Editors turn every Christie move into a political stunt

Leonia is one of those Bergen County towns that doesn't get much coverage in The Record of Woodland Park. Dressing up the small business district along Broad Avenue is a sculpture garden, above and below.

Most of the businesses along Broad Avenue are owned and operated by Korean-Americans. Leonia borders Palisades Park and Fort Lee, both of which have even stronger Korean presences.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I've learned to ignore the lame political column Charles Stile has been writing since Governor Christie took office way back in January 2010.

But his Page 1 column in The Record today is hard to miss, especially because Editor Marty Gottlieb is using it in place of a news story on the special session of the state Legislature the governor called to fix the bail system (A-1).

This boring Stile column reads like all the rest:

The special session, Stile claims, could "polish up his resume for a likely run for president in 2016" (A-1).

"Some say the timing is good for Christie, who is trying to rebuild his image in the wake of the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal" (A-7).

Voter apathy

But on A-7, readers also find a news story on the special session that repeats much of Stile's column -- a real waste of space.

Stile and The Record avoid discussing how politics divide the nation and New Jersey, and how reporting like this simply turns off voters.

Christie was reelected last November in the lowest turnout of any previous gubernatorial election, but The Record always refers to it as a "landslide" and doesn't even mention the legions of disaffected voters.

Worst governor ever

Below the fold today, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reports that funding of open-space preservation is endangered by the poor state economy under the GOP bully.

But you have to read the entire story to get that message.

Today's editorial on anti-violence efforts by three North Jersey cities also is edited in a way to avoid placing blame on Christie for cutting state aid to poor cities like Paterson, resulting in the layoff of 125 police officers in 2011.

"Indeed," the editorial writer declares, "during the recent tenure of Mayor Jeffrey Jones in Paterson there was the feeling that, for whatever reason, the city's needs were not being heard by the powers that be in Trenton."

"For whatever reason"? What crap.

The quaint Borough Hall in Leonia.

New suicides? 

Another Page 1 story may cause more suicides on the George Washington Bridge among readers who learn a plan to build a 9-foot fence might take eight years -- twice as long as did construction of the span (A-1).

Imagine how many lives could have been saved if this fence was built during the years the Port Authority was diverting toll money to construction of One World Trade Center, with all of its delays and cost overruns.

It's hard to believe the fence won't be finished until 2022.

The story is by Staff Writer Christopher Maag, who has been neglecting his Hackensack beat.

Maag is thorough, but the story goes on and on like something you'd see in The New York Times, Gottlieb's old paper.

Hackensack news

With Maag writing about bridge suicides, the only Hackensack news today is another reporter's story on a lawsuit filed against the city by Patrolman Moise Flanagan (L-1).

Hackensack Scoop, a local blog, reported the lawsuit five days ago.

Lying to readers

If a recipe isn't healthy, The Record's editors don't see anything wrong with lying to their readers.

Clueless freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson's recipe for Chilled Fennel Soup calls for 4 tablespoons of butter filled with artery clogging saturated fat (BL-2).

Yet, Jackson writes of the soup, "with no cream whatsoever, it's as healthy as healthy can be."

OK. With no brains whatsoever, Jackson is as stupid as stupid can be.

On Broad Avenue in Leonia, retail space is being renovated behind a colorful barrier, above and below.

No apology for generic news

Buses carrying New Jersey commuters are backed up during the morning rush hour at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. Don't expect The Record to report on whether a bigger terminal is needed. The editors have banned mass-transit news.

The Record's front page today carries an apology for problems "with telephone calls to our offices in the 973 area code."

But I didn't see any apology for a dull newspaper from Editor Marty Gottlieb and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.

The lead story on Page 1 today is about failure of a "river cleanup" in a region where just about all of the rivers are stubbornly polluted.

The biggest element on A-1 is about Halloween in Clifton -- one of an estimated 90 towns in the circulation area.

How does Hackensack manage to pull off an entire block of homes decorated for Halloween while Clifton chokes on just one house?

More sports on A-1

The other Page 1 stories are about the presidential race and baseball.

The lead story on Monday's front page ran under a riveting headline: "Towns buried in paperwork."

The biggest element on Page 1 is about Samantha Oh, a Korean woman who is the first female Asian-American officer on the staff of the Bergen County sheriff.

This is only the latest story about Korean-Americans, who get far more coverage in The Record than North Jersey's larger ethnic groups.

Elephant goes berserk

Local on Monday and today carried little municipal news, and nothing from Bergen's most diverse towns: Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood.

Today, Columnist Charles Stile dissects Governor Christie's appearances for GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney without discussing the elephant in the TV studio (L-1).

Many viewer watching Christie on CBS' "Face the Nation" shook their heads over just how big he has grown -- a subject Stile and the media won't touch with a 6-foot hero sandwich. 

What didn't happen

On Monday, Columnist Mike Kelly bored readers again with something that didn't happen in his hometown of Teaneck, calling it "a story of our times" (L-1).

Somehow, the editors missed reporting the death of international motorsports journalist Chris Economaki of Ridgewood on Saturday or Sunday.

The obituary finally appeared on Monday (L-5).

Editors are losing North Jersey focus

Image via Wikipedia
Assignment editors at The Record couldn't find directions to Fort Lee, above, and Palisades Park to get Korean-American reaction to the death of Kim Jong Il of North Korea.

Kim Jong Il, the madman who ruled North Korea, died a few days ago, but editors of The Record have done nothing to localize the story by interviewing some of thousands of Korean-Americans who have changed the face of North Jersey.


Instead, they ran wire-service boilerplate on Page 1 today and Monday -- basically duplicating all the mindless TV news coverage readers had to sit through.


The only story about Korean-Americans in the paper today is the sentencing of  a swindler from Palisades Park by the name of Chul-Hoe Choi (L-3).


The Kim Jong Il story ruins an otherwise strong North Jersey front page today, led by a classic pay-to-play expose from Staff Writer Jeff Pillets involving a Bergen County insurance agent, Joseph Bigica.


Of course, after umpteen similar stories over the years, why isn't The Record exposing the corrupt campaign-finance system locally and nationally and calling for the reforms that would forever put an end to play-to-play and special-interest legislation? 


Our own dictator


Instead of wasting precious A-1 space on Kim Jong Il, interim Editor Douglas Clancy should have played up the story he relegated to A-3, reporting the state's "first significant increase in revenue collections in three years." 


Will North Jersey see an end to Governor Christie's mean-spirited cuts in school aid and property tax relief -- part of his orchestrated campaign against the middle-class way of life in New Jersey?


That's a hell of a lot more important to North Jersey residents than "U.S. in the dark on North Korea moves," as today's A-1 headline states. There are four sidebars to the Kim story on A-9.


One of those sidebars is about "restaurateur and freelance diplomat Bobby Egan," owner of Cubby's barbecue restaurant on River Street in Hackensack, where he serves some of the worst food in North Jersey.


The only other Hackensack news residents will find in today's paper is a photo and caption on L-3 about a holiday lunch for seniors, served for the past 18 years by the Trobiano family.


For that, we can thank Clancy and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.


Little local news


How much local news is there in today's Local section, Sykes' pride and joy?


There is so little local news Sykes ran a photo of a minivan fire on her section front (L-1), even though no one was injured.


There is so little local news Sykes ran two photos of murder defendant Jenny Tran on the witness stand, when one would have been enough  (L-1 and L-6).


There is so little local news that a large part of the funeral Mass story on murder victim John Amendola is devoted to the man accused of killing him, former Police Officer Scott Smith (L-1 and L-6).


Most of the filler about Smith seems to have been taken verbatim from earlier news stories.


And buried in the back of Local is the obituary of Teaneck businesswoman and child star Susan Aviner, whose life is of far more interest to North Jersey readers than Kim Jong Il's (L-7).


Will the editors of the Woodland Park daily please remove their heads from their assholes.


Say cheese


For a real waste of space, see the Better Living cover story comparing fresh food to frozen and canned (F-1).


On F-3, a story listing cheese retailers omits Costco Wholesale, which stocks more than 50 cheeses at unbeatable prices.

Editorial tunnel vision

Image via Wikipedia

A science center official says the "Jurassic Park"  movie showed "live dinosaurs."

The Record's front page on Friday was dominated by Governor Christie's unilateral decision to stop work on the Hudson rail tunnel and an editorial backed him up. But none of the reporters or the editorial page editor questioned -- or even explained -- his authority to do so. Today, we learn the feds got Christie to agree to a two-week "hiatus," whatever that is.


Since the Republican took office in January, the Woodland Park daily has endorsed virtually every one of his decisions, including his slashing and burning of state programs for the middle and working classes, while giving him a pass on his clear favoritism for millionaires such as the Borgs and his wealthy supporters.

Sadly, the staff -- from Editor Francis Scandale to Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin to Washington, Trenton and transportation reporters -- have become nothing more than media whores catering to the governor's every whim. What a disservice to readers.

