Political gridlock is slap in face to long-suffering taxpayers

Thousands of residents of Hackensack and other towns were scrambling this week to meet the deadline for payment of property taxes, but I haven't seen a single story in The Record of Woodland Park about them or all of those inefficient home-rule communities. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In New Jersey, you have to pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation, but you still get jerked around by some of the sorriest politicians anywhere.

The lead story on Page 1 of The Record today reports no progress in breaking the political logjam in Trenton over transportation funding.

Democrats in the state Legislature still don't have enough votes to override Governor Christie's threatened veto of a 23-cents-a-gallon hike in the gasoline tax.

Meanwhile, The Record reports a statewide freeze on transportation projects "is likely to stretch into the fall and past the November elections" (A-1).

Ford Motor Co.

North Jersey residents can only hope Ford Motor Co. will be forced to excavate tons of contaminated soil, if voters approve a November ballot proposal (A-1).

Who can feel sorry for an automaker that has shirked its responsibility to clean up toxic paint sludge and other waste dumped into abandoned mines and a landfill in the 1960s, with the borough's approval?

Excavating the contaminated soil, which is near reservoirs, would cost Ford and the borough's insurance carriers $32.6 million, compared to $5.4 million for a plan to cap it.

Let's not forget Ford was the only major Detroit automaker that didn't declare bankruptcy and didn't need a bailout from the federal government.

Trump the 'flamethrower'

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman compares Donald J. Trump's inflammatory words about Hillary Clinton and the Second Amendment to those that led to the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

The wacko racist GOP presidential nominee declared "gun rights supporters might still find a way to stop ... Clinton, even if she should defeat him and then name anti-gun Supreme Court justices," AP reports (A-1).

If important story is incorrect, what else did staff get wrong?

The main entrance to the Hackensack Performing Arts Center at 102 State St. clearly shows its origins as a Masonic Temple, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

If you don't live in Hackensack, you probably didn't pay much attention to the A-2 correction in The Record today.

On Wednesday, Editor Deirdre Sykes ran a story in Local, reporting a special meeting of the Hackensack City Council "to introduce nearly $3 million in funding for renovations" to the Performing Arts Center on State Street.

Coincidentally, city taxpayers are scrambling this week to come up with their quarterly tax payments, which are due next Wednesday.

But the story turned out to be wrong, according to today's correction, which said nearly $2.2 million -- not nearly $3 million -- is need for renovations of the former Masonic Temple.

And today's meeting was a no-go, because city officials fell two hours short of the necessary 48-hour notice, and will be held next week.

Hackensack readers can only speculate what else the staff got wrong, given the reputation of six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton to shrug off errors and to publish corrections only reluctantly.

Not much else

Burned-out political Columnist Charles Stile is a day late with his endless ruminations over Governor Christie's image now that the GOP bully was abandoned by his former top aide, Maria Comella.

Still, Sykes is wasting precious front-page space to lead the paper with his boring column (A-1).

Comella spoke to CNN on Tuesday, calling wacko GOP nominee Donald J. Trump a "demagogue" and saying she will vote for Hillary Clinton, so her comments were broadcast and published nationwide on Wednesday.

Residents of North Jersey who fear Trump will be elected president on Nov. 8 will find their dollars go a lot further in Canada: Take refuge from Trump insanity

A big gamble

Also on A-1 today is a story on the closing of the Trump Taj Mahal casino hotel in Atlantic City and the loss of 3,000 jobs after the Labor Day weekend.

That's expected to help put a nail in the coffin of efforts to build casinos in North Jersey, despite the upbeat story on L-3 today.

'Ringwood travesty'

At the bottom of Page 1 today, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reports Ringwood officials still are treating the Ramapoughs like dirt (A-1).

An editorial with the headline "Ringwood travesty" urges the Borough Council to allow a November ballot referendum on removing rather than capping 166,000 tons of pollutants linked to Ford Motor Co. dumping that dates to the 1960s (A-8).

Early Wednesday, the council challenged the referendum on legal grounds in yet another blow to the mixed-race neighborhood of Upper Ringwood.

Wacko racist Trump stumps with Plump to pay GOP debts

A horse and carriage returning along Prospect Avenue from the Hackensack High School Prom Show Off on Thursday night, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In a joint appearance with Governor Christie, Donald Trump's subliminal messages to "Make America Hate Again" and "Make America White Again" went over big in Lawrenceville on Thursday night.

More than 1,000 people paid $200 each to see the apparent Republican presidential nominee, and hear his promise to build a wall along the Mexican border, The Record reports today.

A private, $25,000-a-ticket fundraiser went toward more than $300,000 in legal bills from the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal exclusive of the $10 million taxpayers forked over to get Christie off of the hook (A-1 and A-8).

Exploits vulnerable

Meanwhile, faced with another big budget gap, Christie is once again exploiting the most vulnerable, and plans to cut millions from charity care (A-1 on Thursday).

An editorial today (A-18) carefully avoids mentioning that a tax surcharge on millionaires Christie has vetoed at least tree times would nearly cover the $1.1 billion revenue shortfall.

What else would you expect from Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin, who has the filthy rich owners of the Woodland Park daily breathing down his neck? 

A Saturday Night Live skit shows crackpot Donald Trump and a humiliated Chris Christie conferring on a vice presidential candidate to run with the apparent Republican presidential nominee in November -- anyone but Christie.

Trump picks Dr. Ben Carson, right.

Legal fees

Stories on a $15 million lawsuit settlement and a $2.2 million jury award today and Thursday don't mention that the plaintiff's lawyers are expected to take at least one-third of that for payment of legal fees and expenses (A-1 and L-1).

Attorney Samuel L. Davis, who won the $15 million deal, represents Juliana Valdez, now 13, who had 22 surgeries after her foot was mangled by an escalator at a Paramus mall in 2013 (A-1).

Should any lawyer who worked on one case part time for three years be paid more than $5 million?

Rare victory

Another Page 1 story today reports a rare victory in the battle to get Ford Motor Co. to remove all of the 166,000 tons of toxic paint sludge dumped 50 years ago in Ringwood (A-1).

Borough officials "have suspended plans to build a recycling center on top of a mountain of contaminated soil," The Record reports.

Still, there is no mention anywhere in the story that the "Ramapo Lenape tribe" (A-8) are a mixed-race people who have been discriminated against for hundreds of years.

In previous stories, The Record has called them "low income." 

Scott Garrett

In all the years Staff Writer Herb Jackson has been covering Rep. Scott Garrett, D-Wantage, today might be the first time he's described him as having "the most conservative record in the state's delegation" to Congress (A-1).

Josh Gotthheimer, the Democrat challenger in November, goes further, calling Garrett a key member of the racist Tea Party.

Readers want to know why Jackson, the so-called Washington correspondent, has never mentioned Garrett's Tea Party credentials.

'To die for'

One thing I learned in many years of copy editing for The Record is to avoid using the word "die" in a headline over a food piece.

But that didn't stop the copy editor who handled Elisa Ung's Informal Dining Review of a takeout-only deli in Fair Lawn.

"Heroes to die for"

Could that be "to die from"?

Ung tells readers nothing about the cold cuts used in the hero sandwiches except they are "imported" or from stores in "the famous Arthur Avenue Italian neighborhood in the Bronx" (BL-14). 

Big deal.

What readers really want to know is whether the meat in the cold cuts was naturally raised and is free of nitrates and other preservatives that have been linked to cancer.

Under her puzzling rating system, she awards the deli, A Family Affair, only two out of three stars, meaning "if you're nearby, a must-eat."

So, I guess Ung is saying if you live in Hackensack, Englewood, Wyckoff, Mahwah, Wayne and many other towns, don't bother.

Rail nightmare was averted, but commuters still face ordeal

Completed in April 2014, NJ Transit's new Anderson Street Station is more of a shelter, open to the elements on two sides, and with inadequate heating and few creature comforts.

