Evidence mounts of Christie's pivotal role in Bridgegate

Traffic on Center Street in Fort Lee crawling toward Main Street on Monday, when construction on Main made driving in the borough an ordeal, as it has been on so many days in the past two years.

A digital sign on Main Street warned motorists of similar disruptions through Friday.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I'm betting the 1.5 million pages of evidence federal prosecutors won't make public show Governor Christie had a pivotal role in the George Washington Bridge political-retribution scandal.

Indeed, the GOP bully could be one of the unindicted -- and as yet unidentified -- co-conspirators mentioned in today's Page 1 story in The Record.

There is a lot more negative news on Christie in today's paper, but you won't find it on A-1, where it belongs.

Joke's on us

Editor Martin Gottlieb used precious front-page space to recap the stupid jokes that closed out David Letterman's late-night TV career (A-1).

Letterman's 6,028th and last show on Wednesday night upsets only insomniacs and workers stuck in crappy night jobs, like the luckless copy editors in the old Hackensack newsroom.

On A-4 today, readers can find stories on an attempt to stop Christie from developing the Liberty State Park waterfront in Jersey City, and on a favorable legal opinion from his appointee on disclosing gifts from Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones and other friends.

Mass transit

More on Christie can be found on A-20 today, where an editorial finally calls on the worst governor in New Jersey history to "make mass transit a priority," noting in an understatement that he hasn't done so since taking office in 2010.

For years, The Record has reported negatively on the extension of light rail to Bergen County, and ignored the need to expand both bus service to Manhattan and the PATH commuter rail system (A-3).

The editors also allowed Road Warrior John Cichowski to stray far from his role as a commuting columnist, and almost exclusively cover problems associated with driving and drivers.

Now, the editorial declares, "Mass transit needs public subsidies; there isn't anyway around that fact.

"Taking commuters off highways is a boon for  commuters in cars as well as for commercial truckers."

Correction

On A-2 today, Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza acknowledge that after decades of covering similar local stories, they don't have a clue which Ho-Ho-Kus board will hear a large-scale housing plan on June 4.

In Local -- the section edited by Sykes and Sforza --the death of that vicious German shepherd at the hands of a Wyckoff cop three weeks ago gets better play on L-1 than the L-6 obituary of jazz music executive Bruce Lundvall, 79, also of Wyckoff.

Low gas prices

An Associated Press story reports low gas prices in early 2015 didn't boost the economy, as the media predicted they would (L-9).

Of course, the clueless wire-service reporter, Christopher S. Rugaber, doesn't bother exploring whether low gas prices encouraged people to drive more.

That would have worsened air pollution, increased traffic congestion and discouraged owners of gas-guzzlng SUVs from switching to more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Self-serve gasoline could be bad for air quality in N.J.

This two-pump gas station on Sylvan Avenue in Englewood Cliffs will probably never convert to self-service, even if the law is changed to allow it.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front-page story on a proposal to allow self-serve gas stations in New Jersey raises a lot of questions about prices that are never answered.

The story claims drivers pay a "full-service premium ... at the pump" estimated "at 8 cents to 18 cents a gallon," but doesn't say whether prices will be cut, if self-serve is approved (A-6).

Nor does The Record say how much the gasoline tax might be raised, and whether the net effect will be lower prices at the pump.

Cutting gasoline prices would transform a quality of life report into an environmental story, if lower prices encourage more driving and discourage the purchase of hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars.

Of course, the New Jersey Gasoline C-Store Automotive Association probably wouldn't pass along labor savings to the consumer.

Members of the owners group have been charged with numerous wage violations.

Confusing numbers

At one point, the story reports self-serve pumps "would mean the loss of hundreds of part-time jobs," but a few paragraphs later notes gas stations employ about 5,000 attendants who pump gas, most of them part time (A-6).

Today's lead story on A-1 reports air pollution is getting worse in New Jersey. 

A proposal that might lead to lower gas prices and encourage more driving certainly isn't welcome in the Garden State, where mass transit is already operating at capacity.

Letterman effect

If the page proofer, news and copy editors, and other members of the newsroom production staff are still watching David Letterman, readers might finally have an explanation for the dramatic spike in errors in recent years (BL-1).

