Editors finally acknowledge issues, not politics, matter most

Cartoons from John Cole on Meryl Streep's criticism of President-elect Donald J. Trump , above, and Rick McKee on President Obama's legacy, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Though many months too late, The Record deserves credit for launching a series on "15 issues important to North Jersey residents" that could be affected by the administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

No matter that "Trump Tracker" echoes "Christie Tracker." 

That was the Matt Katz series on our very own GOP bully, Governor Christie, that ran for a couple of years on WNYC-FM, the New York and New Jersey public radio station.

And readers also know that if the Woodland Park daily and all of the other news outlets across the country had been focusing on issues during the campaign, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election would have been far different.

Instead, the news media delighted in repeating every sensational, unsubstantiated charge against Democrat Hillary Clinton, and ignoring her decades-long service to families ad children.

Five-part series

Today's "Trump Tracker" installment focuses on immigration, train transportation and health care (1A, 8A and 9A).

Editor Rick Green doesn't explain why the transportation segment leaves hundreds of thousands of New Jersey bus commuters out in the cold (8A).

The other issues -- including homeland security, education, taxes, the environment, social-safety net and infrastructure -- are scheduled to run through Thursday, the day before the inauguration (8A).

Politics as usual

Sadly, it's politics as usual at the bottom of Page 1 today, with yet another Political Stile column on Christie:

"Christie leans left in N.J., 
but keeps door open on right"

Readers also are keeping their bathroom doors open, in case they get the sudden urge to throw up.

Local news?

On the Local front, Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski appears to be telling drivers they have two and a half months to "read, eat, drink, groom themselves and use hand-held devices to ... talk, text or find their way" before an April police crackdown (1L).

In Opinion, an editorial notes Paterson remains "among New Jersey's most violent places" despite an overall drop in crime (2O).

"Homicides held steady at 19, the same as in 2015, while the number of rapes increased" to 57 from 42, according to the editorial.  

The editorial is incorrect in saying rapes "increased from 42 to 57 percent." 

A year ago, another editorial on the overall drop in crime credited Police Director Jerry Speziale while letting him off the hook on curbing gun violence and the drug trade. 

Today's editorial doesn't even mention  Speziale or the undercover state police troopers who have been helping Paterson police.

Korean food crawl

The Better Living cover on a Korean food crawl in Palisades Park should have been labeled, "For carnivores only" (1BL and 3BL).

By using Robert Austin Cho, owner of a Korean barbecue restaurant, as her guide, Staff Writer Sophia Gottfried largely omitted all the great non-meat dishes -- heart-healthy seafood, tofu and vegetables -- served in Korean restaurant in Palisades Park and neighboring Fort Lee, which isn't even mentioned.

And with Cho in tow, Gottfried also managed to keep the secret of the vast majority of Korean restaurants -- they serve low-quality beef and pork raised on harmful antibiotics and growth hormones to boost their bottom lines.

Fewer stories?

Since the November redesign of The Record, many readers have complained there are fewer stories in the paper.

There was a good reason for that on Saturday, when an upbeat Page 1 story explained how teenagers are coping with life in crime-ridden Silk City:

"Paterson students
outsmart crime
through use of 
technology"

The story reported these geniuses developed "a cellphone application that would send an alert to school security staff if students diverted from their normal route home from school."

If readers turned to the continuation page (Saturday's 4A) and read the story to the end, they found the entire story was repeated -- all 23 paragraphs.

How's that?

On Saturday's Local front, this headline puzzled many readers:

"Hospital
manager
gets 6 
months"

But the story had nothing to do with the sentencing of a human to jail or prison.

"Manager" referred to a company that manages Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus, and the "6 months" is how long its contract has been extended.

This is high-school level journalism, plain and simple.

For that, you can thank the payroll-slashing Gannett Co. -- owner of seven New Jersey dailies -- and the morons employed in a centralized Neptune design center.

Editors allow partisan politics to shape Trenton coverage

In Englewood, Mayor Frank Huttle is pushing the City Council to buy a building next to a Korean supermarket and develop it as a community center, The Record reports today. The plan comes many years after the city dropped plans to buy the shuttered, 100-year-old-plus Lincoln Elementary School for a community center, eventually selling the land and building to an apartment developer.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's editors and owners refuse to provide the leadership readers are looking for as Governor Christie butts heads with Democrats over an "extensive" list of problems facing the state.

As they did after Christie took office in early 2010, the editors continue to focus on the nasty partisan politics dividing the conservative governor and the Democratic majority in the state Legislature (A-1).

Today, The Record announces a groundbreaking "tracker graphic" as key issues move through the Governor's Office and the legislative process in 2016.

Of course, the original "Christie Tracker" was started by WNYC-FM, which told listeners where Christie was traveling as head of a GOP governors group or when he was campaigning.

Real estate mogul Jon F. Hanson, left, is a top adviser to Governor Christie, and a personal friend of Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record.

He said, she said

But if the past is any guide, Editor Deirdre Sykes' bad-hair days will mean bad-news days for readers, who will have to slog through endless he said/she said stories on such issues as transportation, public worker benefits and taxes.

Since she took over in January, Sykes has failed to provide any editorial leadership in Woodland Park, repeating the same failures readers know from the many years she ran the local-news section.  

Seven other daily papers in New Jersey called for Christie's resignation after he endorsed and campaigned for racist Donald Trump. 

But the Woodland Park daily didn't even report the state's biggest daily, The Star Ledger, and the other papers want the GOP bully to leave Trenton for good.

Readers' eyes roll

Charles Stile, the biggest Christie apologist on staff, today has readers' eyes rolling with a front-page column on the Republican Party in New Jersey more than 50 years ago (A-1).

Meanwhile, as limp as they are, the last four lines of Mike Kelly's Opinion front column on Christie should have been the first four lines (O-3):

"He says he's 'back to work'. Yet, he skips a state trooper's funeral for a political campaign.

"He's the butt of belittling jokes.

"He thinks this is all just a good time."

And on the Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski is writing about "us older folks" who don't buckle up in the back seat (L-1).

Mazel tov

Congratulations to Hackensack Mayor John P. Labrosse Jr., who became a grandfather twice on Friday (L-1).

Flay's burgers

Food writer Elisa Ung has been a big fan of Bobby Flay ever since she reported a decade ago "chef's quality" beef is used in the hamburgers sold at his Bobby's Burger Palace in Paramus.

Today, the sell-out continues to blow smoke in another elaborately promotional piece on Flay and his burger restaurants (Better Living front).

Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Flay uses Certified Angus Beef, which is raised on harmful antibiotics and who knows what else.

Stick with the salads, if you know what's good for you.

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