Local schools, government? Readers come up short again

SIGN CONFUSION: At this Hackensack intersection, where a Wawa is under construction, the sign says South River Street, but another sign near the traffic signal, below, calls it "South River Road."

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Should a local daily newspaper like The Record lead the paper with "chaos" among do-nothing Republicans in Congress?

Or a long column on a protest in front of the White House over lax gun-control laws, even though it involves an Oakland rabbi whose father was shot to death way back in 1999?

Is there anything else to read on Page 1 today?

Editor Martin Gottlieb, who thinks he still works at The New York Times, runs an inconsequential story about a man who feeds homeless cats in the Meadowlands, and an even sillier piece on Mets fans using social media (A-1).

Couldn't Gottlieb find anyone who feeds homeless humans?

This is an irresponsible waste of space on the page that should be reserved for the most important local or regional news of the day.

Local news?

But The Record, it seems, has given up covering most of the local governments and school systems in its circulation area, relying instead on sensational crime and court news to fill its Local section, as it does today (L-1, L-3, L-5 and L-6).

And that's the case despite the impact those schools and governments in nearly 90 towns have on the property taxes that seem to go up with little if no improvement in services to residents and businesses.

Tenafly police

An editorial today praises a three-year contract for Tenafly police, who will get no raises and have to wait longer to reach the highest salary tier (A-22).

"This ruling is ultimately positive for the region at large and is exactly what needs to happen in other municipalities, if there is hope of reining in property taxes," the editorial trumpets.

But in the news story on the arbitration ruling in Thursday's Local section, Tenafly officials couldn't say how much the police contract will save the borough, and there was not a single word on how any savings would affect property taxes.

The editorial also ignores all of the tax appeals that have forced some towns, such as Hackensack, to issue bonds to pay property owners who have filed successful challenges to their assessments and bills.

So, even if a town saves money by denying raises to police officers or other municipal workers, those savings could be wiped out by other factors in home-rule communities, which aren't known for efficiency, let alone competent managers.

Worth the detour?

Staff Writer Elisa Ung continues to explore the outer fringes of the circulation area in her restaurant reviews.

Today, she reports on Yuki, an expensive Japanese restaurant in an Oakland strip mall -- more than 18 miles from Hackensack -- and it doesn't even have a Japanese sushi chef or owner (BL-16).

With authentic Japanese-owned restaurants in Fort Lee and Edgewater, why would any reader in central Bergen County want to drive so far to experience the discourteous customer service Ung complains about?

She was so upset, she suggested "takeout may be the way to go." Yet, she rates the place Good to Excellent (2.5 stars).

Go figure.

Stupid headline hides truth about GOP-led Congress

A sign in the unisex bathroom at Pushcart Coffee on Ninth Avenue and 25th Street in Manhattan.

Shivering tourists on a walking tour of Manhattan's Theater District on Saturday, another frigid, sunless day.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A headline declaring "deep divide in D.C." certainly is familiar to anyone who has read a newspaper in the last few years.

But after months of hysteria in The Record and other media about Tea Party radicals and other Republicans taking full control of Congress and dismantling President Obama's health care law and other initiatives, reality has set in.

On Monday's front page, more than two months after the 2014 election, Columnist Herb Jackson reports voter turnout was pushed down "nationally to its lowest point since World War II," and ending gridlock is "overly optimistic, to say the least."

Jackson blames voter apathy on a "bitter election," but the media also are at fault for ignoring issues in favor of conflict and sound bites, and failing to reveal the lies in GOP attack ads.

However, the main headline on his column used the old "deep divide in D.C." and ignored the real truth -- no end to gridlock in the new Congress, despite Republican majorities.

Monday's A-2 carried another long correction of a story in the Local news section, the one on Sunday about Brendan Jordan, 7, the New Milford boy who died in a school accident.

Today's paper

Page 1 today is dominated by Staff Writer John Cichowski's Road Warrior column -- based on press releases, phone interviews and fatal accident reports (A-1).

If the past is any guide, Cichowski likely has committed a number of errors in citing state police data, and he continues to refer to pedestrian deaths as "crashes."

Weak laws

Cichowski should be calling for stronger laws to hold drivers criminally responsible for killing a pedestrian.

Now, drivers can use the excuse that they "didn't see" the pedestrian as a get-out-of jail card.

