Gannett compares N.J. criminal-justice reform to Monopoly

Let's see how this works once Republican con man Donald J. Trump is sworn in as president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2017.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You'd expect Staff Writer Jim Norman, a former New York Times reporter, to do a good job explaining the many complex changes in New Jersey's criminal justice system to readers of The Record today.

But imagine the dilemma of a faceless Gannett editor holed up in a production center in Neptune, where he or she had to come up with a Page 1 headline that is both bright and right.

Well, the headline certainly is bright, if not downright sensational:

"Get out of
jail free,
or court
reform?"

What an abomination, not to mention inaccurate.

"Get out of jail free" sounds like a reference to Monopoly, the board game, but the phrase also strongly suggests that convicted criminals will go free once the changes go into effect on Jan. 1.

Unfortunately for the inept headline writer, all of the people who will remain free while awaiting trial are innocent until proven guilty, a bedrock of our legal system.

Numerous errors

Since Gannett's drastic November downsizing of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, bad headlines and errors seem to have increased.

Today, for example, a photo caption on 4A refers to the "Bronx section of New York," when everyone knows the Bronx is one of New York's five boroughs.

On 2BL in Better Living on Wednesday, a story on the expected opening of Azucar Cuban Cuisine in Closter says you'll be able to spot the restaurant easily by a "black 1950 Chrysler parked in front (pictured)" -- except no photo of the car appears with the story.

Also on Wednesday, the lead news story on Page 1 carried a totally meaningless headline:

"Court
fight
reveals
Christie's
planning

"Details on PATH station
ceremony offers glimpse
of governor's preparation"

The reaction of most readers: 

So what?

Legislature stops Christie, gunman avenges Syrian slaughter

Moments after pumping several bullets into the back of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov on Monday, a Turkish police officer shouted, "Don't forget Aleppo! Don't forget Syria!" This photo and others from Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici, who was covering the event at an arts center, are certain to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie is down but not out after the state Legislature killed a bill that would have allowed him to cash in on a book-publishing deal while giving hefty raises to his Cabinet officers, judges and legislative aides.

But a separate bill -- to drop the requirement that public notices be published in newspapers -- survived, and will be debated again next year  (1A and 6A).

For the biggest piece of fiction in today's paper, see the third paragraph of the Page 1 news story:

"It was a stunning turn of events for Christie, who was once regarded as a master of cutting deals with New Jersey's Democratic political bosses and muscling the bills through the Legislature" (1A).

Christie hasn't made deals for years; instead, he's unleashed more than 500 vetoes to get his way with the majority Democrats -- vetoes that have hurt the working and middle classes in New Jersey.

And shame on Charles Stile for yet another front-page column on what Christie once was and what he is now -- amounting to a rewrite of every piece under the byline of the burned-out Trenton reporter since the GOP bully abandoned his White House dreams last February (1A).

Defending profits

The Record and other newspapers, as well as the New Jersey Press Association, portrayed the battle over legal notices as a "free press" issue.

The NJPA ran a full-page ad on the back of The Record's Local section claiming Christie is trying to "hide ... vital information" from the public, including "government contract bids, air and water pollution emergencies, and meetings of legislative bodies" (8L on Sunday).

But the substantial revenue generated by publication of the notices amounts to a questionable subsidy to newspapers, which are supposed to be independent.

Finally, the notices are of little use to taxpayers, because they are printed in small type and poorly organized. 

In Hackensack, the City Clerk's Office spends about $1,000 a month on publishing the legal notices, an official said on Monday.

The city's Board of Education also publishes its own meeting schedule and budget, but spends less than the City Clerk's Office.

Christie apparently exaggerated the savings to government and business as $80 million a year, if the notices were put online.

'Don't forget Aleppo'

Every time the news media reported Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Tump's praise for Vladimir Putin, few editors reminded readers of the Russian bombers that were pulverizing Aleppo to keep a dictator in power.

On Monday, a Turkish cop fatally wounded Andrei Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, avenging all of the deaths of innocent civilians during the civil war struggle for Syria's biggest city.

Cubans live longer, don't worry about guns, crime or drugs

Pope Francis and Fidel Castro meeting on Sept. 20, 2015, during the pontiff's trip to Cuba (Credit: Alex Castro-AP).

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's news, feature and travel editors and columnists are trying to keep readers from learning a dirty little secret about Cuba.

The island has long been the safest major tourist destination in the Caribbean.

Cuba doesn't have crime, gun or drug problems, making it a paradise on earth for its 11 million residents, and a great place to vacation.

In fact, the life expectancy on the biggest island in the Caribbean is 80, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reported on Saturday.

That's quite a feat for a country that is often portrayed in the news media as one of the poorest in the world, especially when you realize the life expectancy in the United States is 79.

In reporting the death of Fidel Castro, the Sunday edition of The Record is filled with negatives about the Cuban revolutionary, communism and life on the island -- a former U.S. colony (1A, 9A, 10A, 11A).

The headline over the huge black-and-white photo of Castro in 1970 reads:

"DEFIANT LEADER DIES"

Castro handed over the presidency to his younger brother, Raul, in 2008 and was in declining health for several years, so he really wasn't the "leader" of Cuba on his death.

