Desperate Christie taking a big gamble with future of N.J.

In the truck lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike on Sunday afternoon, light traffic, cheap gas and the absence of state troopers encouraged some drivers to pass me doing 85 mph to 90 mph  with not a care in the world.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

More casino gambling in New Jersey? Are they out of their minds? 

Given the sordid history of casinos in Atlantic City, readers are puzzled today by The Record's upbeat, front-page coverage of Governor Christie's desperate gambles (A-1).

As he does on Page 1 today, Staff Writer John Brennan has been wasting readers' time in the last few months with story after story on a ballot proposal to add two casinos in North Jersey (A-1).

That proposal is certain to go down in flames.

Readers get the feeling North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, will get behind the plan to add North Jersey casinos, just as the publishing company has backed repeal of Bergen County's blue laws.

Both would generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue for NJMG, which more and more has been focusing news and feature coverage on advertisers, and reducing the amount of municipal news.

That also must be the explanation for why Editor Martin Gottlieb put the casino gambling stories on Page 1, and buried a long story on ballot questions, bills and other action in Trenton (A-4).

More vetoes

On A-4, you'll find reporting on 20 more vetoes from Christie on top of the 430 he has executed since early 2010, cementing the GOP bully's reputation as the worst governor in state history.

And you can read how voters will get a chance to clean up two of Christie's messes by approving quarterly payments to public-workers pensions, and dedicating all of the revenue generated by the 14.5-cents-a-gallon gas tax to transportation.

Dirty trucks

It's no surprise the Port Authority "has backed off a plan to ban thousands of older, soot-spewing trucks from hauling cargo" at its New Jersey seaports (A-1).

Staff Writer Scott Fallon should know the bi-state agency is no friend of the environment, as shown by the bigger jets using Teterboro Airport and its refusal to add another exclusive bus lane to the Lincoln Tunnel.

Local news?

Today's Local front is dominated by police news or news about the police, including two big stories from Paterson.

You know Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza were desperate to fill the section when you see an obit for the last survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (L-6).

Auto scams

Also desperate are The Associated Press reporters who covered the North American Auto Show in Detroit (L-9 and L-10).

Despite climate change, neither story discusses whether automakers are improving the efficiency of the antiquated internal-combustion engine or introducing more green cars.

Monday's paper

Three long stories on politics dominated Monday's A-1 as Gottlieb tried to generate interest in the most boring topic under the sun.

Readers were asked to plow through more reporting on how Christie is doing on the campaign trail.

On the Local front, Sykes and Sforza finally caught up to the surrender two days before of a driver in the Christmas Day hit-run death of a man in downtown Teaneck.

For North Jersey readers, another dull front page

The 24 Hour Fitness gym off Route 4 east in Paramus was closed this morning. Firefighters said they were investigating a natural gas or electrical "odor."

Ex-New York Timesman Marty Gottlieb, editor of The Record, roamed all over the world to bring North Jersey readers an exciting front page today, but he falls flat on his face again.

And what is this, the fourth or fifth day in a row, with a Page 1 story about a new athletics brouhaha at Rutgers University? Give us a break, Marty.

It doesn't get much better inside.

A Star-Ledger story about what Governor Christie does or does not eat equates enjoying many kinds of vegetables to being "a health nut" (A-7).

Utility pole news

Every page in head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section is filled with Law & Order or minor accident news.

Sykes advances utility pole and DWI news with an L-2 photo.

Another driver who rented a patch of front lawn in Ridgewood as a parking space failed a sobriety test, according to the photo caption on L-6.

Wrong-way John

Now, readers don't have to read several Road Warrior columns to find contradictions from Staff Writer John Cichowski, who can't seem to remember what he reported a few days or weeks ago. 

He contradicted himself in his May 26 column, according to a concerned reader, who sent another e-mail to management: 

"The Road Warrior is unable to make coherent, mistake-free statements in his May 26 column about traffic enforcement and road fatalities.

