reporter assigned to cover Christie, in her usual adoring style, as you can tell immediately from the first paragraph.

Christie's proposals for Social Security and federal health care are called "overhauls," not cuts (A-1).

"Today, one of the most unpopular governors in the country is unveiling what soon will become one of the most unpopular entitlement reform plans," U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-Paterson, said, according to PolitickerNJ.com.

Bob Menendez

After Sen. Bob Menendez was indicted by a federal grand jury, The Record leapt to his defense, quoting one defense attorney after another claiming his actions on behalf of a Florida eye doctor were inspired by friendship, not bribery.

Today, Dr. Salomon Melgen, 61, the senator's friend, is back on Page 1 after he was indicted for allegedly trying to bilk Medicare of more than $190 million and receiving $105 million (A-1).

In 2012 alone, health officials reported, Melgen billed Medicare $21 million, more than any other doctor in the nation, The New York Times reported.

If anything, Menendez's really poor judgment in calling this man a friend and accepting free travel and Paris hotel rooms from him should be questioned.

More corrections

The news, assignment and copy desks are on a roll, admitting to two more editing screw-ups on A-2 today.

Readers know The Record only acknowledges a few of the many errors that appear in the paper every day now that six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton, supervisor of the copy desk, has eliminated all fact checking and limited editing to spell checking.

If you think the A-7 photo of Menendez is unflattering, check out the Englewood Hospital and Medical Center construction photo the news editors are running on A-9 today.

Local news?

Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza continue to rely heavily on Law & Order and court news to fill the thin local-news section, robbing readers of legitimate municipal news (L-1 to L-6).

Four of the six stories on the Local front today distract readers from how poorly many of our towns and school systems are run -- which are among the issues The Record's lazy editors have never been eager to tackle.

Spring surprise

What's the point of running recipes for shad roe with such unhealthy ingredients as butter and bacon that many readers are trying to avoid (BL-1 and BL-4)?

First Christie rat abandons sinking ship of state

David Wildstein, Governor Christie's appointee to the Port Authority, orchestrated early September lane closures that caused gridlock in Democratic Fort Lee, above and below. Now, Wildstein claims Christie knew about the lane closures as they happened, but he hasn't disclosed the "evidence."

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The Record's front-page photo today shows Governor Christie with two of his appointees to the patronage mill known as the Port Authority, which runs bridges, tunnels, ports and airports in the bi-state region.

The photo was taken during the early September George Washington Bridge lane closures that have been viewed as political revenge in Democratic Fort Lee.

Now, former Port Authority executive David Wildstein, who appears with Christie in today's A-1 and A-10 photos, is the first rat to abandon the sinking ship of state.

Did Christie lie?

Basically, Wildstein is saying Christie lied during his two-hour news conference three weeks ago, when he said he had no knowledge of the lane closures engineered in e-mails between Bridget Anne Kelly, who was the governor's deputy chief of staff, and the Port Authority.

Wildstein's claim that he has evidence Christie knew of the lane closures -- as they were happening -- broke first on The New York Times Web site after 3 on Friday afternoon, setting off a scramble in the Woodland Park newsroom.

Today's banner headline shows the effect, incorrectly calling Wildstein an "ex-aide" of the GOP bully. That's a stretch.

In the text, on Page 1, a copy editor made a second mistake, missing a lower-case "legislature."

Political spin

And instead of assigning a reporter to write an "ANALYSIS," Editor Marty Gottlieb called on the columnist who is the paper's chief political hack, Charles Stile, to assess whether Christie's "career is in tatters" (A-1).

Stile has given the governor so many journalistic blow jobs in the past four years, everything he writes now is suspect.

Super bullshit

The lead Page 1 story says a letter from Wildstein's lawyer, first disclosed by The Times, "landed like a bombshell two days before North Jersey hosts its first Super Bowl ... and three days before massive amounts of records subpoenaed by an investigative committee of the state Legislature were due for delivery."

Three more Wildstein sidebars appear inside on A-6 and A-10.