Letterman's "Late Show" was a fixture in the newsroom before the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group abandoned Hackensack in 2009.

Even more significant, moving the printing of The Record to Rockaway Township from Hackensack a couple of years earlier apparently ended the tradition of checking the first copies for errors, stopping the presses and fixing them.

Six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton has done a miserable job of ensuring accurate headlines, and all editing seems to have ended, allowing reporters and columnists to write on and on, and spin fiction if they want.

All this coverage -- today and Sunday -- of Letterman's final show on Wednesday is a waste of space. 

After I left the paper, I never watched the comedian again.

Second looks

Take a look at the corrections on Saturday's A-2 for examples of what a crappy job Houlton and the news and copy editors under her are doing.

One headline "gave the incorrect town in which seven people face prostitution-related charges."

Another correction fixed the misspelling of a Bergen County official's name, but also gave the name of his agency incorrectly.

Adam Strobel was identified as "division director for open space." The division isn't named.

The Strobel correction noted the "impact" of raising the open-space tax also was wrong in a story on Friday's L-6.

Death Valley

Sunday's Travel section cover story on California's Death Valley National Park was beautifully written by Staff Writer Lindy Washburn, the paper's chief medical reporter.

Her description of the landscape and "a silence as immense as any on earth" makes me want to visit even more than I did before (T-1).

Paper's obese editors long ignored our obese governor

A front-page "ANALYSIS" in The Record today credits four officials and declares that NJ Transit bus commuters no longer face long lines and delays in returning home from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, above. Now, will the Woodland Park daily finally take notice of the shortage of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In The Record's front-page story on Governor Christie's weight loss, experts note a candidate needs "to look like the part they are running for."

But the story never explains why Record reporters covering Christie's campaign in 2009 and his inauguration completely ignored his weight and whether he was fit to serve.

That may be because after working side-by-side with at least two obese editors in the newsroom, the reporters covering Christie didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.

And that continued for years as only the national media tried to find out how much Christie weighed, and late-night comedian David Letterman guessed the GOP bully had ballooned to 400 pounds.

See this Eye on The Record post from 2011:

Guess how much Christie weighs 

Better or not?

A front-page story last Wednesday and another one today declare an end to long lines and afternoon rush-hour delays for NJ Transit bus riders leaving the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan (A-1).

But Jay Holahan of Teaneck says in a letter to the editor today:

"As a 25-year commuter, I don't recognize any immediate improvements ...." (A-13).

News or snooze?

Residents of Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other Bergen towns won't find anything about them in Local today.

The lead story in the section is a controversial proposal to replace Memorial Field in far-off Washington Township with artificial turf (L-1).

The local editors needed another Dean's List to fill their pages (L-2).

Poor food choices

Free-lancer Kate Morgan Jackson's list of a dozen "great food stores" for home cooks omits Whole Foods Market, Costco Wholesale and two of the best, Jerry's Gourmet & More and Balthazar Bakery, both in Englewood (BL-1).

Jackson appears unwilling to stray too far from her Upper Saddle River home.

On Wednesdays, the food blogger also supplies Better Living with unhealthy recipes, many filled with artery clogging cream and butter.

Another sad day for New Jersey journalism

Will The Record's coverage of the Christie administration's politically inspired George Washington Bridge lane closures in Fort Lee, above, win the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize, the highest achievement in journalism? Prizewinners and nominated finalists will be announced April 14 at Columbia University in Manhattan.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Newspaper veterans rubbed their tired eyes today as they read of more drastic cuts in the news-gathering staff at The Star-Ledger, the onetime behemoth that once cast a shadow on The Record and every other newspaper in New Jersey. 

The Woodland Park daily is reporting that 40 more jobs will be lost in The Star-Ledger's non-unionized newsroom, cutting the staff to 116, down from a high of 350 before the first buyouts in 2008 (A-1 and A-3).

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Star-Ledger, hit by the newspaper industry's nationwide drop in readership and advertising, claims a circulation of 167,600 daily, compared to 473,000 in 1993.

