On Page 1, editor focuses on bunch of losers like himself

Late Wednesday morning, traffic lights went dark at Main and Anderson streets in Hackensack, as well as at Anderson and River streets, above, and at Cedar Lane and River Road in Teaneck, below.

On Cedar Lane, drivers were forced to turn right onto River Road.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Oh, there was another GOP debate? Yawn.

Like most North Jersey Democrats, who far outnumber Republicans, I feel Governor Christie and the other GOP presidential hopefuls are just a bunch of losers.

Why is Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record devoting so much of the front-page to that sorry lot while neglecting local elections?

And I am sick and tired of the almost daily Page 1 analysis of those other losers, the Mets (A-1).

Lazy lifers

Gottlieb is a former New York Times editor who is completing his third year in the job of running the Woodland Park newsroom.

But he seems unsuited for the nitty gritty of covering local affairs in nearly 80 towns in Bergen and Passaic counties.

He leaves that to three lazy, disinterested lifers, local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, and Sunday Projects Editor Tim Nostrand.

On A-3, a story reports the decision to replace the antiquated midtown Manhattan bus terminal is being driven by politics and a rivalry between New York and New Jersey.

But that has been the case for decades. 

In fact, the original name of the Port Authority didn't include "New Jersey," and state officials complained bitterly in the 1980s that New York was grabbing the lion's share of agency resources.

Hackensack news?

If you wonder why there is so little Hackensack news, take a look at six major stories from Passaic County in today's local-news section, including a long report on the Paterson school board election (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

In Bergen County, the bare-knuckle Democratic Party machine in Hackensack is trying to regain a single seat on the City Council in a special Nov. 3 non-partisan election.

Jason Nunnermacker, president of the city's free-spending Board of Education, is the knucklehead candidate supported by Lynne Hurwitz -- the power broker behind the Zisa family dynasty -- and other Democrats, including Hackensack lawyer Roy Cho.

Cho gained the respect of Democrats in 2014, when he challenged Rep. Scott Garrett, the Wantage conservative who represents a good deal of Bergen County in Congress.

But his endorsement of the pudgy school board president shows just how desperate the Hurwitz-Zisa alliance is to regain the power they lost when Nunnermacker and four other hand-picked candidates were defeated in May 2013.

$22-an-hour aides

In an email to fellow Democrats, Cho claims he's seen Nunnermacker's "commitment to the children of Hackensack while vigilantly ensuring that tax dollars are spent wisely."

Cho apparently is unaware the principal of Hackensack High School is paid more than $172,000 a year, only a few thousand less than Christie, or that lunchroom aides at two elementary school are listed in board documents as getting $22 an hour. 

Nunnermacker has three opponents, including Richard L. Cerbo, the son of a former mayor who doesn't have any axes to grind.

Cerbo's motto is "We can do better."

John Molinelli

The lead story on L-1 today reports critics of Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli say a letter the freeholder chairwoman sent this month to Christie "was instrumental in [the governor's] decision to appoint a new prosecutor."

But a few paragraphs later, the story says Christie decided in January 2013 to replace Molinelli, but that the nomination expired.

Can both of those things be true? 

Wednesday's Local 

Passaic County also dominated the local-news section that was delivered to Bergen readers on Wednesday.

At least Sykes and Sforza were able to find a photo showing the face of William J. Bate, a surrogate judge, for a story on the dedication of Paterson's new courthouse plaza.

The best the lazy editors could do on Tuesday was showing the back of the head of James P. Coleman, onetime pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack, where a street was named in his honor.

Coleman was black and Bate was white. Could that have influenced the choice of photos?

Mixed food messages

A day after the World Health Organization caused a media storm by linking cured meats to colon cancer, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz wrote a long column praising Taylor Ham, a pork-based processed meat that is "cured, smoked and pre-cooked" (Wednesday's BL-2).

Her recipe for N.J. Taylor Ham and Cheese Stuffing includes artery clogging butter, bacon fat and two kinds of full-fat cheeses.

Yuck.

Another front page overflowing with news we can't use

The exterior of the 222-unit Meridia Metro rental building on State Street in Hackensack appears to be complete, but tenants won't be moving in until the fall. Completion of the project, the first in the city's ambitious downtown redevelopment plan, was delayed.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's Sports section does such a pathetically poor job of covering Formula 1 and other auto racing readers are bewildered by a Page 1 story today on a Wayne college student's quixotic quest to drive in the world's most exclusive club.

That's only one of the stories and columns Editor Martin Gottlieb chose for a front page that basically wastes North Jersey readers' valuable time (A-1).

A-1 is dominated by the same images of a refugee crisis in Europe readers have seen on the nightly TV news for many days now.

Christie, Iran deal

Gottlieb also robs readers with yet another A-1 story by Staff Writer Melissa Hayes on Governor Christie's floundering campaign, especially in New Hampshire, which he visited 22 times.

Are you looking for an opinion on whether families of victims killed "in Iran-sponsored attacks" should finally collect on court judgments from billions of dollars that will be unfrozen as part of the nuclear deal?

