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| The Record today reports the homeless are "invisible" in Bergen County. |
Editor Marty Gottlieb blew a decent front page today by wasting space on who won the redneck-and-racist vote in the GOP presidential primaries in Alabama and Mississippi.
The three North Jersey stories on Page 1 of The Record are compelling reading, but forgive me if I don't have the patience or compassion to slog through 30 inches of text on an 82-year-old homeless man with emphysema who continues to smoke and almost blew himself to smithereens.
Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes apparently ordered Staff Writer Stephanie Akin to neglect her reporting on Hackensack and pull the story together, but who is the editor kidding by calling Bergen County's homeless problem "invisible"?
It's "invisible" from the Garret Mountain newsroom where Sykes and her lazy, incompetent minions spend all their time with their heads up their well-padded posteriors.
Homeless beat
But for many years before Publisher Stephen A. Borg abandoned Hackensack, the large number of homeless who walked that city's streets almost amounted to a beat, and the problem merited the building of a large shelter between Costco Wholesale and the county jail.
Why insult Bergen County readers by pretending The Record's editors exposed homelessness?
Two local obits
Below the patch story, there is a terrific piece by Jay Levin, the local obituary writer, on a party former Rutherford Councilman and Ramsey teacher Alan "Big Al" Note threw himself before he died.
Levin has another good local obituary on the front of Local -- Helga Newmark of Hackensack, the first female Holocaust survivor ordained a rabbi (L-1).
Readers of Road Warrior John Cichowski's column today may be surprised to learn he has a 95-year-old father, who isn't named for some strange reason (L-6).
Cichowski has only shown contempt for older drivers -- who cause numerous accidents, killing and injuring others -- refusing to compile a list of classes and other programs to help them improve their driving skills.