Still, the station is a vast improvement over the two bus shelters and ticket machines commuters were provided after the original station house burned down on Jan. 10, 2009.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A tentative contract agreement may improve the lives of NJ Transit rail workers, who threatened to strike on Saturday.

But North Jersey commuters still have to contend with crowding on SRO trains and in their Penn Station waiting room in Manhattan, and frequent service disruptions.

The Record's A-3 reaction story today and Saturday's banner headline on Page 1 -- "Rail nightmare averted" -- ignores all of the problems rail commuters face, including higher fares and service cutbacks.

Nor is there any mention of Governor Christie's anti-mass transit policies, and the deep cuts he made in state subsidies, forcing NJ Transit to raise those fares.

Transportation reporter Christopher Maag, like his predecessors, apparently has never ridden a train to and from Manhattan during the rush hour, when seats are hard to come by, and reported on the quality of service.

And in more than a dozen years of writing the so-called commuting column, Road Warrior John Cichowski also has ignored train and bus service, distracted as he is by MVC lines, potholes, pedestrian deaths or road projects (L-1).

Half the story

In fact, a column and two major stories on today's front page are woefully incomplete.

Staff Writer Charles Stile's column sounds like a political battle over the state constitution between Christie and Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat (A-1).

But nowhere does Stile mention Sweeney's hand has been forced by the hundreds of vetoes the GOP bully has executed, including those against a hike in the minimum wage.

The A-1 graphic on local property taxes is missing towns where non-profit hospitals and other tax-exempt entities shift the burden to homeowners, such as Hackensack and Englewood, making it difficult for them to stay within the 2% cap.

And from the story on a lake cleanup, readers have a hard time deciding whether Pompton Lakes, state and federal environmental officials caved into corporate giant DuPont -- just like Ringwood did on Ford Motor Co. pollution.

Local news?

In Local today, stories about schools in Englewood, Saddle Brook, Edgewater and Leonia have Hackensack readers wondering why they rarely see anything in the paper on their schools (L-2 and L-6).

Readers also are puzzled why Englewood Schools Superintendent Robert Kravitz isn't being offered a merit payment for increasing white enrollment in the city's elementary and middle schools, where 99% of the students are black and Hispanic (L-2).

What's the point?

On the Opinion front, the first four paragraphs of Mike Kelly's column put readers to sleep.

OK. A Jersey shore native became "the first U.S. citizen to be convicted ... of trying to join the Islamic State in Syria and fight against his country" (O-1). 

"What is significant is how ordinary [Tairod] Pugh is," Kelly writes.

What is Kelly's point? Sadly, most readers will never turn the page.

Editors ignore racism -- from Ringwood to White House

The rebuilding of the Route 46 Bridge over the Hackensack River is 99% complete, above, and a lane is closed on the new Court Street Bridge between Hackensack and Bogota, below. Still, The Record's Mike Kelly on Monday focused on the Anderson Street Bridge as an example of "how New Jersey does not have enough [money] for all of the bridges that need fixing." Was Kelly's column the 49th or 50th piece to make that point in the last year or so?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Even though Ford Motor Co. began dumping toxic paint sludge in Ringwood nearly 50 years ago, The Record today is splashing across Page 1 an exposé about the discovery of a new, cancer-causing chemical.

The focus of Staff Writer Scott Fallon's story is whether chemicals, including the newly discovered 1,4-dioxane, "are migrating from the site ... above the Wanaque Reservoir, a drinking source for 3 million people" (A-1).

Readers have to search on the continuation page for Fallon's description of the people who live in a "low-income neighborhood" near the mines and landfill where Ford dumped the sludge (A-4).

Later, Fallon quotes Vincent Mann, whom he describes as "chief of the Ramapough Lenape Nation's Turtle Clan." 

But nowhere does the reporter note the Ramapoughs are a mixed-race people who have faced discrimination for centuries.

Same as in '05

Today, as they did in their 2005 "Toxic Legacy" series, The Record's editors refuse to explore whether racial animus has shaped how the Ramapoughs have been treated by Ford, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ringwood officials, the courts and the media.

