When Christie drops out, editors will push for a comeback

Sign pollution at an auto service center and gas station on Forest Avenue and Teaneck Road in Teaneck.

Editor's note: This post has been updated to include a Star-Ledger editorial that condemns Governor Christie for killing a bill that would have boosted the turnout of voters in New Jersey.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

There was little if any mention of Governor Christie this morning on such National Public Radio stations as WNYC-FM.

But his comments in the so-called Republican undercard debate on Tuesday night leads The Record's front page today.

Political columnist Charles Stile continues to bore readers to tears with his endless analysis of Christie's every word, burp and fart -- as if the reporter sees himself as a patron saint of lost causes (A-1).

Even calling the GOP bully "presidential candidate Chris Christie," as St. Charlie does, is a stretch, given he didn't even poll the 2.5% he needed to get on the main stage with Dr. Ben Carson and Donald Trump.

Readers can expect Stile, Editor Martin Gottlieb and other Christie apologists to push for a comeback after the governor goes down in flames at the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary in February.

Until then, it will be Christie on the campaign trail 24/7, and repeated backing of every veto in New Jersey.

Early voting

Shame on Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin for praising Christie's veto of early voting, automatic registration at Motor Vehicle Commission offices and other Democracy Act attempts to boost turnout (A-16).

Again, Doblin and other editors continue to politicize every issue by calling greater access to voting an exclusively Democratic concern.

"Voting is a responsibility," Doblin scolds readers turned off by the partisan politics that fill The Record's news columns. 

"A little effort is not asking too much of any citizen. Christie got this one right."

A little effort isn't asking too much of a so-called journalist like Doblin, either, especially in view of unprecedented voter apathy and low turnouts in state and local elections.

The Star-Ledger, on the other hand, wants to take voting laws out of Christie's greedy hands:

"New Jersey just had the lowest Election Day turnout in its history – with just one out of five voters bothering to show up – so the governor figures he might as well make it harder for people to vote.

"His veto of the Democracy Act Monday was another predictable strike in Gov. Christie's campaign for voter suppression, and he even dusted off some old chestnuts about unreasonable costs and how the bill failed to "ensure that every eligible citizen's vote counts and is not stolen by fraud."

"It's always amusing when politicians imply that voters cannot be trusted.

"And it's special when a politician who spent $12 million on a special election – in a shameless attempt to hide from the electorate – claims he's looking out for our wallets."

To read the full editorial, click on this link:

Take voting laws out of Christie's hands


In Hackensack

In a special nonpartisan election in Hackensack on Nov. 3, only 2,625 votes were cast for four council candidates -- this in a city with about 20,000 registered voters.

One 90-year-old resident did make the "effort, but complained the entrance to his polling place at Hackensack High School was poorly marked, and he had to circle the large building to find it.

Of course, The Record's lazy editors did their best to ignore local races in Hackensack and other towns, and the irresponsible Doblin didn't even issue any endorsements for those contests.

Deborah Keeling-Geddis, standing at right, was sworn in as a city councilwoman in Hackensack on Tuesday night. She replaces businessman Jason W. Some (Photo credit: Hackensack.org)

Local news?

Today's front page offers nothing to local readers in Bergen County, and if you turn to the local-news section, municipal reporting takes a holiday (L-1).

Crime and court news apparently crowed out any mention of Tuesday night's meeting in Hackensack, where teacher's assistant Deborah Keeling-Geddis, who is African-American, was sworn in as a city councilwoman.

Assemblyman Gordon Johnson of Englewood officiated at the swearing in.

The Bergen County clerk certified the election of Keeling-Geddis to an unexpired term on Monday night, giving her a total of 819 votes.

Incumbent Jason W. Some received a total of 784 votes, school board President Jason S. Nunnermacker got 756 votes and Richard L. Cerbo received 266 votes.

Those totals are of votes cast on machines, mail-in ballots and provisional or paper ballots.

The agenda of Tuesday night's meeting was posted on the city's Web site:

City Council Meeting Docket 

It's not enough to criticize the PA behemoth from afar

The Record has written thousands of words criticizing the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, but no reporter has actually boarded a bus to the city or joined the long lines of home-bound commuters who face delays on the platforms, where spring-loaded seating resembles a torture device outlawed by the Geneva Convention, above.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

How does a North Jersey newspaper cover the region's crowded public transit system?

If you are Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record, you buy into what the lazy local assignment editors have done for decades:

You send reporters to cover the meetings of the mass-transit agencies, including NJ Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

In recent months, thousands of critical words about the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan have merely parroted complaining letters to the editor, a state legislative hearing and the experiences of the bi-state agency's new chairman.

Rouse et al.

Commuters will cheer news the Port Authority board on Wednesday voted to approve $90 million in emergency repairs this year (A-1).

But that emergency spending could have come a lot sooner, if only the paper's transportation reporters actually rode mass transit and reported on the quality of the service, as the New York papers did for years with their subway columns.

A couple of years ago, Staff Writer Karen Rouse did report firsthand on the afternoon stampede for trains at New York's Penn Station, but Rouse apparently has never actually tried to get a seat on a city bound train or bus during the morning rush hour.

She also refused to ride the decrepit local buses in North Jersey -- relied on mostly by people who can't afford cars -- in the years before NJ Transit replaced them with new "talking" buses.

Boburg, Cichowski, Sforza

Shawn Boburg, who covers the Port Authority, has never reported on the need to expand the PATH commuter rail system or the reverse bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel -- two parts of his beat.

The befuddled Road Warrior, John Cichowski, is hopelessly lost in the suburbs, and the so-called commuting column he has written for more than a decade has been taken hostage by drivers whose sanity is questionable. 

Anti-transit reporting

Of course, none of this is a surprise to readers who remember long, anti-light rail stories aimed at Englewood and Tenafly readers from then-reporter Tom Davis that were ordered by Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, himself a failed transportation reporter.

Lines of home-bound commuters are as long as ever at the Manhattan hub, but the Port Authority did install touch-screen terminals on the main level that show bus routes and, more importantly for occasional users, the number of the gate where they can catch a bus.

I haven't seen that improvement reported in The Record.

Today, an editorial on the new Port Authority chairman, John Degnan, and emergency terminal repairs is careful to avoid reviewing all that Governor Christie has done to hurt mass transit (A-12).

Forgotten responsibility

I chuckled at Boburg's lead paragraph this morning:

"For years, the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan has seemed frozen in time, a forgotten giant in the agency's vast portfolio of transportation facilities" (A-1).

Indeed. The terminal has long been forgotten in the Hackensack and Woodland Park newsrooms, too.

More corrections

Three long corrections appear on A-2 today, including a rare error in a local obituary.

Taking more breaks from news, accuracy

The Record continues to neglect Hackensack news. (Photo credit: Dougtone)

Didn't we read today's Page 1 story about New Jersey immigrants "bracing for another holiday season away from family" last year and the year before?

Why is The Record running a front-page photo of Santa Claus giving gifts in hurricane-ravaged Moonachie, with no reference to A-3, where readers find another Santa doing the same in South Seaside Park?

Does a story about American flags at the 9/11 Memorial really belong on the front page, even on a slow-news day like today?


Error-prone editor


On that story's continuation page, Production Editor Liz Houlton clueless layout and copy editors screwed up two photos of the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan (A-4).

The two photos were supposed to appear side by side, but were stacked on top of each other. Still, the caption refers to a "left" photo and a "right" photo.

On A-6, a photo caption contains the awkward phrase: " ... for relatives in [Colombia] at El Rinconcito in Hackensack."

The caption also misspells the country of Colombia as "Columbia." 

Back to school?

Apparently, Houlton and none of the copy editors attended the well-respected journalism school in Columbia, Mo., where the first lesson was "accuracy, accuracy, accuracy."

Below that on A-6, a caption says "onlookers, left, viewing the membrane filtration plant," but no building is visible in that photo. 

On A-8, the Business page, the words "Chinese food" inexplicably appear over a graphic on the march of crappy American fast food across China. 

I don't think we're going to see a McBroccoli sandwich anytime soon.

Environment hits back 

Superstorm Sandy and the freak snowstorm two days before Halloween in 2011 show the environment is striking back against all the human abuse it has sustained in recent decades. 

Yet, lazy head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, actually quote lazy shoppers who refuse to buy reusable bags and help the environment (A-1 and L-1).