Older drivers

The challenges facing older drivers is another issue the lazy, demented reporter has neglected in the more than 11 years he has been writing the column.

That can be plainly seen today in the two photos that run in Local, where head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, hold up another older driver to ridicule.

Look at the helpless expression on the white-haired woman's face -- as captured by an ambulance-chasing freelancer -- after she drove her 2009 Honda Civic "over a guardrail and retaining wall and down an embankment at a condominium complex" in Ridgewood (L-3).

Of course, the woman didn't "drive" her car through the guardrail on Monday afternoon.

She likely mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal, a common error for elderly drivers.

Is driver retraining available for older drivers such as this woman? 

Cichowski could care less, and Sykes and Sforza fear any such public service stories would deprive them of the filler accident photos they so desperately need to complete their weak local news report.  

Second look

On Sunday, Columnist Mike Kelly criticized Governor Christie for not attending the funeral of another pedestrian, Cliffside Park Special Police Officer Stephen Petruzzello, who was killed by a driver who claimed she didn't see him (Opinion front).

But Kelly gets absolutely no editing, and thinks readers have nothing better to do than plow through a dozen long introductory paragraphs about Christie the football fan and a gubernatorial vacation.

The criticism appears on the continuation page, and many readers may have been so bored by all the background they never saw it.

It seems silly to tell someone who has been a columnist for more than 20 years: Put your criticism in the first paragraph and leave the background for later.

But it's necessary with Kelly, one of the paper's chief word pushers.

Local editors continue to flub breaking news

Drivers startled by a huge inflatable rat on State Street in Hackensack might think it's a marketing ploy gone awry for the luxury apartments going up on the site. In fact, members of Carpenters Union Local 254 put up the rat and picket the site to dramatize the developer's use of "rats" -- non-union contractors -- according to the union's Facebook page.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

When you compare The Record's Page 1 follow-up today to Friday's sensational lead story on a sibling rivalry that ended in death, they expose deep flaws in local-news gathering.

It's been apparent for years to many in the newsroom that head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who is taking a prolonged sick leave, and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza can't handle breaking news.

It's possible the lack of information in Friday's story can be traced to reporters who simply have never developed a rapport with Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli and local police chiefs.

But the assignment editors have encouraged their reporters to cover breaking news by telephone or by waiting for news releases -- like so many beggars on the street -- instead of aggressively mining other sources, including neighbors.

Missing information

Despite references to family photos on Facebook and adopted children, readers on Friday remained in the dark about whether a 17-year-old boy who allegedly stabbed and killed his older sister were among three children adopted by the Gallos in Washington Township (Friday's A-1 and A-7).

Today, thanks to three photos on Page 1, readers learn the brother, sister and a third adopted sibling are black, but that is never mentioned in the text today or Friday.

GOP screws jobless

Thanks to the Republicans in Congress, more than 125,000 New Jerseyans are being dropped from unemployment rolls in the next three months and losing emergency benefits (A-1).

House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican whose last name is pronounced "boner,"  has been quoted saying they should be out looking for jobs, not collecting benefits.

LG boycott

A letter to the editor on A-11 today calls for a boycott of LG products as the U.S. arm of the South Korean company moves forward with plans to build a 143-foot-high building that will project above the tree line on the Palisades.

Sounds like a good idea, but you have to wonder why the Woodland Park daily hasn't called for a similar boycott.


Second look

On Friday, The Record ran another wildly exaggerated, error-filled column from addled Staff Writer John Cichowski, according to a concerned reader who maintains the Facebook Page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"The Road Warrior makes up information about the Jan. 30, 2013, collision of a train and a truck carrying paint cans at a Little Falls rail crossing and exaggerates subsequent crossing improvements.

"The Road Warrior compounded his original errors from his Feb. 1 column, and contradicted The Record’s own reports when he indicated there were eight commuters injured in the Jan. 30 accident and reported a rail-crossing accident in Ridgefield in December.

"As The Record originally reported, five commuters and three train workers were injured in the January accident, and the December accident was in Ridgefield Park, not Ridgefield."

Even more troubling than the exaggeration and errors in Friday's column was Cichowski's recommendation in his original Feb. 1 column a few days after the Little Falls collision that no safety improvements were needed:

"But sometimes crash investigators at places that produce few crashes don't yield much more than headlines, especially if an engineering fix is considered too costly and an unusual driver error is the only readily definable culprit."