The Record's editors had the good sense to put the third, 8-page "Super Bowl Special" section this week inside the paper, instead of wrapping all that mindless publicity around other sections, as they did on Thursday and Friday.


Weak local report

But Dan Sforza, the incompetent deputy assignment editor, still needed two Super Bowl stories on L-1 to fill out the local-news section.

Instead of more pro football nonsense, Sforza should have given better play to:

The tributes to Harriette Townsend, a beloved crossing guard in Leonia killed in a house fire (L-1); and efforts by Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. to get the United States to accept more refugees from the Syrian civil war (L-3).

'Insufferable hype'

Congratulations to Staff Writer Kara Yorio for telling readers how to escape the "insufferable hype" of endless Super Bowl coverage from The Record and other media (BL-1).

But Yorio is wrong on advising readers to take mass transit into the city on Sunday. 

The day of the Super Bowl has always been known as a paradise for drivers as millions stay glued to TVs at home and in bars and restaurants.

Delayed bargains

One downside of a North Jersey Super Bowl is that Manhattan's biggest dining bargains have been postponed until after the game.

The city's famous Winter Restaurant Weeks -- which usually begin in late January -- won't start until Feb. 17 and will be shortened by a week, ending on March 7.

North Jersey residents and out-of-towners are being denied three-course lunches for $25, plus tax and tip, compared to $40 to $45 for the same food ordered a la carte, and three-course dinners for $38.

Pascrell error is a national embarrassment

NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Unfortunately, the building looks like it would be good for squeezing juice from oranges. (Wikipedia)

The boneheaded error on Page 1 of The Record on Sunday  -- "NFL HALL OF FAME TAPS PASCRELL," a reference to the Democratic congressman from Paterson -- has proven to be a national embarrassment to the paper and The New York Times veteran who is presiding over its meltdown.

Editor Marty Gottlieb was probably home and in bed on Saturday night, when the paper was printed in a Rockaway Township press building that shows no signs of intelligent life.

But the blame falls squarely on six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton, whose crew failed to catch this booboo -- the latest in an endless stream of inaccurate headlines, photo captions and Road Warrior columns; typos and errors in graphics and news stories.

The Hall of Fame error is being lampooned by RollCall.com., PolitickerNJ.com, I4U.com and SpeedTV.com, among others, and it has earned numerous "Likes" on Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr.'s own Facebook page.

Of course, the Woodland Park daily meant to say the pro football Hall of Fame had tapped Bill Parcells, the former Giants coach.

Can he climb stairs?

Another national embarassment is our morbidly obese governor and how little he has done to fight the obesity epidemic in New Jersey (A-4).

I was amazed at the straight faces of David Letterman on Monday and media members in Sea Girt on Wednesday when Governor Christie asserted that he is "the healthiest fat guy you've ever seen" or "the healthiest 50-year-old you've ever seen."

The GOP bully launched a personal attack on former White House physician Connie Mariano, who expressed concern he might "die in office."


Christie has refused to make his health records public, he's only gained weight since he took office in January 2010 and he has only "a plan" to get in shape.

Too busy eating

Most of the questions about his weight have come from the national media as The Record and other New Jersey media basically sit on the story.

At the Woodland Park daily, two obese editors, Deirdre Sykes and Tim Nostrand, have consistently squelched any project on a leading cause of death in the United States.

Our fat savior

The story on A-4 today reports Christie was "trotting around the state, from the Shore to Hoboken during 18-hour days, barking orders, hugging residents and guiding New Jersey" through Superstorm Sandy.

I get it: He is selling himself as an obese Santa Claus who will bestow millions in federal money on state residents, ensuring his election to a second term.

But this kind of fuzzy writing is dangerous and minimizes Christie's health problems. He can barely walk or fit into most conventional chairs.

Derailing readers

I found the front-page story on rising rail fares impossible to follow, and wonder why the A-1 graphic didn't label all the stops.

I also suggest that commuter Christine Lawrence, who will be paying about $1 more a day, ask a therapist why she "feels sad" when fares go up (A-8).