"The Road Warrior continues to pull his made-up conclusions and figures out of thin air, even though they contradict well-known facts or what he reported in the very same column.

 
"He indicated that New Jersey State Police reported LESS traffic enforcement this year since they were still focused on Sandy recovery efforts. I am sure the same was true for local police.

"He then indicated that the reduction in road fatalities this year was due to MORE traffic enforcement. 

"He continues to make up fictional numbers based on fictional calculations that he expects will NOT be checked by anyone at The Record. 

"He continues to be unable to read reports and provide any sensible analysis or correct data.

"North Jersey readers are not content with the Road Warrior scourge, which continues unabated,  to mislead them and waste their time."

To read the full, bad-news e-mail, go to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers at The Record:

What did I just say?

Paving Euclid Avenue with good intentions

Drivers would be foolhardy to go more than 20 mph over this frequently patched stretch of Euclid Avenue in Hackensack, above. The first crew I've seen plugging potholes in my neighborhood appeared this morning at Clinton Place and Linden Street, below, but the two men didn't do any repairs to that pockmarked block of Euclid, between Grand Avenue and Clarendon Place.

 

At last week's City Council meeting, City Manager Stephen Lo Iacono said crews were working six days a week to repair a rash of potholes left behind by winter.

Did they lose their maps of the city?

As of today, Euclid Avenue has barely been touched, but I did see repairs to Grand Avenue, in front of Fairmount School, ater its potholes rated a mention in The Record's Road Warrior column.

Dead wood

You can't say much about today's paper when just about the only must-read is a gee-whiz story about a golfer who was killed by a falling tree after he went looking for a lost ball on private property (A-1).

The story doesn't tell you much about the luckless golfer except his name, age and hometown.

But both the victim and homeowner have Korean names, and the golfer breathed his last in Alpine, one of the wealthiest communities in the United States.

Editor Marty Gottlieb leads today's paper with more endless blah, blah, blah about Rutgers University (A-1).

Today's thin Local news section has two Teaneck stories on L-1, but nothing from Hackensack, suggesting no resident left the house over the weekend.   

More deeply flawed reporting in Local

An ambulance from Hackensack University Medical Center, whose repeated expansions have forever changed life in its Hackensack neighborhood, and not for the better. The non-profit hospital doesn't pay taxes on an estimated $130 million in property.

On the front of today's Local news section in The Record, the first major Hackensack story since March 22 and the Road Warrior column both contain major errors.

If past practice is any guide, readers shouldn't expect to see corrections published on Monday's A-2.

Today's L-1 story on attorney Richard Malagiere and the controversial Bergen Passaic Long-Term Acute Care Hospital almost halves the height of the rejected building.

Given the bitter, 3-year battle between Prospect Avenue residents and the developer, reporting that the hospital would be 10 stories -- and not 19 stories or the originally proposed 24 stories -- is simply irresponsible, and only rubs salt in residents' wounds.

Dissing Hackensack

Hackensack readers are accustomed to being ignored by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza.

But they continue to wonder why The Record pays a six-figure salary to Production Editor Liz Houlton, whose sleep-deprived copy editors and proof readers keep on missing major errors passed onto them by Sykes and Sforza.  

The story on LTACH, as the hospital plan is known, quotes only two of the 11 candidates in the upcoming City Council election in reference to Malagiere, a Zisa family ally who is the former zoning board attorney.

Zisaville pays well

Malagiere has received more than $1.2 million in legal fees from Hackensack and the Bergen County freeholders in the past three years.

The story also quotes City Attorney Joseph C. Zisa Jr. as defending the retention of Malagiere on the LTACH case at $125 an hour to fight the developer's appeal.

Zisa, cousin of disgraced former Police Chief Ken "I Am The Law" Zisa, appears to see his role as facilitating the payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to a small fraternity of lawyers, including Malagiere.