Outsourcing

A total of 306 will be laid off at The Star-Ledger and other daily and weekly papers owned by Advance Publications Inc. in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and at the company's NJ.com Web site.

Advance plans to create a new company based in Woodbridge that will provide advertising, marketing and news content to The Star-Ledger, its other newspapers and its Web site.

Outsourcing news gathering is sort of like a school board outsourcing janitorial services: 

Both deal with a lot of shit. At New Jersey newspapers, that takes the form of bullshit from Chris Christie, the GOP monster who has turned out to be state's worst governor.

Second thoughts

The Star-Ledger has done a better job than most of seeing through Christie's bluster, and in February, the paper called its endorsement of his reelection "regrettable."

"...Yes, we blew this one," wrote Tom Moran, the former Record staffer who is now on The Star-Ledger's editorial board, mentioning both the Bridgegate and Sandy aid debacles.

The Record's story today is strangely silent on how the flagship North Jersey Media Group daily has weathered the downturn in the industry.

The Woodland Park daily has been hiding its circulation decline by issuing numbers that include the Herald News, which is called an "edition" of The Record.

After a major downsizing in 2008 and the abandonment of its Hackensack headquarters in 2009, many new reporters have been added, likely at much lower salaries than newsroom veterans.

But the merger of the NJMG daily papers' newsroom staffs in Woodland Park has resulted in a decline in the quality and quantity of local news; poor writing and editing, and a dramatic increase in errors. 

Page 1 profiles

Three of today's Page 1 stories read like profiles:

Virginia Rohan's column on David Letterman, who announced his retirement from late-night TV; a story on Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, called "a mystery" in the headline; and an obituary for Vincent Lamberti, a Lever Bros. researcher who is called the "father of Dove soap," a synthetic compound (A-1).

I just skimmed the headlines and first few paragraphs of the column about Letterman, who will be missed by insomniacs, drunks who live in bars and The Record's long-suffering news and copy editors, who work late into the night putting out the error-filled paper.

Ditto for the long, boring story on Guadagno, a non-entity who was chosen as a running mate by Christie because she was a woman, had a pulse and wouldn't dare challenge the governor in anything.

Christie was already henpecked by his overweight wife, who later got him to kill the Hudson River rail tunnels because the connection to the New York City subway was too far for her to walk.

But I read and enjoyed every word of the Lamberti obituary, saying to myself, Now, that is a life well-lived, something I'm sure I will never say about Letterman, Christie or Guadagno. 

Hackensack news

The Record's Local section today has a follow-up on Polifly Towing, a Hackensack company that has been using city owned land rent free, but has been paid $20,613 for towing illegally parked vehicles in the past three years (L-1).

The Record has had nothing so far on whether there is a school-board election this month.

But today's edition of the weekly Hackensack Chronicle reports the school board has presented a proposed 2014-15 operating budget that raises taxes $116 for a home assessed at $240,329.

Neither paper has reported the ups and downs of the elevator at Hackensack High School, where the cafeteria is in the basement, and classes are held on upper floors.

The elevator was out of service for more than two months, until a new part was fabricated, but it continues to break down periodically, stranding disabled students and an athlete recovering from a broken leg. 

Dog food

Is any reader eager to dine at The Dog & Cask in Rochelle Park, where a "pathetic" 5.5-ounce burger was "cooked into oblivion," the toast with charcuterie was burnt, and cod and pasta were oversalted (BL-16)?

Elisa Ung, the dessert-obsessed reviewer, even hated three of the four artery clogging treats she sampled. 

The poorly edited review describes the pub as "upscale ... with food that veers more fine dining," but a word is missing (data box on BL-16).

Leave it to Ung to find awful places to eat, then neglect to tell readers whether any of the meat served is grass-fed or raised naturally.

The Dog & Cask replaces Bistro 55, where former Food Editor Bill Pitcher was given a send-off several years ago.

If you eat at the new place now, good luck surviving the drunks in the parking lot or the ones racing by on Route 17.

Is Christie heading for the grave?

Friday's nor'easter didn't live up to the media hype, allowing Hackensack residents to notice how poorly some streets were plowed and to contemplate a post light, above.