Much of today's coverage reflects The Record's relentless focus on politics -- the same filter used to report on Governor Christie, the racially inspired congressional gridlock during the Obama presidency and the nasty White House campaign that ended with the election of wacko racist Donald J. Trump.

In 2000, on one of my visits to Havana, Cuba, I took a photo of three teenagers. They reflected the diversity of an island that until the 1959 revolution had been strictly divided between whites and blacks.

I made seven trips to Cuba between 1997 and 2004, and stayed with a family in Havana on most of my vacations. I rented cars to explore such eco-tourism as bird watching and scuba diving. Here, I saw a group of friends gathering at the Bay of Pigs on a hot January afternoon.

Redesign

Gannett editors launched a major redesign of The Record with the edition of Nov. 16, a Wednesday.

When you compare today's Sunday edition to the Sunday paper of Nov. 13 -- before the redesign -- the differences become clearer.

The redesign appears to use more white space and smaller type, especially in photo captions, but the type used for text is not as dark as before.

So, pages with big blocks of type make the paper appear grayer.

Headlines and captions were far from perfect before Gannett bought the Woodland Park daily in July, but now even more errors appear:

In the Page 1 caption on the death of Castro, his full name is used twice -- usually a no-no.

Last week, in a front-page promotion of a column on rehabilitation of Route 495 to the Lincoln Tunnel, the headline, caption and sub-headline all repeated the subject of the story.

From the website Mike Kelly Writer.

Columnists

The redesign also uses updated thumbnail photos for most columnists, such as the one that appears with two Mike Kelly columns today (1A and 1O).

The old photo, in use for nearly a decade, showed an annoying shit-eating grin.

Although Kelly's own website shows he has a lot of gray hair, the new photo makes him appear to have colored his hair, and he looks like he is holding up his head with his right hand.

Local news?

Although readers today won't find any news from the vast majority of the 90 or so towns in the circulation area, the Local front carries a long story about a single parking spot in Ridgewood (1L).

The Record has devoted move coverage to the village's downtown parking woes and solutions than to the entire school system in Hackensack. 

Restaurants

Many readers rejoiced at the departure of Elisa Ung, who was the paper's beef-and-dessert obsessed restaurant reviewer for more than nine years.

Ung consumed obscene quantities of mystery beef and other artery clogging food, all on an expense account, and showed extreme deference to celebrity chefs.

Still, Gannett hasn't replaced her.

On Friday, in place of the usual weekly restaurant appraisal, readers found a list of Theater District restaurants taste tested by Food Editor Esther Davidowitz and Robert Feldberg, the theater critic.

The week before, Better Living editors listed expensive North Jersey restaurants that were serving Thanksgiving dinner.

Future of Gannett journalism: 5 times more ads than news

NJ Transit buses in the exclusive lane to the Lincoln Tunnel are driven against the flow of westbound traffic during the morning commute. The Port Authority has ignored calls for a second XBL, as the lane is called, and never explained why exclusive bus lanes don't operate in the evening, too.

For decades, this portion of Route 495 to the Lincoln Tunnel has been called the helix. On Wednesday, The Record's so-called commuting columnist labeled it a "bridge," and raised an alarm about a rehabilitation project that won't start until late next year at the earliest.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I might actually try reading the Thanksgiving Day edition of The Record now that I've caught my breath after wrestling with what felt like 5 pounds of advertising inserts.

I quickly bundled them up for recycling, along with Sports, leaving me with four news and feature sections, containing pages that appear to carry more advertising and less news than before Gannett redesigned the print edition.

Stephen A. Borg, the former publisher, was no slouch when it came to advertising and marketing, and he even created a North Jersey Media Group unit that staged food-truck and other events.

Those events were promoted in the paper and covered by the news staff.

With the sale of NJMG to Gannett for a reported $40 million in July, the Borgs now call themselves Fourth Edition Inc., and work out of their old offices in Woodland Park.

Today's paper

It's front-page news when President-elect Donald J. Trump doesn't appoint another middle-aged white man or white supremacist to his Cabinet (1A).

Today's A-section has news on 4A, 8A and 9A that would normally appear in Local.

Local news?

Since Gannett let go more than 200 NJMG employees, reporters and editors for daily and weekly papers now work out of the same newsroom.

That means readers of the local-news section have been seeing many unfamiliar bylines, which belong to reporters from the weeklies.

Generally, they are younger and less experienced, and make a lot less money than reporters for The Record and Herald News.

Wednesday's paper

Staff Writer Christopher Maag, who covered NJ Transit and the city of Hackensack for The Record, had a Page 1 byline on Wednesday that identified him as "columnist."

No thumbnail photo of Maag appeared, as with The Record's other columnist. 

His story on "one family's journey from Syria to Paterson" is a tearjerker, especially if you've been following the horrific news from Aleppo and other towns that are being destroyed during the civil war.

The focus was on Ghussoon Zouabi, 39, who recalls the food shortages in Syria and who has been cooking non-stop since she arrived in South Paterson for her family, for the homeless and for others.