Why is this story on Page 1? What doesn't go up in price? 

Burying the dead
    
In Sykes' Local news section today, a non-fatal auto accident (L-3) gets better play than the obituary of world champion bridge master Ira Rubin of Paramus (L-6).

On the cover of Wednesday's Better Living section, clueless Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill and Staff Writer Elisa Ung promoted a Hawthorne woman's artery clogging recipe, which might have come close to killing her husband (BL-1).

Chicken Kiev -- "chicken stuffed with butter and herbs and deep-fried" -- apparently is linked to Arthur Deutsch's "recent heart problems" (BL-2).

I can't understand why Deutsch, 72, is smiling in the cover photo with his wife, Eileen, or holding her specialty, a heart attack on a plate.

Another road wreck

A concerned reader's repeated e-mails to management may have prompted Road Warrior John Cichowski to finally write an accurate column, but the reader found other problems:

"The Road Warrior provided easy, sometimes clueless or senseless answers to people's questions about getting special license plates for members of community organizations, problems with getting a drivers license at the MVC, and why both drivers frequently leavethe scene of many accidents at a Hackensack intersection. 

"He left unanswered issues that would have better helped people in his Feb. 6 column.

"How do the Road Warrior and Record management continue to allow questions to be published that don't make any sense based on presented information?

"How does the Record management allow Road Warrior answers that are useless, clueless or senseless without any supporting facts, or lead to even more questions?"

See the full e-mail on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Answers raise more questions 
 

Rothman turns defeat into huge paycheck

Steve Rothman of Englewood when he was a  U.S. congressman. His smile is even broader now that he's landed a job with a big law firm. (Wikipedia)

It's bad enough Steve Rothman of Englewood ran from a fight against one of the most conservative members of Congress, and took on fellow Democrat Bill Pascrell Jr. of Paterson.

Lots of Democrats cheered mightily when Pascrell defeated Rothman in the election this past November, and roared with laughter as the latter's 16-year career in Congress ended in disgrace.

Now, Rothman has parlayed all the campaign donations he received from top defense contractors into a job with one of the state's biggest law firms, where he will head a new division that will cater to defense-industry clients (Page 1 of The Record on Friday).

Isn't that cozy?

The newspaper doesn't like reporting on the hourly rates charged by lawyers -- one of the factors that denies people who want to sue their employers access to the courts.

But I'll bet Rothman's hourly rate at Sills Cummis & Gross will be big enough to choke a horse or a litigant. 


The Record's story omits how Rothman moved back to Englewood from Fair Lawn to avoid running against Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage.

Second look

So far, Margulies the cartoonist is the only member of the news or editorial staff to expose how Governor Christie is sweeping all of his policy failures under the rug as part of his "Superstorm Sandy clean-up" (A-10 on Thursday).

This week's cover story on suburban sprawl in the Signature section contains more discussion of mass transit than has appeared in the newspaper in the past decade (Thursday).

Bat, Mac and fat 

In Friday's Better Living section, Staff Writer Elisa Ung devotes half of her restaurant review to the "back story" of Bat Barry's, an "American bistro" in Westwood.

"Bat," it seems, is a nickname used by Bartholomew Barry, just as "Mac" is the nickname of Chairman Malcolm A. Borg.

And I always thought the nickname "Mac" recognized his love of mac and cheese for breakfast.

"Fat" is what Ung must be after sampling at least three of Bat Barry's artery clogging desserts -- among the hundreds she has eaten and often complained about since she took over the restaurant beat more than 5 years ago.   

Today's paper

A story on the Local front today reports Hackensack will maintain a computer database for inspection reports "to make sure no buildings 'fall through the cracks' and that codes are enforced" (L-1).

The Record's investigation found serious violations at two buildings on Johnson Avenue that are owned by politically connected lawyers.  

Those homes aren't the only ones with building violations. 

The house at 177 Euclid Ave. -- especially the front steps -- has been in a state of disrepair for more than 5 years, and the city's Building Department seems powerless.