A morbidly obese Governor Christie appears to be following in the footsteps of Robert "Bear" Bottigliero, a 61-year-old, 600-pound Lodi man who died of a heart attack on Feb. 2 (The Record's Local front today).

As usual, the obituary ignores the medical story, so readers don't know if a dangerous buildup in his coronary arteries or valve disease or something else killed him.

Chrsitie, 50, responding to a renewed debate over his weight, claims he is "the healthiest fat guy" in the world, and that his cholesterol and blood sugar are fine (A-4).

The GOP bully thinks he is going to live forever, judging from his personal attack on a former White House doctor who expressed concern Christie might die in office.

Christie lashed out, saying his 12-year-old son asked, "Dad, are you going to die?"

Gee. Doesn't his family know he is mortal or do they believe all the walk-on-water hype about the governor that appears in The Record and other media?

Yes. Christie is going to die, and depending on what he does about his weight and what he eats, that might be sooner rather than later.

More than three years after he took office, The Record and other New Jersey media continue to give Christie a pass on his obesity and what his administration has or hasn't done about the obesity epidemic.

They react to outlets like "60 Minutes," among the first to raise the issue of Christie's weight in 2010. 

David Letterman guesses Christie weighs 400 pounds, but the governor refuses to say whether that is accurate or to release his medical records.

Saturday's paper

Two more corrections appeared on A-2 of Saturday's paper, which whipped up hysteria among readers that Friday's storm could be another Sandy, even though it was clear that wasn't the case.

"We love you, Sandy" are the words most frequently spoken by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her minions, who have scrambled for years to gather enough local news.

Now, all they do is fill news columns with endless stories on Sandy cleanup and relief aid, compare any other storm to the devastating superstorm and promote Christie as a Sandy saviour who is worthy of a second term.  

Today's paper

Today's A-1 and L-1 reports on the nor'easter don't contain a word about how well North Jersey towns did in plowing streets and clearing bus stops and crosswalks, except for tiny Moonachie.

At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, an entire block of Euclid Avenue in Hackensack, between the railroad tracks and Main Street, hadn't been plowed, and the intersection of Main and Euclid was full of snow.

I'm sure other neighborhoods showed similar neglect.

This is what Hackensack residents have come to expect as property taxes rise and the quality of municipal services declines, but it's a story you'll never see in The Record, which fled the city in 2009.

No budget stories

In 2011 and 2012, Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, couldn't even find time to report on the city's budget and tax rate.

Councilman John Labrosse is the only incumbent running for a new term on May 14, claiming credit for ousting former Assemblyman Ken Zisa as police chief and installing Michael Mordaga as police director.

Those claims are laughable, seeing how, despite higher property taxes, Labrosse and his fellow council members can't even get the streets plowed properly. 

Poor and rich

Another A-1 story today suggests Christie is hoarding roughly $115 million "in appropriated spending" that may eventually lead to cuts in programs for poor and low-income residents.

That's no surprise from a governor who has protected the wealthy from a tax surcharge at the expense of the middle and working classes.

Annoying columns

Did anybody read more than a few words from Road Warrior John Cichowski, who today rehashes past roof-snow columns and events dating to the 1990s and the 1980s (L-1)?

Or get past the first few lines of Columnist Mike Kelly's rewrite of recent news stories he calls "warning signs about children" (O-1)?

Millionaire's diet

Guy Fieri, a restaurant owner and celebrity chef, probably eats more unhealthy, low-quality food than any other multimillionaire in the country, judging from "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" on the Food Network or Fools Network, as I like to call it.

So why does Staff Writer Elisa Ung waste her Sunday column, The Corner Table, promoting Fieri's crappy food at Montclair State University (BL-1)?   

Screw-up of the day

The clueless copy desk came up with a doozie today, and six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton failed miserably in catching it.

On the Real Estate cover story (R-1), a subheadline claims: 

"Strident rules

restrict loan

modifications"

"Strident" means "loud and harsh, grating," so I'm sure the proper word the headline writer was looking for is "stringent."

LOL.

Christie's gorging partner is revealed

Superstorm Sandy damage in Union Beach on Jan. 19, above and below.

