Sunday edition editor is ignoring local readers once again

Grand Avenue in Hackensack has finally been repaved, but so many other streets in the city have been neglected for decades.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On Saturday's front page, Governor Christie's presidential campaign was described as "sluggish" and "struggling."

Yet, The Record today continues to waste precious Page 1 space on how the GOP bully is doing in New Hampshire, ignoring the mess he's made in the Garden State (A-1).

Sadly, a reader serves as the only antidote to the upbeat coverage masterminded by Editor Martin Gottlieb:

"Christie's most recent attacks [on the teachers union] have come in the same week when state schools have once again received national recognition for excellence," Paul White of Ridgewood says in a letter to the editor (O-3).

"This is the same man who lied about his real reasons for cutting money for women's health, who destroyed the proposed ARC tunnel and who accepts 'lavish' gifts from 'friends' while attacking the wages and benefits of public workers."

Today, there are only two other main elements on the front page -- a lead story and a superfluous column about a disgruntled whistle-blower from Fort Lee who fatally shot a security guard before killing himself, and a piece on college tuition insurance (A-1).

Local news?

Bergen County readers find two Passaic County stories dominating the Local front (L-1).

And a Road Warrior column on "confusing signs" on Route 4 is of concern only to those drivers who refuse to buy or use navigation systems (L-1).

Inside Local today, another long Dean's List stands in for municipal news (L-2), and stories from Riverdale and Kinnelon appear on L-3.

I haven't seen any stories about Hackensack lately, meaning the reporter assigned to the city might be on vacation.

Food news

On the Better Living cover, restaurant critic Elisa Ung is back with a column promoting sub shops that use cheap, low-quality, preservative-laden cold cuts -- this only four days after the section praised the variety of crappy lunch meat available at supermarket deli counters (BL-1). 

She notes one of the shops uses "quality bacon from Nueske's," but the smoked-meat company's Web site doesn't claim its products come from animals that have been naturally raised, so readers have to wonder if Ung is trying to deceive them again.

Either way, Christie will leave New Jersey in shambles

This nondescript patch of asphalt -- three local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge -- was quiet on Monday afternoon, but Fort Lee police responded in force to the Washington Bridge Plaza shopping center nearby and arrested a robbery suspect.

At the intersection of traffic and the Christie administration's political retribution against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee. Closure of two of the three access lanes to upper level tollbooths occurred one year ago Tuesday.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie, his aides and his cronies on the Port Authority managed to cover up their involvement in the massive traffic jams at the Fort Lee end of the George Washington Bridge for a good four months, well past the November election that gave the GOP bully a second term.

There was no hint in the media the Christie administration had anything to do with closure of bridge access lanes on Sept. 9-13, 2013, until January, when this e-mail from the governor's deputy chief of staff was uncovered:

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

Endless speculation

Today, the front and editorial pages of The Record carry two more attempts to measure the damage to Christie's presidential ambitions, but what difference does it make (A-1 and A-11)?

Whether Christie leaves office to run for president in 2016 or at the end of his term in 2017, New Jersey will still be in shambles.

By any measure, the Garden State is far worse off in the first year of his second term than it was when he took office in January 2010 -- tax revenue, job creation, roads, mass transit, the shore, Atlantic City and, most important, pride.

Under Christie, the Jersey jokes have returned with a vengeance.

Just look at the photo from late March news conference the governor called to unveil his legal team's cover-up, which has already cost taxpayers more than $7 million (A-6).

The sheepish look on Christie's face screams, Get me out of here!

Law breakers

More than 1,000 motorcyclists broke every local anti-noise ordinance on the books, and still managed to land a glowing story on the Local front today (L-1).

Some of the Fort Lee police officers who responded to the Washington Bridge Plaza shopping center in Fort Lee on Monday afternoon, above and below.

A couple having lunch at the Binghamton Bagel & Deli reported a white man in a hoody with his pants worn low on his buttocks walked in and asked, "Who has the money?" They called police.