"When we got to my parents house [in Paterson], the kids opened the fridge and pulled all the food out and ate it. I sat on the floor and cried."

Zouabi arrived in the United States in March 2013. 

Last year, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Governor Christie called for a ban on all Syrian immigrants to New Jersey, including children, but it has been widely ignored.

Route 495

Staff Writer John Cichowski appears to be the only columnist who continues to use a dated thumbnail photo, which is probably a decade old.

On Wednesday's Local front, his Road Warrior column quotes commuters who use Route 495 to the Lincoln Tunnel.

But Cichowski isn't concerned about congestion in the exclusive bus lane, the lack of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit buses or how Route 495 was closed for an hour in each direction when Trump left Manhattan for his New Jersey golf club last week.

Instead, the addled reporter looks more than a year ahead to the start of a major rehabilitation of the Route 495 helix, which he refers to as a "bridge" (1L).

Commentary, lack of editing are two of paper's biggest flaws

Hundreds, if not thousands, of New Jersey residents have already received mail-in ballots for the Nov. 8 election; and made their choices for president, 5th District congressman and county offices, as well as voted "yes" or "no" on two ballot questions. Meanwhile, an editorial in The Record today endorses Democrat Hillary Clinton for president.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

As usual, readers are having a hard time telling what point Columnist Herb Jackson is trying to make on Page 1 today.

Do ads paid for by "the super PAC of the National Association of Realtors" -- saying that Democratic congressional candidate Josh Gottheimer would "protect the 30-year mortgage" -- mean the businessman is in the pocket of special interests (A-1)?

As Jackson reports, Gottheimer's opponent, Rep. Scott Garrett, a Republican from Wantage in Sussex County, "crossed the Realtors group by pushing a bill in 2013 that would have scaled back the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed companies that buy mortgages from lenders."

Readers of the front page still don't know what all of this means until Jackson quotes "an outspoken critic of federal housing policy" saying that Garrett, in effect, was trying to stop "more government subsidies for housing."

It gets worse. If you stick with Jackson (few readers will get beyond A-1), you find out the bill pushed by Garrett would mean "thousands of people in New Jersey would have to pay more or not get a mortgage at all," according to New Jersey Citizens Action (A-6).

Then, the column goes on and on, giving the impression that Jackson and other columnists at The Record are encouraged to write long, convoluted pieces that violate the cardinal rule of daily journalism:

Telling the reader in the first or first few paragraphs exactly what you're trying to say.

And for opinion columnists like Jackson, Mike Kelly and Charles Stile, the lack of opinions in their work is even more alarming.

This trio of columnists rarely express opinions; they usually only quote so-called experts on each side of an issue in a tedious he said/she said account that resembles a news story or analysis.

Lack of editing

In his front-page column on Monday, Stile reports that as hundreds of Republicans across the country are abandoning GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, "Governor Christie strode right into the vortex" (A-1).

"There's a simple reason why: He has no other place to go [italics added]."

Another Christie column appeared on Monday's Editorial Page (A-11), written by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin:

"Republicans are lining up in disgust [over Trump boasting about kissing and groping women]. Not Christie.

"He's all in with Trump, probably because he has nowhere else to go" [italics added].

Kelly column

Kelly's Sunday column on the Opinion front cried out for editing, because only readers who slogged through the veteran reporter's awkward phrases, such as "Christie's self-definition," got to see him throw the strongest punches ever at the GOP thug and Trump sidekick (O-1).

His column begins with a tedious recap of testimony in the Bridgegate trial that Christie unleashed a series of F-bombs against a Monmouth County freeholder who criticized him and called him fat.

Christie reminded him he is "the fucking Governor of this state."

Kelly also spends a few paragraphs recounting the governor's tough-guy act during his nearly seven years in office.

It's only on the continuation page -- in his last four or five paragraphs -- that Kelly gets to the F-ing point:

Kelly uses "[expletive]" for the word Christie used in his tirade against the freeholder, "fucking" or "fuck" (Sunday's O-4):

"Our [expletive] governor actually believed he had the intellectual depth and temperament to be president of the entire nation ....

"... Bridgegate has reminded us that Chris Christie's bully act has grown old -- that this man has the quick-trigger temperament of a teenager.

"Yes, Christie is definitely a governor defined by expletives, In these expletives, he has made himself fragile and forlorn and forsaken.

"Soon, he will be forgotten -- finally."

A second mail-in ballot asks voters to say "yes" or "no" on allowing casinos to operate in North Jersey, and whether they want the state constitution amended so that all gas-tax revenue goes toward road and rail repairs and improvements.

Clinton endorsement

Today's editorial on the presidential race and an "Open letter to Trump" are laid out across A-8 with portraits of Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald J. Trump by Staff Artist R.L. Rebach.

"The choice is clear: Hillary Clinton. She is qualified, prepared and capable," according to the editorial endorsing her for president.

"Donald Trump will fight with Americans; Hillary Clinton will fight for America."

The open letter to Trump concludes:

"America needs a president, Mr. Trump, not a predator.

"Abandon this race."