In the photo on Page 1 of The Record today, can that be the friend who has been enabling Governor Christie's binge eating and continued denial of how his morbid obesity is endangering his health?

There, in the bottom left corner of the photo from Sea Bright, the unidentified bearded man in a red T-shirt and suit jacket appears to be even bigger than Christie, who weighs 400 pounds or close to it.

The photo is a rare glimpse of the GOP bully actually walking -- as opposed to being driven even short distances in a massive state police SUV or Ford Crown Victoria.

'Fat Thursday'

Is it a coincidence that at the bottom of the front page readers find a blurb about a Polish holiday called "Fat Thursday," which could very well serve as the overline for the photo of Christie and his eating partner? 

On A-4 today, a story from The Star-Ledger -- not from Deirdre Sykes, The Record's obese head assignment editor -- quotes experts who see rising health risks for Christie, who ate a jelly doughnut on the David Letterman TV show even as he declared himself "the healthiest fat man" on Earth.

Secret records

"The governor declined Thursday to release his medical records and does not discuss what he eats and drinks or how often he exercises," The Star-Ledger reports, contradicting media reports dating to 2010.

Two of Christie's favorites are beer and pizza, according to those reports. 

And on "60 Minutes," he claimed to be working out with a personal trainer, but refused to reveal his weight or say how much he had lost. 

Editors as enablers

Another enabler is Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, a trim, fastidious man who describes himself as "short" and "husky" growing up (A-18).

Doblin and other media members who emphasize how hard it is to lose weight only encourage the obese, whose eating is out of control.

"Losing a lot of weight can appear to be an impossible task," Doblin says, but he should have added it is very possible with a little discipline or, if you don't have will power, with life-saving surgery.

Weight loss is easy

Of course, Doblin may think it's "impossible," because he rubs shoulders with Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill, who delights in promoting cookbook recipes filled with butter, sugar and heavy cream, and chief Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, who is addicted to desserts.  

At the gym on Thursday, I met an obese man who said he had lost 96 pounds after Lap-Band surgery at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck. 

"An inflatable band is placed around the upper part of the stomach [that] divides it into two unequal parts. The upper part acts as the new stomach, restricting food intake and promoting weight loss," according to NJBariatrics.com. 

Hire a personal cook 

The Christies' net worth has been put at $3 million, so it would be easy for the state's overweight first family to hire a personal cook.

He or she could prepare weight-losing meals for the entire family, and snacks for when the governor is traveling around the country collecting campaign money from special interests. 

Talking about special interests: Is The Record going to identify all of Christie's donors and free flights, as it does today for embattled Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat (A-1)?


Another bad headline

Also on A-1 today, the headline on the Silver Alerts story improperly puts quote marks around the words "be on the lookout" that don't appear on the highway signs.

On the front of Sykes' Local section, the first line from Road Warrior John Cichowski -- "Ka-boom!" -- signals another column that lands like a bomb and has absolutely nothing to do with North Jersey's many commuting problems (L-1).

Gee-whiz fillers

Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, found little local news and had to fill out their pages with two gee-whiz photos of non-fatal accidents (L-2 and L-3).

Mother Nature struck a blow for the environment by using a tree to destroy a gas-guzzling, polluting SUV that had a single occupant, a woman (L-3).

As in the past, both photo captions lack even basic information on the cause of the accidents or the identity of the drivers.

Having a heart

Also on L-3 today, The Record corrects a previous story on less-invasive heart surgery by including the names of two hospitals the paper had omitted on Sunday -- Englewood Hospital and Medical Center and St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson. 
 

Section is on diet


In another sign of cutbacks, the restaurant review in Better Living today fills only one page, instead of two (BL-18).

The Balcony in Carlstadt gets a lukewarm "Good" rating from Bob Probert, who doesn't say whether any of the meat or poultry is naturally raised or whether the salmon is wild or farmed. 

Second look

On Thursday's L-3, The Record reported the Teaneck Township Council unanimously approved a resolution expressing support for state and federal measures to address gun voilence.

The paper didn't report that Hackensack's City Council deferred action on the same resolution Tuesday night.


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