North Jersey Syrians

A rare story about Syrian exiles also appears on the Local front today, where Staff Writer Hannan Adely reports on the support they are receiving from the long-established community in Paterson and other towns  (L-1).

On L-3, the skeleton newsroom staff in Woodland Park made no attempt to find out if "a person" who jumped "from the Terrace Avenue Bridge onto southbound Route 17 [in Hasbrouck Heights] on Sunday morning" was killed.

But the caption does tell readers who are blind "the investigation caused traffic to be diverted."

Corrupting corn

Leave it to one of The Record's clueless freelancers to take wonderfully sweet Jersey corn -- which needs little more than steaming and a sprinkle of salt -- and recommend two ways you can prepare it and clog your arteries (BL-1 and BL-2).

See how far this paper has fallen

Image via Wikipedia
A Fort Lee bribe scheme in 1974 is front-page news today.

From today's huge front-page play in The Record to Columnist Mike Kelly's overwriting to the wildly exaggerated headline, you'd think Burt Ross was the only honest politician in New Jersey.


Is this headline deserved or even accurate?

N.J. icon moving on 

Of course, we should respect Ross, who turned down a $500,000 bribe offer when he was mayor of Fort Lee and then informed the FBI, but that was 37 years ago, for crying out loud. Is he really an "icon"?


The untold story, which Kelly only hints at, is the incompetency of Fort Lee officials, who in all of that time haven't been able to develop the forlorn expanse of empty land at the center of the bribery scheme.


And while Kelly blames resentful politicians for Ross being unable to win higher office, he completely ignores voter apathy. Finally, is it really Page 1 news that Ross and his wife are moving to Malibu from Englewood to live near their daughters?


Failed columnist


If you want to know how far The Record has fallen in recent years, consider that Kelly is the Woodland Park daily's lead columnist, even though he gives the impression he is just pushing words around.


Look at the writing in today's column: Referring to the California move, Kelly says Ross "faces the consequences of a new decision."


Does Kelly mean earthquakes or the Golden State's horrendous traffic jams, worse than anything we have in the Garden State?


Later, Kelly says the land at the center of the bribe scheme "now seems to be home to more broken concrete slabs than broken dreams." Huh? 


At Ross' Englewood home, Kelly notes, "Cardboard boxes lined a wall in one room. A computer screen blinked in another." This is truly great journalism. Kelly has incredible powers of observation.


Judging from the level of editing, Kelly's column once again put his assignment editor to sleep -- as well as his readers. 


Lifer news


Interim Editor Douglas Clancy and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes have been around so long, they've worn ruts in the newsroom floor.


So, it's no surprise the biggest news on the front of Sykes' Local section is the swearing in of Gerald Calabrese, 86, for yet another term as mayor of Cliffside Park, where his son, Thomas, is a councilman (L-1).


Of course, there's no discussion in this upbeat account of whether Cliffside or any other town deserves the dubious distinction of having any one official in office for more than 48 years.


Fish stories


In Better Living, the owner of a seafood restaurant apparently duped the writer of the Starters feature on F-1, Joyce Suss.


She quotes Alfred Ianniello of Brigantine Seafood Eatery and Market in Hawthorne as saying he is "promoting sustainable, organic fish" (F-4), but that's impossible, because there are no organic standards for seafood.


Suss also doesn't say whether the salmon he serves is artificially colored farmed fillets or wild-caught, nor does she identify the fish used in the fish and chips or fish tacos.


Since the clueless Suss was assigned to Starters, the feature has been expanded, with more text and more photos, so now this first, non-critical look at new restaurants resembles free advertising.


After praising Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill for publishing a healthy recipe for vegetable soup on Wednesday, I actually looked closely at the ingredients, only to discover a full stick of artery clogging butter and a recommended garnish of crumbled bacon.


Sherill continues to show how out of touch she is with readers who take healthy eating seriously, and may be inadvertently contributing to poor eating habits and all the subsequent heart disease.