Readers have noticed the same blind spot when it comes to critics who still haven't gotten over the election of our first black president, including Governor Christie and Record Columnist Mike Kelly.

Local news?

Hackensack residents won't find any news of their city on Page 1 or the Local front today.

The lead story on L-1 is about a dog that was found dead in the home of a Northvale man who is being held in the Bergen County jail on weapons charges. 

Hackensack may be the most populous community in Bergen County, but it continues to be slighted by local assignment editors.

Monday's Local section also contained no Hackensack news, and the closest the paper came was a front-page column on closure of the Anderson Street Bridge to Teaneck. 

Although that piece, by Kelly, went on and on, the columnist didn't explore whether closure of the bridge will hurt merchants along Teaneck's Cedar Lane.

Ramapoughs are victims of news media, legal system, too

A 2011 image from CBS2 coverage of Ford Motor Co. pollution in the Upper Ringwood section of Ringwood.

Editor's note: My first beat as a reporter at The Record was covering Ringwood and West Milford. When staffers were researching the "Toxic Legacy" series in 2005, they came across stories I did around 1980 on Ford Motor Co. dumping in abandoned mines.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Mixed-race members of the Native American community living in Ringwood have suffered discrimination throughout history.

But in the past decade, their treatment by the news media -- including The Record -- legal community and public officials is the most despicable.

Today, a 10-year retrospective of the newspaper's "Toxic Legacy" series contains a major error in reporting on a class-action lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. for decades of paint-sludge dumping and the resulting illnesses and death among the Ramapoughs (A-1).

Chump change

Staff Writer Scott Fallon refers to "a $12.5 million award for 633 current and former members -- far less than other pollution cases across the nation" (A-12).

In fact, whatever money the Ramapoughs received -- minus hefty legal fees -- was the result of a settlement, not an "award" from a jury.

Fallon doesn't mention the Ramapoughs' lawyers rushed into the settlement, citing the financial problems of Ford and the other Big 3 automakers during the recession.

Nor does he report The Record's editorial page urged the Ringwood residents to take the deal, and not continue their long struggle for justice.

Checks ranged from $4,368 to  a maximum of $34,594, The Record's Mary Jo Layton reported in December 2010: "How much is a life worth?"

Ford and the lawyers laughed all the way to the bank. Unlike GM and Chrysler, Ford didn't need a bailout from the federal government.

Sloppy editing

The flawed reporting and sloppy editing of today's story on the Ramapoughs have become commonplace at The Record of Woodland Park. 

Another example appeared on Saturday's front page, showing the editors' ignorance of even the most momentous of issues.

Editor Martin Gottlieb or his minions could have crafted a climate-change package out of a large photo of English miners and a story on electric cars in New Jersey (see today's Opinion front).

Instead, the photo appeared by itself, leaving thousands of North Jersey readers wondering what the end of coal mining in England had to do with them.

Just shocking

And the story on the anemic sales of all-electric cars had holes big enough for a Tesla Model S to race through.

Fallon, an environmental reporter, wrote this story, too, and claimed the drawbacks of electric cars are "the limited range and lack of charging stations in New Jersey and elsewhere" (Saturday's A-1).

He never mentions the typical electric car, with a range of 85 to 100 miles, is ideal for the tens of thousands of senior citizens whose daily driving involves food shopping, visiting doctors and volunteering.

And though he reports the sleek, luxurious Model S has a range of more than 200 miles, he doesn't tell readers Tesla is the only manufacturer with a nationwide network of fast, free Superchargers that make long-distance travel a breeze. 

Health-care bias

Saturday's front page also carried the pejorative "Obamacare" in the lead headline when the words "Health care" would have fit and showed objectivity.

And once again, Staff Writer Lindy Washburn forgets to remind readers Governor Christie's refusal to set up a health-care exchange in New Jersey has slowed sign-ups in the Garden State.