Thankfully, no one paid attention to the overpaid but clueless Road Warrior.

For the full e-mail alerting editors and managers of The Record about continuing problems with the Road Warrior column, see:

Road Warrior is off the rails once again

Editors remove heads from assholes

Image via Wikipedia
"The Republicans were protecting fat cats from higher taxes,"a Rutgers University political scientist comments today in The Record.

To Editors of The Record:


Tell us something we don't know, for crying out loud.


"Politics" doomed deficit-reduction talks? Really? Where has Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson been? Living in a cave?


Politics have paralyzed Congress for more than a year. Why does interim Editor Doug Clancy even think it's necessary to label Jackson's Page 1 story today as an "Analysis"?


Clancy had his head buried in newsroom budget books for far too long, trying to figure out new ways to screw the news copy editors and pamper the digital news group, which puts out the clunky NorthJersey.com.


And is it news to anyone who lives in North Jersey that the region is pockmarked with failed chemical cleanups or that the system is broken (A-1)?


What about the "broken" flood-control system, the "broken" home-rule system of local government and the "broken" property tax system?


Failure of government is evident all around us, on the national, state and local levels, but the editors can't stop defending the status quo -- inside and outside the Woodland Park daily.


Even a third front-page story -- on the dangerous chemical BPA in can liners, drink bottles and other metal containers -- is at least a year late.


Of heads and holes


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes continues to cover court motions relating to suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa more than she does the city's municipal affairs (L-3).


Although there is no Hackensack municipal news in the paper today, Sykes found room for two stories from Ridgewood (L-2 and L-6), plus stories from Northvale (L-1) and North Arlington (L-3).


An editorial on A-18 today blasts Republicans in Congress for blocking new, healthier school lunch guidelines, despite an obesity epidemic that seems to have escaped the attention of Sykes and the other editors at the paper.


Chewing the fat


In a talk on Monday to a class of seniors at Bergen Community College, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill noted she also is in charge of health and fitness coverage, but didn't explain why that doesn't extend to healthy food.


Sherrill didn't mention that many of the recipes in her weekly column call for inordinate amounts of artery clogging heavy cream and butter.


Or, that the restaurant reviews she edits rarely mention that most of the poultry and meat served contains harmful antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products.


She spoke about consumers' fondness for swordfish, tuna and other large fish, but not that they contain the most mercury or that wildly popular farmed salmon is artificially colored.
  
Isn't it the responsibility of Sherrill, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung and other food writers to supply this information to readers, so they don't have to rely solely on menus, supermarket ads and TV food shows?

Sending mixed messages on Wayne thugs

U.S. Census Bureau map of Hackensack.

For the third day in a row, Interim Editor Doug Clancy continues to devote precious Page 1 space to those nine thuggish Wayne football players -- directly contradicting an editorial blasting the Board of Education and the coach for ignoring the victims (A-11):

"In Wayne, nine criminally charged high school students took the field, their football coach took control of the Board of Education, and residents, so far, have taken it on the chin.

"All the while, the two assaulted students are forgotten...."

Putting aside the editorial's awkward language, readers also are getting the shaft, with more A-1 space devoted to Wayne football than to the deficit-reduction talks in Congress -- an issue that affects just about everyone in North Jersey.


Doesn't Clancy live in Wayne? What kind of news judgment is that?


And why did Clancy think a training exercise for police is worthy of the front page, unless he didn't have anything better from head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes?


Blinded by editor


The biggest news on the front of Sykes' Local section is the installation of solar panels on the roof of the Ice House in Hackensack -- as the assignment desk tries to chronicle every solar project in North Jersey with its own story and photo.


Of course, residents still are in the dark on the progress of the city's solar-panel installations, potential savings and whether they will help trim property taxes.


In utility pole news, a large photo on L-3 documents how a truck demolished one in Teaneck.


Selling out


Even though the space devoted to news has shrunk in recent years, Better Living continues to run stories promoting a wide variety of businesses, including today's shameless piece on Black Friday sales, complete with 13 store or mall logos (F-1).


Food writer Joyce Venezia Suss apparently doesn't know the difference between mostly organic food and a crappy McDonald's hamburger (F-1).


In a Starters column on Nanoosh, a new restaurant at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, she says of the salads, organic chickpeas and other healthy items: "The proprietors insist that it's not fast food."