And in a photo caption, Houlton's moronic copy editors describes one responsible shopper's reusable bag as a "tote" bag (L-1).

Plastic-bag fees have been common in Europe for years. 

 Car-crash photos

On L-2, four beautiful photos from a reader, Judith Kopitar of Hawthorne, are a welcome break from all the non-fatal accident photos Sykes and Sforza run to fill space in the Local news section.

An L-6 story on the retirement of the overpaid Fort Lee police chief -- who got $210, 437 this year -- only serves to remind readers Sykes and Sforza never bothered to ask Governor Christie an important question:

Why did the GOP bully cap school superintendents' salaries at $175,000, but left his law-enforcement pals still living high on the hog.

The story doesn't say how many sick days he'll be cashing in or what his pension will be, but you can assume it will be huge.

Can you imagine how many donuts the ex-chief's pension will buy?

 

They stand in the way of greatness

Governor Christie mocks Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney for being in shape. (Getty Images)

Everyone on Wall Street and Main Street knows that New Jersey desperately needs more -- not less -- tax revenue, as The Record's front page reports once again today. 

But Governor Christie continues to push for a tax cut that will benefit his wealthy supporters most of all.

Oh, The Record long ago stopped including in its Christie stories who would get the biggest cut in income taxes. 

A middle-class family would save about $80 in the first year, enough to buy a bag of groceries.

Instead, the editors continue to give Christie a front-page pulpit for his ridiculous plan, and regurgitate even the most outlandish B.S. from the GOP bully.

You'll find this illogical statement deep in the text of the main A-1 story today:

"Christie argues that an income tax cut would help the economy by bringing businesses to New Jersey (A-8)."

Marty makes it worse

Editor Marty Gottlieb and his Trenton staff continue to ignore reality: 

It's our enormous governor -- with his rabid, no-tax policies -- who literally stands in the way of New Jersey once again becoming a great state.

At least an editorial today notes "it's the arithmetic that counts, not the politics" (A-12).

But what readers remember is Christie's relentless P.R. campaign -- plastered all over the front page almost every day.

In the newsroom

In the Woodland Park newsroom, two enormous editors stand in the way of The Record once again becoming a great local newspaper.

In the last decade, local-news editors Deirdre Sykes and Tim Nostrand have squelched any meaningful coverage of the obesity epidemic in New Jersey or what state health officials are doing about it.

Look at the story on obesity and health-care costs at the bottom of Page 1 today. It's based on a new "study."

You'd think that after years of staring at their ugly, bloated bodies in the mirror, the lights would have gone off in Sykes' and Nostrand's heads about the need to report on obesity.

Instead, they just sought solace in eating more food.

Screw all commuters

The third major story on A-1 today shows Sykes and Nostrand have given up all pretense of trying to ease the commute of tens of thousands of readers.

A story on Route 3 construction is on the front page, but not because of the continuing inconvenience to commuters.

What the editors are really worried about is the work not being finished in time for the Super Toilet Bowl, a football game scheduled for 2014. 

Lazy news gathering

Sykes and Nostrand are so inept, they squandered their staff on four full days of reporting on the death of Barbara Vernieri, who was murdered on Friday before her East Rutherford home was set on fire.

The story was slowly reported four days in a row on A-1 -- not three, as I wrote earlier -- and Tuesday's account ended up demoting Mitt Romney's insulting remarks to somewhere inside the paper.

Now, a day after the entire country was discussing Romney's campaign, The Record finally puts the controversy on Page 1. 

Laziest columnist

If two lazy local-news editors aren't enough, the lazy Road Warrior columnist continues to ignore the needs of commuters by searching out every obscure story or simply relying on e-mails from readers.

Today's entire column by Staff Writer John Cichowski is about "Route 23 signage" and a single reader's e-mail (L-1).

Sykes, Nostrand and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza had so little local news today they were forced to lead Local with Christie's remarks on the state Supreme Court.

More 'responsible journalism'

Image via Wikipedia

The editors at The Record of Woodland Park love politics, and they want  their readers to love it, too. But most readers are turned off by politics and the telling of so many stories by what the Democrats, Republicans, Tea Baggers or other groups think. 

Still, the lazy, incompetent editors know no shame and don't hesitate to cover Page 1, as they did today, with a story on Jon Corzine's contributions to fellow Democrats, complete with an elaborate graphic. "Corzine closes his wallet" is the headline. Who -- with the exception of Democrats who received his largess -- cares?

Why not devote the paper's resources to reforming a system that allows only the rich to run for office? I guess that wouldn't be the kind of "responsible journalism" espoused by North Jersey Media Group. Apparently, the Borgs like the idea that only rich and powerful people like themselves get elected.

Then, the editors squander more of the front page on a sensational story about pedophile tourists in Thailand, burying the shocking news that protesters in Greece killed three bank employees.

Another story the editors try to minimize quotes a powerful senator saying he won't hold a confirmation hearing for King Chris' nominee to replace the only black justice on the state Supreme Court. Ha, ha, ha.



On the front of Local, Columnist Mike Kelly inadvertently indicts head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and exposes the weak reporting of the team that was chasing allegations against Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa, who has been suspended with pay.


Kelly says a private investigator (working for an attorney who represented a Hackensack police officer) was the source of the allegations that Zisa covered up an accident involving his then-girlfriend, and that he informed the Bergen County prosecutor. Why didn't The Record's reporters get to this investigator first?

Focus on Passaic and Morris counties

Image via Wikipedia

Today's edition of  The Record is another clear sign that news coverage has shifted west with the move of the newsroom to Woodland Park from Hackensack.

Half of Page 1 is devoted to a quality-of-life story affecting three families in far off  Ringwood, and there's another long Ringwood story inside the Local section. When is the last time you saw a long, illustrated story about a single Bergen County town on the front page? Or a quality-of-life story about Bergen families?

There are two Paterson stories, one about John F. Kennedy High School, and a Passaic story inside the Local section. When is the last time you read a story about Hackensack High School? Or about the quality of life in Hackensack? Monsy Alvarado, the poor woman assigned to cover Hackensack, ended a two-day streak of  having a story in the paper.

When you count up the bylines of  Star-Ledger reporters and reporters who work for the weeklies owned by North Jersey Media Group, you have to wonder what The Record's reporters are doing. Mostly, they are doing nothing right under the eyes of the lazy, incompetent editors.

The Star-Ledger stories are poorly done and often lack details. Or they seem irrelevant -- mere filler -- such as the story on Page A-4 about gunshots hitting a Morristown family's duplex; no one was hurt. When did the paper still known to many as  the Bergen Record start covering Morristown?

Are we in trouble yet?

Image via Wikipedia

The state's huge financial problems are back on the front page as The Record of Woodland Park continues its now-you-see-it, now-you-don't coverage of  the  "mountain of debt"  in New Jersey -- third highest in the nation.

The onetime Hackensack daily's lazy, incompetent editors finally acknowledge former Gov. Chirstie Whitman's "borrowing spree" after running a column by her a while back that blamed everyone but herself for the mess the state is in. And, on Page A-12, the focus is taken off politicians and put on taxpayers, who  are criticized  for approving bonds to preserve open space. This reflects the Borg family's long-held goal of  covering  North Jersey with shopping centers and keeping the ones in Paramus open on Sundays to boost the paper's advertising revenue.

You won't find any development, education or municipal news about Hackensack, where the paper was founded in 1895, but the front of the Local section today has the juicy details about a municipal court appearance by a bimbo complainant from Wayne.

Inside, you'll find the second story in less than a month about establishment of a "green team" in Englewood that will apparently duplicate the work of the city's Environmental Commission, but no mention about whether this will lead to recycling of  TV sets, computers and other electronic devices, something Hackensack has been doing with little fanfare for more than a year.

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung gives two out of four stars to Cafe Amici in Ho-Ho-Kus, but such a rating is meaningless after she gave the same number of stars to Bahama Breeze, a chain restaurant that serves fake Caribbean dishes in Wayne. And while she continues to obsess over the quality of desserts, missing for another week are any health inspections of Wyckoff restaurants.

She describes a "giant" cupcake as "impeccable," "dense and moist with a thick cream cheese," then adds, innocently, "We're guessing it wasn't low-fat." Indeed. Readers likely are guessing that she isn't "low-fat," either.