You won't find one from opinion Columnist Mike Kelley, who pushes thousands of words around in another overly long piece to frame the "debate over the deal" (A-1).

The thumbnail photo of Kelly's shit-eating grin -- dating to the early 2000s -- is an insult to readers.

Local news?

Did local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza give up their best local story to Gottlieb -- the one on Page 1 of a 19-year-old's Formula 1 dreams?

That would seem to be the case from all of the Law & Order news in today's local-news section (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

On L-3, readers stare dumbly at filler photos of a trash spill on Route 17 and a non-fatal fire in Clifton, where the tenants have so little rent money they have to live over a bar.

The number of Paterson stories in the section delivered to Bergen County readers suggests North Jersey Media Group is trying to save money on newsprint by eliminating a separate section for Passaic County.

Non-profit medical center giving Hackensack $5.1 million

At Tuesday night's meeting of the Hackensack City Council, Jerry Lombardo, right, chairman of the Upper Main Street Alliance, announced that two developers, Alfred Sanzari Enterprises and Meridia, are donating $40,000 toward the cost of the Atlantic Street park the business group urged the city to build on downtown parking lots. George Capodagli, the developer behind the Meridia Metro apartment project on State Street, is giving $25,000 of that amount.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Hackensack University Medical Center, a non-profit that holds more than $130 million in tax-exempt property, will pay the city $5.1 million over three years, officials said Tuesday night.

In a second development, Capt. Nicole Foley, head of the Hackensack police Traffic Division, has been reassigned.

The move came after numerous complaints from residents that police failed to enforce no-parking rules on 70 streets during the winter, entombing vehicles, hampering snow clearing and endangering drivers on streets too narrow for two cars to pass.

HUMC payments

At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, City Manager David Troast said as the result of "tax appeals," the huge medical center will contribute $5.1 million over three years for "progressive projects."

He declined to be more specific.

At earlier meetings, Mayor John Labrosse, an HUMC employee, said the city was talking with the medical center about paying for the repaving of Prospect Avenue, a heavily traveled street lined with high-rises that resembles a third-world camel track from the pounding of traffic, including ambulances.

But the repaving of Prospect and other streets was announced a couple of weeks ago with financing from a bond and grants.

City Manager David Troast said a "frugal budget" approved by the Hackensack City Council will raise municipal taxes 3.99% or a hike of $155.99 on the average home. During the public portion of the meeting Tuesday night, no resident rose to comment on the spending plan.

Capt. Foley

The reassignment of Hackensack police Capt. Foley apparently is unrelated to the fatal pedestrian accident on March 9, when she cleared a detective of any wrongdoing in the death of a 64-year-old Vietnamese-American woman.

Foley was quoted in The Record's March 11 story on the accident at Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street, saying police do not know where Hue D. Dang was "standing" when she was hit by an unmarked car driven by Detective Sgt. John C. Straniero, 49, of Wayne.

Foley did not mention the Jackson Avenue crosswalk to The Record's police reporter, Stefanie Dazio, nor tell her Dang fell to the pavement with her feet in the crosswalk and that a plastic grocery bag she was carrying fell next to one of the car's wheel.

Neighborhood residents believe Straniero may have been looking left to see if traffic on Kennedy was approaching Jackson Avenue and turned right toward Route 80 ramps, hitting the woman when she was in or near the crosswalk.

On Wednesday, one resident referred to Dang as the "woman who got creamed."

When Eye on The Record contacted the state police and state Attorney's General Office, expressing concern that no charges were filed against the detective, the Union County prosecutor's fatal accident unit was asked to investigate.

Today' paper

Staff Writer Todd South of The Record covered Tuesday night's Hackensack City Council meeting, but any story he may have written doesn't appear in the paper today.

As you can see from the Local section, crime news took precedence on L-1 and L-2.

Page 1

For the second day in a row, Editor Martin Gottlieb blesses readers with another all-New Jersey front page (A-1).

Unfortunately, Gottlieb included a boring Charles Stile column on Governor Christie's presidential ambitions that reads much like the 100 others the Trenton reporter has written on the same subject (A-1).

If you Google "Charles Stile and Governor Christie," you get 18,700 "results."

Gottlieb also included a big photo of Tiger Woods and his adorable children as the editor and sports Columnist Tara Sullivan try to help the wealthy pro golfer rehabilitate his image as a womanizer and home breaker (L-1 and S-1).

David Samson

In an unintentionally hilarious story, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg reports David Samson --Christie's father figure, confidant and adviser -- is retiring from the practice of law (A-1).

What's hilarious is that his firm, Wolff & Samson, is changing its name to a real tongue twister -- Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi -- and will likely lose millions in billings to other firms that are easier to remember.

Samson resigned as Port Authority chairman, the job Christie gave him, in the wake of the Bridgegate scandal. 

More corrections

Local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, and Production Editor Liz Houlton admit today to two major screw-ups on Tuesday's A-1 and in an L-3 story on March 31.