GWB probe

The end of the state Legislature's probe of the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal isn't Page 1 news (A-1).

Everyone is on the edge of their seats awaiting the identification of "unindicted co-conspirators" during the federal criminal trial of two Christie aides, now set for April.

In the court of public opinion, the GOP bully certainly was involved, despite all the protestations from The Record's editors, columnists, reporters and editorial writers.

Local news

Don't look for much municipal news in today's paper, but you'll find the editors are paying plenty of attention to retailers who are among the paper's biggest advertisers (A-1 and L-1).

Staff Writer John Cichowski continues to scrape the bottom of the barrel for his so-called commuting column with a discussion of short cuts around road construction projects (L-1).

Readers are wondering when the burned-out, error-prone Road Warrior is going to find his own short cut to retirement.

Leonia stands still

On L-3, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes runs another story on Leonia, but has never explored why this town is so poorly run or why officials have downsized the Police Department (L-3).

In August 2014, the lack of an officer directing rush-hour traffic at Broad Avenue and Fort Lee Road, a major intersection, has been cited in the death of Leyla Kan, 60, who was struck in the crosswalk by a small school bus and dragged to her death.  

Nothing has changed.

In today's story, Leonia Police Chief Tom Rowe continues to bitch and moan over not having enough police officers to handle the crush of George Washington Bridge-related traffic.

Food phobia

Restaurant critic Elisa Ung's Sunday column continues to ignore the poor quality of beef, poultry and other food served in even expensive restaurants (BL-1).

Today, she complains about a far less compelling issue, small type and typos on menus. Maybe she needs glasses.

Weighty issue

Today, for a change, Real Estate takes a break from celebrating the greed of Realtors, home builders and owners to tackle a weighty issue, radon (R-1).

Local-news editors, reporters can't get act together

Friday morning at 10: A major backup on a quiet street in Teaneck.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

How did Editor Marty Gottlieb, a veteran of The New York Times, and an unknown number of reporters and sub-editors screw-up so badly on today's lead Page 1 story in The Record?

The big, black headline screams about a "midnight rampage" at Teaneck High School, but the text mentions students breaking into the school in the "wee hours" and a "2:11 a.m." burglary alarm.

Doesn't sound like "midnight" to me. How embarrassing. What went wrong? 

And why does this happen time and again -- major errors in headlines and photo captions, all the responsibility of six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton?

Big question

With more than 20 hours to work on the story -- and two sidebars -- no one at the paper asked or answered an obvious question:

Where were the parents of the 62 students when they left their houses in the "wee hours" and traveled to the school to commit the vandalism?

Sleeping, no doubt, like Houlton and the other editors. 

And why doesn't the Woodland Park daily name the 24 students facing charges who are 18 years old?

Sanitizing Ford story

But the problems with today's edition don't end there.

Another front-page piece that goes into great detail, yet still manages to have big holes in it, is the profile of Paramus High graduate Mark Fields, who will become the first Jewish CEO of Ford Motor Co., started by a notorious anti-Semite.

Deep in the text on A-9, Staff Writer Richard Newman, who is a business reporter, mentions the Ford plant in Mahwah closed in 1980.

But Newman says not a word about the despicable company history of dumping paint sludge in Ringwood mines and woods, perilously close to North Jersey's major water supply.

The dumping inspired "Toxic Legacy," an investigative series by The Record, and a lawsuit against Ford on behalf of the Ramapough Mountain People, members of a mixed-race community who were sickened by the sludge and then duped into settling the case.

Ford destroyed the environment is their Upper Ringwood enclave, yet the story praises the current CEO with "shepherding to market a new lineup of ... fuel-efficient vehicles ...." (A-9).

Ford is environmentally responsible, this whitewash from the business staff seems to be saying.

Failed strategy

On today's Local front, Englewood officials say they are hoping new apartments will help expand the downtown economy -- a strategy that has already failed miserably (L-1).

The city plans to knock down the Lincoln School, which was more than 100 years old when it was closed in 2008, and a city firehouse on Williams Street to make way for the new apartments, which will receive a 15-year tax break.

