Flood victims continue to get the shaft

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NJ Transit admits the safety of rail crossings and tracks can be improved.

Editor Francis Scandale has finally pulled his swelled head out of you-know-where and produced a strong North Jersey front page for a change.


But what didn't change today is how officials continue to give flood victims the shaft, and how Staff Writer John Brennan manages to get his Meadowlands stories on Page 1 -- for the third time this week -- no matter how exaggerated or insubstantial.


Flood of excuses



The lead A-1 story reports that no action will be taken on two flood-aid bills until after the Nov. 8 election, because all 120 members of the Legislature will be out campaigning.

Brennan, a small-brained former sports reporter, is known to obsessively talk up his business stories with top editors until the only way to shut him up is to agree to put his highly promotional pieces out front.


In contrast to Brennan's fluff, the best story on A-1 today is an apparent change of heart by NJ Transit toward pedestrians who get mowed down by trains at unmanned crossings or along unfenced tracks.


Those victims, including three teenagers killed on Oct. 2-3 in Wayne and Garfield, are called "trespassers" -- a label the agency uses liberally in an apparent attempt to limit its liability.


But Jim Simpson, the state transportation czar who heads NJ Transit's board, said "a joint task force" will study adding transit police to guard some crossings, in addition to new signs, warnings, lights and fences.


New attitude


Unfortunately, the assignment desk turns out an upbeat story that puts the agency in the best light, failing to tell readers what a big change in attitude this is on the part of a normally inflexible NJ Transit. 


For decades, the state agency has maintained a hard line against victims, aided and abetted in recent years by a scolding John Cichowski, the inept Road Warrior columnist.


Also on A-1 today, the Paterson City Council is weighing whether to hold Mayor Jeffrey Jones in contempt for refusing to answer questions about Hurricane Irene overtime.


But shouldn't the story tell readers whether residents have the power to remove Jones from office? And why does the editorial on A-22 stop short of calling for his ouster?


Deadline dilemma


Scandale has been ignoring the occupy Wall Street protesters as best he could, but by putting a photo of them on A-1 today, he got screwed by his own early deadlines.


Just after midnight -- long after he went to sleep and the paper was put to bed -- the park's owner told the city it was postponing a cleanup scheduled for this morning.


After such a strong Page 1, the Local front is even more disappointing than usual, with a huge, space-filling photo of a gee-whiz traffic accident that injured a 17-year-old girl. 


Unable to generate local news, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes specializes in berating her staff photographers to produce many similar photos, reducing them to ambulance chasers.


Check his cavity


Cichowski continues to stray far from his L-1 commuting column, reporting today on the strip-search case involving a Burlington County driver that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.


The editors should conduct a cavity search on Cichowski in an effort to find his brain.


Pages L-2 to L-5 are devoted to higher education news.


Chief sponge


In Better Living, Staff Writer Elisa Ung gives an Ethiopian restaurant a good-to-excellent rating. Unfortunately, Mesob is in Montclair, and like me, many readers won't drive that far for dinner out.


Where are the new, interesting restaurants in Bergen and Passaic counties?Mesob has been open since 2003.


Related posts

• Editors railroad readers again (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)
• Flooded, lied to and then abandoned (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)
• Christie keeps the bullshit flowing (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)

Kicking Paterson when it's down

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On a clear day, Manhattan is visible from West Milford.

It's usually Editor Francis Scandale who kicks Paterson when it's down, but now the impoverished city's own mayor and three aides are getting into the act, prompting The Record to run more front-page coverage and an editorial today.


According to the A-1 story squeezed under a one-column headline, Mayor Jeffrey Jones and his three top administrators will return more than $20,000 in overtime pay they received after Hurricane Irene hit the Silk City. 


On Friday, the payment of overtime was Page 1 news in the Woodland Park daily. Today, as incredible as it may seem, the mayor left open the possibility he might in the end deserve overtime.


Moral outrage


In the past decade, Scandale has done a great deal to shape Paterson's image in the eyes of his largely suburban readership, claiming in two major series that drug dealing and prostitution were corrupting North Jersey residents. 


In both cases, the overwhelmingly negative stories were published without any balancing material on Paterson's rich and storied history:


How the Great Falls drove it to become America's first industrial city; the architectural riches of its Eastside mansion district or its bustling Middle Eastern and Turkish bazaar in South Paterson.


Paterson isn't just a city that has been "battling crimes, drugs and poverty for decades," as today's editorial says. Here is a link to the history of Lambert Castle, built by the most successful silk baron:


The Story of Catholina Lambert's Castle 


But that sort of thing bores the simple-minded Scandale, who often fails miserably in his responsibility to readers. 


And I don't know if the editor paid overtime to his reporters and photographers, but the series was so detailed that one day, a user-friendly map was published showing the street corners where drug dealers operated.


Getting it wrong


The paper has been covering the Tyler Clementi story for more than a year, but still struggles to get its facts straight, as noted in an A-2 correction today.


The editorial on A-11 treats the Paterson mayor and his aides harshly, but stops short of calling for their resignations. I can't find anything in the coverage on what Jones has done since he was elected.


Nor is there any mention today of how state aid to the city is tied up by political squabbling in Trenton. 


And while Scandale has exposed all of the city's flaws, he's directed no coverage of unscrupulous landlords, redlining banks and the other forces that keep down the predominantly minority residents.


Police news out front


The major news on Page 1 and on the Local front today basically are police stories -- a 15-year-old boy hit by a school bus in foggy West Milford and a manhole blast in downtown Ridgewood -- complete with photographs.


The latter story reports no one was injured, but quotes the police chief as saying the underground explosion had "enough force to rip up the manhole cover partially and leave it ajar."


The L-1 photo caption reports "severe power outages," but the reporter calls them "sporadic."


The Ridgewood story really is a waste of space, but a desk laboring under head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes couldn't come up with anything more legitimate from the 90 or so towns in the circulation area.


Borgs gulp


Congratulations to Staff Writer Andrew Tangel for getting the phrase "class conflict" into his lead paragraph on the firing of unionized office cleaners in Teaneck -- without quote marks (A-10).


That must be a first on the Business page of The Record, whose owners have fought tooth and nail to keep unions out and to preserve their right to fire workers with 20 to 30 years or more of service.


What the F?


I must be really out of it not to realize that every high school football team represents not the town or the county, but the entire Garden State, and that unbeknownst to me, teams compete every week in a statewide Olympics of High School Football.


At least, that's what I took from Scandale's lame Page 1 photo package last Saturday under the headline:

Jersey wins 1, loses 1

Below the headline, photos show a single play during a winning game and a losing game. 


Maybe the small-minded, sports-obsessed Scandale means football "jersey." Or, maybe he finds the cheerleaders too distracting.