Is The Record guilty of cultural insensitivity or worse? Most of A-1 today is covered by another article about Korean-Americans in North Jersey, the latest in a series. This is a worthy subject -- focusing on survivors of Japanese sex enslavement -- but what about other immigrant groups? 


A couple of weeks ago, a former columnist wrote an op-ed piece taking the paper to task for omitting Japanese-Americans from an education story. 

I can't recall anything more than an occasional crime story about the God-fearing, hard-working Jamaican community in Englewood, Teaneck and Hackensack from any reporter in the past two decades -- yet head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes bought and ate her fair share of Jamaican black rum cakes. The Jamaican community has been here far longer than the Koreans.

Does it have to do with Jamaicans being black? We know what a shameful job Scandale and Sykes have done in diversifying the newsroom. Scandale even got rid of the paper's only Hispanic and black columnists.

Did you read that A-3 story from The Star-Ledger about the frozen woolly mammoth on display at the Liberty Science Center? Did you read this quote from a science center official: "You've seen those live dinosaurs in movies like 'Jurassic Park'...." Live? Is he kidding? Do I have to say they weren't "live dinosaurs"? More great news copy editing.

Local is another crappy section from Sykes and her staff of assistant assignment editors and municipal reporters. The first Englewood story by Giovanna Fabiano in nearly two months is about the dredging of a pond. No, that's not the same pond dredging you saw in the section the other day.

Sykes and the staff try to catch up with the sex-assault arrest of a Fox 5 news reporter from Wyckoff, allegedly with a 4-year-old girl -- a story that has been all over Jerry DeMarco's Cliffview Pilot.com. Pages L-6 and L-7 are mostly court, police and fire news.

This front page caters to few readers

Image by joseph a via Flickr












If you are Korean-American with a limited or no ability to speak English, or you give a hoot about Passaic County politics, today's front page appeals to you. However, the vast majority of readers are left wondering what Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale might have been smoking over the weekend.


And what did head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes eat over the weekend that clearly disagreed with her? Maybe she was just pissed that the strongest story her assignment minions could come up with to lead today's Local front is the hiring of an assistant principal in Haworth's tiny school district.

Local journalists say F.U.

I hope Publisher Stephen A. Borg is taking note of what a great job Scandale and Sykes are doing with The Record of Woodland Park -- as day after day they give the finger to readers hungry for municipal news of Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other important towns.

Talk to the neighbors

I recall the staff meeting where Scandle promised to finally get around to talking to his neighbors on Monmouth Road in Glen Rock on what they would like to see in the newspaper. I guess he never talked with them. He likely feared that if he introduced himself as editor of The Record, they would laugh in his face.

News for Korean-Americans

It looks like the photography staff produced no better picture than of a golfer who won a tournament in Paramus and his family, but maybe all the space it takes up on A-1 is by design, not out of desperation. 
 
Koreans are big golfers themselves and that image would have led them to the story at the bottom of the page about Holy Name Hospital's special program for these North Jersey  immigrants, with everyone from drivers to doctors who speak their language. (The article may find a few more readers, if the staff translates it for patients.)

Passaic County politics

The lead Page 1 story, about Jerry Speziale's $1 million campaign fund, is a waste of space. The least the tin-badge lawman can do is give the money to the county to ease the tax rate after his years of overspending and padded payrolls as Passaic County sheriff.

Laughing off laziness

On Page L-3 in Local, a story on Labor Day travelers is dumped at the bottom of the page. There's nothing in the story about whether Staff Writer Karen Rouse or the paper's other transportation writers will for the first time actually ride a bus or train to evaluate service this coming weekend. 


Two huge wire-service obits of obscure people came in handy to fill more than half of L-5 -- another embarrassment Sykes dismisses with one of her belly-shaking laughs.

A couple of late hits 

I was moved by the personal accounts in the Paterson shootings story that was all over the front on Sunday, but wonder why the paper didn't put more of the blame on the city's Police Department for not protecting residents.

On Sunday's Better Living front, a bullfighter who lives in Verona justifies killing the animals with the preposterous claim that it is more humane than raising and slaughtering cattle for food.

It's pretty obvious the gullible reporter has never seen a bullfight, where the bull is brutally punished by the picadors, who drive lances into their muscles, and where the bull, in turn, drives its horns into the padded flanks of the sedated horse, causing serious internal bleeding that eventually leads to death.

Why is this bizarre profile in the paper in the first place? A bullfighter (bullshitter) lives in North Jersey? Gee-whiz. Big deal. Next time, Features Director Barbara Jaeger, assign a writer who doesn't have his head up his A-hole or do some intelligent editing before the story is published.

(Photo: Passaic County Courthouse in Paterson.)