Does Features Director Stephanie Rivers really expect readers to take Suss seriously? "Shush" would be more like it.

Front page shouts: No news today

Image via Wikipedia

As a GOP presidential candidate, would Sarah Palin represent "AIDS" or "terminal cancer"?

Editor Francis Scandale thinks a huge photo of an obscure professional golfer is far more important for Page 1 today than a real civics lesson for his North Jersey readers.

More than 20,000 Peruvians from New Jersey and Pennsylvania traveled to Paterson to vote in their country's presidential election, because it is hotly contested and because they are required to do so by their country's constitution (L-1).

The great writer, Mario Vargas Llosa, said the Peruvian candidates presented "a choice between AIDS and terminal cancer," which also could apply to Sarah Palin and other presumptive Republican challengers to President Obama in 2012. 

Christie gets a pass

The lead Page 1 story today is the budget battle in Congress, but Scandale ignores the far more important budget battle in Trenton, likely because he and the other editors are solidly behind Governor Christie, who reminds me of Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.

Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and The Record of Woodland Park are such big fans of the wasteful home-rule system of government, they make a big deal at the bottom of A-1 over Westwood saving 90 gallons of diesel fuel a day during leaf season.

Screwing our seniors

Scandale and Sykes have an unwritten rule about covering only seniors over 95, so you'll find stories about a 97-year-old teacher on A-3 and a 103-year-old federal judge on A-9.

In keeping with the small minds on the assignment desk under the suffocating Sykes, Local today has stories from small towns, such as New Milford, Hillsdale and Northvale, but nothing from  Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood.

Grand Old Partisanship

Image via Wikipedia

Are there any bills congressional Republicans aren't blocking as they bull their way toward extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Which programs for the middle and working classes in New Jersey haven't been cut by our own Republican bully, Governor Christie?

You'll have to read The Record of Woodland Park from cover to cover today to get any sense of how Republicans on the state and nationals levels are hurting the majority with an unprecedented effort at preserving the wealth of their supporters. 

But you won't hear any Editorial Page thunder condemning the GOP: The Grand Old Partisanship, The Party of No.

Editor Francis Scandale can afford a nice home and schools in Glen Rock and a long family vacation in Australia, so he cares nothing about increasing poverty in Passaic and Bergen counties -- a Page 1 story for most editors, but shoved back to L-2 by Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who scrambles every day to fill a Local news section left empty by her lazy, incompetent minions.

Christie's credibility

On A-1 today, federal officials say Christie knew he'd be on the hook to repay $271 million spent on the Hudson River rail tunnels long before he killed the project. 

Now, the governor has hired a politically connected D.C. law firm at $485 an hour to fight an effort by the Federal Transit Administration to recoup the money. When he was U.S. attorney, he gave consulting contracts worth millions of dollars to a former boss and a former federal judge.

Also on A-1, readers learn that Republicans in the Senate opposed the Dream Act to benefit undocumented residents seeking citizenship. 

On A-5, a story reports Senate Republicans also blocked the bill giving health benefits to 9/11 workers and residents. An A-15 story reports more Republican opposition -- to lifting the military's ban on openly gay troops.

Bah, humbug

On A-33, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin rewrites "The Night Before Christmas" to portray Christie as the state's Santa Claus -- another glowing appraisal of the governor from one of his chief apologists. There's only one line of truth, though: "I barely had noticed he never lowered my taxes."

Turning to the Local front, any reader who can figure out what Road Worrier Columnist John Cichowski is saying about changes in the state's highway assistance program is a better man than me.

Also in Local, an L-3 headline says:

Christie backs fertilizer limits

But is there any limit to his bullshit?

Copping a plea

For nearly 18 months, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado has covered suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa's legal troubles, lawsuits against the chief and disciplinary hearings for cops, but it never occurred to her or her assignment editor to explore the impact of all that on morale in the department.

For that, readers will have to turn to the Hackensack Chronicle's Dec. 10 edition.

No health ratings

In place of restaurant health ratings -- dropped by Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill -- readers will find lots of wire service copy and restaurant mini-reviews today in the Better Living tabloid.

Restaurant  Reviewer Elisa Ung rates Pintxo y Tapas in Englewood, formerly Tapas de Espana, as Good to Excellent (two and a half stars) -- on par with a faux-Caribbean, chain restaurant in Wayne called Bahama Breeze. That's not much of a compliment.