Detailed corrections appear on A-2 today.

One correction notes one of the Woodland Park daily's front-page stories on the murder-suicide in Elmwood Park incorrectly reported the day on which the elderly couple died.

"It was Sunday" (not "Wednesday afternoon"), the correction states, referring to Michael Juskin, 100, who killed his wife, Rosalia, 88, with an ax before slitting his wrists (see A-1 follow-up today).

In Tuesday's story, the "Wednesday afternoon" reference appears in the first paragraph of Staff Writer Stephanie Akin's A-1 sidebar on the prevalence of domestic violence among seniors.

How many editors read that first paragraph and missed the error before it was published?

How many of those editors are pulling down six figures and laughing all the way to the bank?

Don Smith

Photographs credited to veteran Staff Photographer Don Smith have been missing for weeks. 

Is he on vacation? Did he get fired? Has there been another downsizing at North Jersey Media Group?

More poor news judgment

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Why doesn't somebody arrest "Baby Doc" Duvalier?

Here's something for readers starved of local news: Charter schools apparently aren't the magic bullet Governor Christie is making them out to be in his assault on public-school teachers. The lead story in The Record of Woodland Park reports some of them under-perform, even in such troubled districts as Paterson.

From there, today's North Jersey Page 1 is all down hill, thanks to the skewed priorities of desperate Editor Francis Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who have led the staff stampede away from covering local municipal news.

Mike Kelly's Sunday column on our weak gun laws belonged on A-1, but his overlong, overwritten piece on Glen Rock unfurling a new flag for a dying Vietnam War veteran has Local front written all over it. Is it on the front page today out of Scandale's loyalty to the borough where he lives?

Every word a gem

Poor Peter Sampson, one of the hard-working newsroom veterans and a former United Press International reporter. What is all this on A-1 about the FBI using cellphone calls to track suspects' movements -- a story that takes up three-quarters of a page inside, complete with complicated graphics?

Readers already are intimately familiar with the tracking technology from "Law & Order SVU," "Fringe" and many other TV dramas. 

A really powerful package of international news appears inside -- the puzzling return of former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and the new government that replaced the corrupt Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his rapacious wife in Tunisia.

Surely, there must be Haitians and Tunisians in North Jersey to tell the story through, if the clueless assignment desk would just send a couple of reporters out to find them.

Putting the twin dictators on A-1 would show readers that Scandale just doesn't exploit the human misery of earthquakes, floods, mudslides and disease when he scrambles for a powerful image the inflexible Page 1 designers demand every day.  

News killer

For months, The Record and other media have quoted Republicans as saying they want to repeal health-care reform because it is a "job-killer." On A-7, a story quotes experts saying that claim is basically unfounded -- even as the effort is getting under way in Congress.

What took everyone so long? I guess the sound bites and hot buttons are too hard for news people to resist.

Conflicting messages

Readers of Sykes' Local front must be wondering whether the Englewood-based Benzel-Busch Motor Car Corp. -- that's the six-column ad above the fold attached to the 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH series-- is the kind of responsible company discussed by consumer advocate Malaak Compton Rock, the subject of today's article.

Also on L-1, Columnist Charles Stile finally identifies John Wallace as the only African-American on the state Supreme Court when he was denied renomination by Christie, but he refuses to confront the governor on the nonsensical reasons cited for his removal.  

Stile and other reporters consistently fail to explore the racial angle, given that Christie's nominee to replace Wallace is a white woman. 

Drive-by reporting

On L-3, a brief identifies the 16-year-old Ramsey girl who was killed by a train, and her death is called a suicide. Readers are told nothing else about her. 

As far as The Record is concerned, her life, and the lives of innumerable others who died in one-car accidents or were run down crossing the street, have no news value.

Just another rich Republican

Image via Wikipedia

More bad news from Governor Christie is back on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today. This governor is another Republican who takes from the working and middle classes and gives tax breaks to wealthy people like the Borgs, owners of North Jersey Media Group.

Now, Christie wants to divert $158 million from the state Clean Energy Program to help with a $2.2 billion deficit in Trenton, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reports. Dozen of environmental programs could be scaled down, including a rebate program for solar panels, the story says.

Two corrections appear on A-2 today, but neither addresses the two errors assignment and copy editors overlooked in Staff Writer Giovanna Fabiano's L-1 story yesterday on the Leonia police chief. The suspect was William David Jones, not "Davie," and the victim was a 21-year-old woman, not "girl," according to a 1995 story in The Record.

If you doubt court, crime and accident news is being pedaled as local news by the lazy, incompetent assignment desk under Deirdre Sykes, take a look at L-3 today -- all but a few lines are devoted to those stories. Elsewhere in Local, there is a one paragraph story about Teaneck and a brief identifying a 34-year-old Hackensack woman killed in an auto accident in Ringwood.

Was she someone's wife, mother, daughter? Let's hope the family buys a death notice, because the police reporter cares not. Yet there is another long story today about the Paterson teen who was gunned down early Saturday.