Editors' well-honed P.R. machine can't help Christie now

In Hackensack, a small deli on Hudson Street is where heroes go for lunch.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Negative court rulings and polls are making a mockery of The Record's campaign to promote Governor Christie as our next president.

Page 1 today is dominated by a ruling from Superior Court Judge Mary C. Jacobson, who called Christie's greatly reduced pension payments unconstitutional (A-1).

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by public employee unions, the judge said the GOP bully's pledge to fund the pension system in the next budget is another in a succession of "empty promises" (A-6).

She ordered Christie to make the full pension payment he cut by nearly $1.6 billion.

Of course, Editor Martin Gottlieb treats readers with contempt, giving equal prominence to another Charles Stile column that revisits the alleged "bipartisan reforms" that Christie claimed would save the pension system from bankruptcy (A-1).

The column's headline is fit only for readers who are imbeciles:

"Ruling is a black eye when
some good PR is needed"

Hackensack news?

Today's Local section doesn't have any Hackensack news, but Staff Writer Todd South, the reporter once assigned to the city, continues to file stories about war veterans like himself.

Retailing reporter Joan Verdon and Staff Writer Mary Diduch try to persuade readers that Westfield Garden State Plaza and the Paramus police are actually prepared for a terrorist attack (L-3).

Now, the mall and police are taking credit for "preventing injuries to shoppers and mall workers" on Nov. 4, 2013, when a disturbed young man with a rifle invaded Garden State Plaza and fired random shots into the ceiling, then committed suicide in a non-public area.

I recall The Record's photos of Paramus police, who were armed to the teeth, but who arrived after he killed himself.

God forbid the news columns should contain any negative news about malls, among The Record's biggest advertisers.

Unhealthy food

Food Editor Esther Davidowitz continues to promote an unhealthy diet with a Better Living feature on a stuffed-cupcake company (BL-1).

The promotion is sure to be lapped up by the thousands of diabetics in the audience, as well as those watching their weight and cholesterol intake.

How many stuffed cupcakes did Davidowitz bring back to the newsroom?

In New Jersey, apathetic morons stifle real change

The campaign office for Barbara Buono and Milly Silva on Cedar Lane in Teaneck.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

If Democrat Barbara Buono fails today to unseat the worst New Jersey governor ever, she can blame the legions of apathetic morons who sit on the sidelines and allow the right wing to seize the high ground.

The real poison in our democracy -- a story The Record has rarely told -- are registered voters too lazy to get off their asses and go to the polls or even apply for a mail-in ballot.

Their corrosive influence can be seen in every local and state election, but in months of election coverage, The Record hasn't bothered to interview a single voter.

Democratic edge

With a 700,000 edge in registered voters, apathy is likely the leading explanation for how a Democrat running for governor loses in New Jersey.

Of course, in 2009, when Republican Chris Christie won his first term as governor, the electorate fell for the Big Lie that he would lower property taxes.

Instead of his first term being one of compromise and bipartisanship, Christie likely employed the veto more than any other previous governor.

And The Record, which insists on calling him "popular," has distinguished itself as little more than a public-relations apparatus for the GOP bully.

What about voters?  

Instead of speaking to voters, Editor Marty Gottlieb and his gang of lazy columnists and reporters have spun endless tales, predicting the outcome of the gubernatorial election based on so-called experts, pundits, polls, politics and fund-raising totals.

I picked up a real newspaper on Monday, The New York Times, and found four large color photos of Brooklyn residents and a story on their views of the mayoral election in New York City.

Imagine that.

Steve Waldman, 65, a computer supplier, is quoted as saying the last presidential candidate he voted for was Hubert H. Humphrey, and the last mayor he cast a ballot for was Edward I. Koch.

(That's pronounced "Kotch," not "Coke," as in the evil Koch brothers behind Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing group that is financing GOP attack ads).

The Times did its interviews in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where only about half of the registered voters cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election, and less than a third voted for mayor in 2009.

A Times editorial on Monday urged New Jersey voters to approve a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage to $8.25 an hour, starting on Jan. 1, a move the greedy Borg publishing family opposed in a Record editorial.

Christie also vetoed a hike in the minimum for low-wage workers, one of the groups he likes to screw with his mean-spirited policies.

Today's paper

What dominates The Record's front page today? Not the election. The editors are already tired of that.

The top half of Page 1 carries a big, black headline:

Gunman strikes panic

in Garden State Plaza

Of course, the "panic" was in shoppers, not in the Paramus shopping center itself.

The phrase "at Garden State Plaza" would have conveyed that, but six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton missed the clunky headline. 

Still, the real weakness in the story is that it fails to report the only one hurt was the alleged gunman, Richard Shoop, 20, the Teaneck man who police say committed suicide in the mall.


Who is to blame?

Was the paper's early deadlines or the five reporters who worked on the story or the editors to blame for that major omission?

Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza and the rest of the Woodland Park daily's local-news operation fails miserably almost every time to get to the law-enforcement sources who have the information readers demand.

This morning, the paper's Web site, NorthJersey.com, actually has the nerve to quote a neighbor of the Shoops as saying Richard was "a nice kid."

A correction on A-2 today acknowledges the misspelling of the name of a candidate in the Bogota Borough Council election. 

How sloppy can Sforza get?

Hackensack news

The Local front today reports Hackensack High School finally got a new resource officer after the school board agreed to pay his salary (L-1).

The dysfunctional Board of Education is the last remnant of decades of Zisa family rule over Hackensack. 

Sforza couldn't find enough local news to fill his section, so he resorted to a time-tested filler photo of a non-fatal auto accident (L-3).

As usual, the caption tells readers little, especially in this case, where Ridgewood police are quoted as saying the brakes on a relatively new Mazda SUV "failed."

Maybe, the driver "failed" to use the brakes and mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead.