Why are editors building a defense case for Menendez?

What looks like a World War II-era poster in Hackensack's City Hall shows that the benefits of whole grains have been known for many decades.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's lead story today is yet another attempt to build a defense case for Sen. Bob Menendez, who faces a federal trial that is probably more than a year away (A-1).

That means Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson and reporters in the Woodland Park newsroom likely will regurgitate these same arcane legal arguments in the days before New Jersey's senior senator goes before a jury on bribery charges.

The best story on Page 1 today reports that Exxon Mobil regarded the wetlands around two refineries in New Jersey as little more than waste receptacles (A-1).

It's unclear why Editor Martin Gottlieb led with the third or fourth story defending Menendez, and not the Exxon Mobil expose.

Even putting pollution  aside, Exxon's Bayway Refinery in Linden has irreparably damaged New Jersey's reputation with the hundreds of thousands of out-of-state motorists who have driven by the smelly complex on the turnpike. 

Robs readers

For every positive Menendez story, Gottlieb is robbing readers of some hard-hitting reporting on the corrupt campaign finance system and public officials who think nothing of repeatedly violating the public trust.

Gottlieb devotes a huge amount of front-page space to the Germanwings tragedy for the second day in a row, even though readers have tired of the story (A-1).

Local news?

A story about a small goat found roaming Paramus streets (L-1), and a long, wire service obituary on the creator of the Pet Rock (L-6) are clear indications the poor editors who got stuck working on Sunday weren't able to find much local news.

The goat headline and the plays on words attempted by the reporter all fall flat.

One unexplored scenario is that the animal escaped being curried for a family's Easter dinner.

Exxon deal, roads are bigger stories than vaccinations

Gasoline prices below $2 a gallon are just a memory. Take that, drivers of gas-guzzling SUVs who speed and hog the road.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's front page exposes Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record to charges he is a slave to the conservative agenda adopted by Governor Christie and congressional Republicans.

Four of the five main elements on A-1 cast such issues as vaccinating schoolchildren, a pollution settlement and a nuclear deal with Iran in strictly partisan terms -- Republicans v. Democrats.

Gottlieb even legitimizes a crackpot group's wildly distorted estimates of road building and maintenance costs in New Jersey in an effort to kill any gas-tax increase (A-1).

Leading the paper with the so-called controversy over vaccinations is bewildering.

Ugly politics

The real controversies involve Governor Christie caving in to Exxon Mobil, and the transportation crisis brought on by the GOP bully's refusal to raise the gasoline tax to repair roads, bridges and rails.

One example of how politics is allowed to influence many of The Record's stories is today's report on the proposed $225 million settlement with Exxon Mobil Corp. for $8.9 billion in damages (A-1).

Staff Writers Scott Fallon and James O'Neill write almost the entire story as a battle between Democrats and Christie's party.

They note "Christie's practice of siphoning funds from environmental settlements to close state budget gaps instead of using the money for restoration efforts" (A-6). 

But in a related story at the bottom of the same page (A-6), O'Neill quotes a Democrat, Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-Wood-Ridge, on Christie's money grab, casting it as a partisan issue.

Of course, this and just about every other story neglects to point out the state's ongoing fiscal crisis is caused by Christie's refusal to impose a tax surcharge on millionaires and raise the gas tax, two moves that would raise billions of dollars.

'Breaking news'

In his Feb. 22 column bestowing 2015 Black Hole Awards, Road Warrior John Cichowski neglected to warn drivers about numerous potholes on Route 4 west.

In today's column, the confused reporter is Johnny-come-Lately for two drivers I know who lost a total of five tires on that highway between Englewood and Hackensack (L-1).

Cichowski isn't the only disoriented reporter in the Woodland Park newsroom.

Staff Writer Hugh Morley insists the Tesla Motors showroom he visited (and wrote about in December) is on "Route 17 west" in Paramus (L-7).

Of course, that highway runs north and south.

How did his editor, a news editor, a copy editor and their supervisors miss that blatant error?

More really bad news for commuters, state environment

Removing winter's grime at a hand car wash on Route 4 in Englewood.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's story today on former reporter Michael Drewniak, who just left his damage-control job with Governor Christie, surely will have you hurling at the breakfast table.

In his inimitable style, Drewniak (rhymes with "maniac") managed the news by confirming on Tuesday he was leaving as Christie's chief spokesman, but not saying he was taking a six-figure job at NJ Transit, the state mass-transit agency (A-3).

Staff Writer Christopher Maag, the paper's chief transportation writer, doesn't even attempt to explain why Drewniak is qualified for "a newly created position ..., overseeing policy, strategic planning, technology, safety and capacity for all bus and train services," according to an NJ Transit press release on Friday.

As Christie's mouthpiece since 2002, what does Drewniak know about mass transit after spending all his time riding in enormous SUVs driven by federal marshals or state troopers?

Stonewalling

Nor does Maag say how Drewniak's annual salary of $147,400 as NJ Transit's "chief of policy and strategic planning" compares to what he made working in the Governor's Office.

Christie got his money's worth when Drewniak helped stonewall the media and officials investigating the politically inspired George Washington Bridge lane closures.

Drewniak also defended the GOP bully's decision to kill the Hudson River tunnels in October 2010, denying NJ Transit rail commuters more rush-hour seats into the city.

And he stood by the governor when Christie snatched hundreds of millions in leftover tunnel money to fix New Jersey roads and bridges, rather than raise the gasoline tax. 

Funding crisis

The governor's refusal to raise that tax then and now means the state's Transportation Trust Fund for repairing roads and bridges, and improving mass transit, may run our of money in a few months.

Finally, Drewniak bears an uncanny resemblance to the former editor of The Record, Francis "Frank" Scandale, who presided over a drastic reduction in local-news coverage in more than a decade of running the Hackensack newsroom.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg showed Scandale the door on Halloween 2011, two days after a snowstorm paralyzed North Jersey. 

Scandale was blamed for The Record's pathetically weak coverage of the storm by a skeleton weekend crew.

Christie sellout

The Christie administration reportedly is putting the fossil fuel industry and the governor's White House ambitions ahead of the environment by settling an $8.9 billion lawsuit against Exxon Mobil for only $250 million (A-1).

The Record reports Christie, while he was chairman, raised nearly $18 million for the Republican Governors Association from the oil, gas and utilities industries in the first nine months of 2014 (A-8).

An in-house Exxon attorney also donated a total of $3,200 to the RGA.

The Woodland Park daily doesn't explain how it was scooped by The New York Times on settlement of the suit over pollution at the Bayway Refinery in Linden and another site in Bayonne.

Tennis, anyone?

Today's feature on the 30th anniversary of the law mandating wearing of seat belts in New Jersey seems an odd choice for the Better Living cover (BL-1).

Odder still is the byline, freelancer Neil Amdur, a former New York Times sports reporter who may know Martin Gottlieb, The Record's editor and himself a former Timesman. 

Bloomberg.com lists Amdur as editor-in-chief of Tennis Week magazine.

Bob Simon

Amdur reports Bob Simon, the veteran CBS newsman, was unbuckled and became "a back-seat bullet" when his limo crashed in Manhattan on Feb. 12. Simon died of his injuries.

Contrast that with reporting by Staff Writer John Cichowski, who used his Road Warrior column to contrive an elaborate scenario in which Simon would have survived, if only the Lincoln Town Car he was riding in had rear side curtain airbags.

What nonsense, but typical of Cichowski's hype, exaggeration, distortion and clearly inaccurate reporting in more than a decade of writing the column.