Say it ain't so, Joe

In the nearly 11 months since Ken Zisa was convicted, The Record has never questioned why Joseph Zisa still is the city attorney.

Throw the bum out, says City Council candidate Victor E. Sasson, editor of Eye on The Record. 

Another bum

Staff Writer John Cichowski has made so many major errors in The Road Warrior column, he has totally lost any credibility.

Today, his response to a question from Hackensack reader James Pepe about "anonymous reporting of litterers" is not only flip (L-6), but completely ignores the right to swear out a citizen's complaint, as I did when I saw a woman throw a lit cigarette butt out of her car in Teaneck.

I wrote down her license-plate number and make of car, drove to police headquarters and asked that a summons be issued to the car owner.

I was notified of a court date and showed up, as did the woman who littered.

The judge didn't fine her, because he said I couldn't positively identify her as the driver, but he did lecture her about the fire danger of throwing a lit cigarette butt out of her car window.

Any driver or pedestian can use the same procedure to have a summons sworn out against someone who litters, passes a stop sign or red light, or doesn't yield to them in a crosswalk.  

See previous posts on mass transit 

and Hackensack City Council campaign 

An emphatic two thumbs down for Roger Ebert

More than 10 NJ Transit bus routes were disrupted by the closing of the Anderson Street Bridge between Hackensack and Teaneck due to emergency weight-limit restrictions, above. Since the September closure, The Record hasn't interviewed a single bus rider on how their commute has been affected, but has carried the Road Warrior's endless hand-wringing over every tiny inconvenience faced by North Jersey lead-footed drivers.

With greedy publishing families like the Borgs and scandals involving fabricated quotes and even entire stories at such prestigious publications as The New York Times and Washington Post, you'd think Hollywood would have exposed the dark side of newspapers long ago.

You'd be wrong, of course, and critic Roger Ebert spent more than 45 years analyzing films without ever mentioning how directors have done exactly the opposite -- they go out of their way to glorify the press.

Hollywood might shy away from blasting the press because critics like Ebert, who worked for a big newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, could make or break them.

And you know the only reason Editor Marty Gottlieb put Ebert's obituary on the front page of Friday's paper is because he was a fellow newspaperman.

The Record's Friday entertainment tabloid once carried Ebert's reviews, but they ended several years ago, in an apparent cost-cutting move.

He's no Jeff Page

Gottlieb also seems to be indulging another fellow newspaperman, Staff Writer John Cichowski, whose Road Warrior columns are paved with inaccuracies.

On Friday, the Road Warrior's annual pothole column appeared on the Local front -- symbolizing the deep whole he continues to dig for the paper's credibility.

Local yokels

Five pages of Friday's Local was devoted to higher-education news, but head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes still needed a photo of a non-fatal accident to fill the local-news section (L-7).

Her deputy, Dan Sforza, spent the day out of the office, measuring potholes for Cichowski.

Rutgers brouhaha

Today, for the third day in a row, Gottlieb presents more screaming Page 1 headlines and blanket coverage of Rutgers University and its abusive basketball coach, Mike Rice.

Meanwhile, readers have had to listen to WBGO-FM radio news or search for stories on Trenton budget hearings to find out how Governor Christie intends to screw the middle and working classes again by short-changing mass transit and affordable housing. 

Crossing readers

Today's story on a Fort Lee crosswalk ticket blitz took readers by surprise -- coming after a March 22 Road Warrior column that warned about the use of plainclothes officers in a similar Teaneck crackdown this month (L-1).

But so far, drivers haven't seen any such blitz on Cedar Lane.

Sykes and Sforza couldn't find room for Hackensack news today, but did find space for the Dean's List; photos of a minor SUV and car fire, and a motorboat being pulled from a river; and for a story on road repairs in Edgewater (L-2, L-3 and L-6).

New to My Blog List 

(on the right of this page):

Hackensack Scoop
The County Watchers