Weak local daily paper is not up to reporting Paris terror

Work continues on the Bergen County Justice Center after completion of a garage at Court and South River streets in Hackensack. Both structures will be tax exempt, adding to the burden of residential and commercial taxpayers in the county seat.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When you're the editor of a local daily paper that relies on the weakest and cheapest news service around, you shouldn't try to tackle a story as big as the terror in Paris.

Yet, Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record dares to publish a front page with an Associated Press story that calls Friday night's attacks "the deadliest violence on [French] soil since World War II" (A-1).

That's a totally ridiculous comparison between a war that killed an estimated 350,000 civilians in France and terrorism that "left at least 129 people dead and 352 injured."

The exaggerated Associated Press coverage also doesn't make any reference to the long and troubled relationship between France and the Muslim countries the onetime colonial power ruled, including Algeria and Syria.

It gets worse

Just below the fold today, Columnist Mike Kelly claims North Jersey has the same kind of "potential terrorist targets that stir some of the deepest fears among law-enforcement experts charged with protecting" residents here (A-1).

Instead, Kelly should point out that pathetic local police departments from Paramus to Paterson aren't even up to doing their job of protecting residents from everyday violence.

And Production Editor Liz Houlton still does not get the incongruity of running a dated thumbnail photo of Kelly's shit-eating grin or an amateurish headline with such a grave story.

"In U.S., ramping up 

readiness for the worst"

Local angle

The Record's staff also tried to localize the story, but the best the editors and reporters could do was to quote one North Jersey resident who was in a Paris bar during the attacks and another who grew up there.

On Saturday's front page, an entire story or sidebar was devoted to two Bergen County residents, a teenager who took a year off and an Englewood pastry chef who heard about the attacks while on a business trip in Japan.

The first is Malo Guegen, 18, a privileged Haworth resident who is living with his uncle in Paris, where he was in a bar watching the soccer match between France and Germany on TV. 

The second is Florian Bellanger, the pastry chef, who grew up in Paris, and who was worried about his two brothers, who still live there. 

Today, a front-page sidebar is devoted to "people across New Jersey and New York" who "took moments to reflect and grieve over the Friday night terrorist attacks" (A-1). 

North Jersey news

The Local section today and Saturday couldn't provide a starker contrast to the events in Paris.

Today's lead story would have us believe life in Allendale is nearly perfect, with residents having little more to worry about than how high school athletic fields are being lit (L-1).

In Hackensack, residents are breathing a sigh of relief after 111 volunteers from nine groups collected litter from across the city on Saturday (L-1).

I am still waiting for a story on Hackensack's free-spending Board of Education, which pays lunchroom aides $22 an hour.

Almost all of Saturday's Local section was devoted to crime and court news, including the sentencing of four defendants in the 2013 home invasion and robbery of multimillionaire developer Fred Daibes.

Last year, Daibes dropped a plan to build apartments on 19.7 acres along River Street in Hackensack owned by North Jersey Media Group, publisher of the The Record.

Tunnel vision

Kelly has a second column in today's Sunday edition, this one about the agreement to build new Hudson River rail tunnels, a project Governor Christie aborted in October 2010.

Basically, Kelly rewrote a Page 1 news story that appeared just two days ago, asking who will pay the estimated cost of $20 billion (O-1).

Kelly and transportation reporter Christopher Maag, who wrote Friday's story, didn't bother to calculate the societal value of expanded rail service, including greater worker productivity, and less traffic congestion and air pollution.

The headline and Kelly's text also are incorrect: Two tunnels will be built, not one.

More bullshit

Critic Elisa Ung sounds just like a restaurant owner today, arguing against the high cost of grass-fed beef, a leaner, healthier type that is raised without harmful antibiotics and growth hormones (BL-1).

Ung's lame argument is that grass-fed beef isn't as profitable for restaurants.

In today's slanted column, misnamed The Corner Table, human and animal welfare aren't even mentioned.

She also is wrong by asserting that grass-fed meat is available only in upscale grocery stores, ignoring the organic grass-fed steaks and ground beef from Australia sold at ShopRite supermarkets.

Jock itch invades news meeting

Image via Wikipedia

The Bergen County Courthouse is in what town?

Editor Francis Scandale's well-known jock itch appears to have infected all of the editors in the news meeting by the looks of today's front page -- the second day in the row of above-the-fold sports.


When I still worked at The Record, Scandale said a survey showed sports was 12th on the list of what subscribers wanted to read. He ignored that then, and he ignores that now.


Governor Christie's White House ambitions also are back on Page 1 today, and the story reports a "public announcement" may come soon.


The A-1 story to the right of the big high school football photo probably has readers doing a double-take. 


Training wheels


In the same position on Friday, Staff Writer Karen Rouse reported the federal transportation debt facing New Jersey had grown to nearly $274 million, and the story contained no hint of a deal.


What a difference a day makes. Today, Rouse reports U.S. and New Jersey officials have ended their 11-month standoff over the aborted Hudson River rail tunnels, and the state can get off the hook with a payment of $95 million.



Did Rouse's sources tell her, earlier in the week, a settlement was near, but she couldn't report it? Or did her story on Friday shake something loose? Pretty strange.