The story doesn't mention that a plan to turn the elementary school into a community center was rejected by city officials, likely because it is located in a minority neighborhood.

Is it that good?

I once tried takeout from Rose's Place in Fair Lawn, which The Record rated three stars, and felt that although the food was good, the portions were small for the price.

And Rose's didn't match my standard for Lebanese fare at time: Vine Valley on Main Street in Paterson, now long closed.

Today, Staff Writer Elisa Ung gives three stars to Rose's of Englewood (BL-20), but I'm not sure that will be enough to lure me away from my current favorite for Middle Eastern food, Paterson's Aleppo Restaurant.

Copy desk saves another reporter's ass

Image via Wikipedia

Lawyers for long-suffering Upper Ringwood residents settled a huge negligence lawsuit, fearing Ford Motor Co. would declare bankruptcy. Why didn't The Record ever report this legal and financial miscalculation? Above, Henry Ford in 1919.

Just when you thought the marginalized copy editors were asleep at their computers, they saved the ass of a veteran reporter who thought she could peddle the same old news in a Page 1 story today.


Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton covered a meeting of Upper Ringwood residents and EPA officials, but buried the lead -- just like the Ford Motor Co. buried toxic sludge in their neighborhood four decades ago and made everybody sick.


It almost sounds as if Layton pre-wrote the story to beat The Record's ridiculously early deadlines, then was forced to leave the real news to the continuation page. 


Did her assignment editor go home early? Where was Editor Francis Scandale?


But in a rare save, the news copy editors told the story in the headlines:

TOXIC LANDSCAPE: UPPER RINGWOOD

'We're the living dead'

EPA urges testing, but residents want buyouts

The copy editors not only saved Layton's ass, they saved the larger posterior of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.

I read to the continuation page, A-6, and found something new in this long-running saga of government incompetence, corporate irresponsibility and media indifference:


Residents want Ford to use some of its huge profits to buy their homes so they can relocate away from the pollution.


One of the newsroom prima donnas, Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, has a rare byline today, but why is her story on a lawsuit judgment on the front page?

Clear age bias

What was the wire editor thinking? 

Why run a Washington Post story on President Obama's 50th birthday (A-5) that is full of "old" references, and reports "he still gets up and down a basketball court without reaching for an oxygen tank"?

A letter to the editor on A-8 describes the Tea Party as no editor has the guts to:

"The Tea Party is a joke," says Francis A. Tutelo of Teaneck. "... They are Republicans who don't care about the elderly and poor. They keep voting again taxing millionaires .... But the truth is: Would Republicans really tax themselves and their friends?"

Tutelo could extend his description to Governor Christie.

What's my line?

On the front of Sykes' Local section, Road Warrior John Cichowski has yet another column on long lines at the MVC. It's time for him to join a line -- the one at the unemployment office.

Readers won't find any Hackesnack, Teaneck or Englewood news today.

Look at all those morons from "Jersey Shore" on the front of Better Living today. Why does the worst of New Jersey gets such prominent play in the paper?

Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill recommends another charred hunk of beef, even though meat grilled at high temperatures has been linked to cancer (F-1, F-2).

Welcome to the United States of Ford

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Eric Cantor, left, gives a bad name to cantors. John Boehner or Boner?

The brutal treatment of a close-knit North Jersey community by Ford Motor Co. is a tortured tale of corporate greed and racism, of government inaction and media indifference.


Now, the lead Page 1 story in The Record today reports the automaker also used Rockland County, N.Y., as a dump site for tons of toxic paint sludge from a Ford plant in Mahwah, and a cleanup will start soon.


How long has it been there, Editor Francis Scandale? More than 30 years. What a great corporate citizen Ford is, what a great journalist Scandale is.


The story by Staff Writer Scott Fallon is filled with lots of background and numbers, but the cleanup is reported matter of factly, as if he had just covered a Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting.


On A-4, an Associated Press story reports suspect Levi Aron, 35,  "has denied molesting" 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky, "but police still consider that a possibility," contradicting the Daily News story that ran Thursday.


Grand Old Bullshit


On A-14, an Associated Press photo shows House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., covering part of his face with his hand, suggesting he is getting ready to tell more lies about debt negotiations.


Months after Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Oh., took over, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin finally seems to have grasped the full meaning of their obstructionist tactics.


His hard-hitting editorial appears on A-20 -- a day after letters from readers made many of the same points. Here's part of it:


"These [Republican] politicians with their blind insistence [that taxes should not be raised] are not making America better, they are sacraficing it."  Tea Partiers and hard-line conservatives "are saddling Republicans with the image of a party run amok ...."


But Doblin speaks out of both sides of his mouth, and on the page opposite the editorial, his column portrays Republican Governor Christie as a more pro-active leader than President Obama (A-21).


What about Christie's blind insistence that taxes on millionaires shouldn't be raised or his assaults on programs for working- and middle-class families, the poor, the old and others who can't defend themselves?


Deja vu news


On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski has his umpteenth list of survival tips for a visit to the MVC office, even though local readers are crying out for a survival guide to the paper itself (L-1).


Smelly fish


Why would anyone want to go to Tani in Glen Rock, a Chinese-run restaurant that tries to serve food  from six different Asian cuisines, especially when the reviewer got a "tough, fishy smelling piece" of raw tuna?


In her two-star review (Good) in Better Living today, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung recommends the five-flavored Chilean sea bass, without noting that one of those flavors comes from elevated levels of harmful mercury.

Newspaper becomes P.R. machine

Image by DoktorSpinn via Flickr

The Record often crosses the line between news and public relations.

Editor Francis Scandale and Staff Writers John Reitmeyer and Charles Stile crank up their public relations machine for Governor Christie's antiabortion beliefs today with a splashy, Page 1 story and an L-1 column in The Record of Woodland Park.

This is essentially a photo-op. Christie isn't pledging to change laws that now give women the right to an abortion, so I guess the message to readers is the Republican governor has more regard for fetuses than for the middle- and working-class schoolchildren, adults, and seniors he has targeted with his drastic budget cuts.

At least Reitmeyer's story noted Christie's $7.5 million cut in women's health programs.

The two other stories on A-1 today are signs of the editors' desperation and the shallowness of news coverage at the former Hackensack daily.

Image via Wikipedia

The lead is another in the seemingly endless stream of stories on the prospects of cleaning up four-decades-old Ford Motor Co. pollution in North Jersey. Of course, the untold story here is the weakness of environmental laws, the courts and the media to move this industrial giant.

And, at the bottom of the page, readers find yet another story about the long and winding road to education reform and teacher "accountability," a word Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes apply to everyone outside the paper, but not to themselves or their staff.

At least, we can be thankful we don't have to read another A-1 story by clueless Staff Writer John Brennan on the Jets cleaning out their lockers, plus a detailed discussion of their bowel movements in the wake of their loss to the Steelers.

Two embarrassing corrections appear on A-2 today, including the listing of a closed restaurant as one of the places to watch Sunday's football game.

Local yokels

Instead of a Bogota resident as one of the 2011 PEOPLE TO WATCH, readers are introduced to an "entrepreneur" who was born and raised there. He owns a restaurant, nightclub and lounge in Manhattan I have never heard of. His story is "brought to you by" a luxury car dealer's ad above the fold on L-1 today.

The 2010 blizzard hit about a month ago and we've had four more snowstorms since then, but Sykes' staff is just noticing how many homeless people are exposed to the cold, and, apparently, that's because a homeless advocate and police are patrolling the streets in search of them (L-1).

The homeless story runs with a mind-numbing graphic -- containing weather data going back to the 1930s -- that tells readers this winter isn't as cold as they think it is. Isn't that sort of insensitive to the homeless, many of whom live outdoors?

There's no Hackensack news, nor stories from Englewood or Teaneck, but you'll find coverage of tiny Northvale and of North Haledon.