Today, Rouse does her best to polish Christie's anti-mass transit image, leaving to nearly the end of her story the resultant loss of billions in federal funds, as well as tens of thousands of jobs, not to mention how commuters will be standing in the aisles on rush-hour trains for years to come.


When he killed the rail tunnels, Christie cited potentially devastating cost overruns, but also noted his overweight wife, first lady Mary Pat Christie, had complained she would have had to walk too far to make her subway connection in Manhattan.


Major Latino news


Putting aside that the sentencing of a gang leader is the most important local news today, the poorly written lead paragraph of the story confuses readers with both an "after" and a "before."


The L-1 lead says Juan Rosario was removed from a courtroom "after an expletive-filled outburst before a judge sentenced him on attempted murder charges."


This would have been much clearer: The gang leader was removed from the courtroom for an expletive-filled outburst at the judge who sentenced him.


Also, he was convicted of attempted murder, so the word "charges" are unnecessary. 


The first paragraph also says the courtroom is in "Bergen County," and nowhere else are readers told that means Hackensack. It's "Superior Court in Hackensack" or a "Hackensack courtroom," not a "Bergen County courtroom."


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' supremely lazy assignment minions also use non-fatal accident photos to fill holes on L-3 and L-6, and the only Hackensack news is a police story on L-1.


Reliving 9/11


The story on journalists giving their eyewitness accounts of 9/11 to students at Ramapo College doesn't mention that Jim Dwyer of The New York Times once worked at The Record (L-3).


Readers also aren't told Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin's "iconic image of three firefighters hoisting an American flag" over the debris was relegated to a back page through a massive failure of new judgment by Scandale, the editor, who -- then and now -- simply lacks the gumption for the job.

Belly laughs echo amid news drought

Image via Wikipedia

Hey, Governor Christie, one of the richest men in the state, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, has some practical advice on how to spend the state's money. 

Don't you love Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.,  telling Governor Christie in The Record today he can get it for him "wholesale"?


Christie railroaded commuters when he pulled the plug on new Hudson River tunnels, and now he's railroading taxpayers by shoveling more than $1 million for legal and lobbying services to his pals at a politically connected law firm in Washington, D.C. (A-1).


"Governor Christie could have gone wholesale, but chose to go retail at a heavy cost to the state," Lautenberg said.


You'll have to plow deep into the Page 1 story, all the way to the continuation page to see Lautenberg's comment (A-6).


So the clueless news or copy editor uses not the Lautenberg quote as a pop-out at the top of the column on A-6, but a quote from NJ Transit containing an embarrassing grammatical error.


And why do Staff Writers Karen Rouse and Herb Jackson insist on sticking to their deadly dull recitation of the facts?  


Loosen up. Use that great Lautenberg quote in the lead to hook readers and stop trying to pass off your stories as exposes.


Organ grinder


Editor Francis Scandale came up with a doozie front page today.


Where did this story on a New Jersey organ-making family come from, and why is it on A-1? As for the other A-1 story, isn't everyone already tired of federal snitch Solomon Dwek, and the petty officials he bribed?


What would have been wrong with putting out front a scary story that affects nearly every reader -- the one on commercial air travel safety -- instead of burying it on A-7?


There's even a Page 1 blurb about an idiotic column by Tara Sullivan in Sports, comparing the U.S. Women's World Cup team to the '99 squad. 


How about comparing the Woodland Park daily to The Record in 1999, before the Scandale scourge arrived?


More Jewish news


Another Page 1 blurb, on a Jewish center, doesn't even tell you what town it's in.


It's in Tenafly, Staff Writer Deena Yellin reports on the front of Local. Isn't there something wrong with allowing an Orthodox Jew to write so many stories about other Orthodox Jews?


Readers often learn a lot from letters to the editor, more than what they learn from the paper.


James T. Gallione  Sr., a retired Westwood teacher, comments on the ceiling Christie has imposed on superintendents' salaries, but notes that in addition to a $175,000 salary, the governor gets a $75,000 cash stipend, a luxury box and other perks (A-10).


It looks like head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes -- or her stand-in -- put the paper to bed real early Monday night.


No July Fourth fireworks photos appear on the Local front or anywhere else.

Stupid Headline of the Week

Image via Wikipedia

New Jersey as seen from the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.

Although the editors at The Record of Woodland Park gave Governor Christie nearly the entire front page on Thursday, the main headline inadvertently cheapened everything he had to say:

Christie's two cents

From dictionary.com:

two cents

–noun

1. something of insignificant value; a paltry amount: We wouldn't give two cents for their chances of success.

—Idiom

2. two cents worth, an opinion, usually unsolicited and unwelcome: Who asked you to add your two cents worth?

And the subhead on the bill for the Hudson River rail tunnels he killed was inaccurate:

"Refuses to pay $271M ... without fight" 

He said the state disputes the federal's government's "math" and will not pay "a nickle more than we think we have to." That's far from saying he refuses to pay the bill.

Taken together, the two heads qualify for "Stupid Headline of the Week."

But overall, the story and photos are some of the best public relations the governor has ever gotten -- all from the fawning editors on The Record's Editorial Board.

And the Borgs call this a newspaper?