Gannett compares N.J. criminal-justice reform to Monopoly

Let's see how this works once Republican con man Donald J. Trump is sworn in as president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2017.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You'd expect Staff Writer Jim Norman, a former New York Times reporter, to do a good job explaining the many complex changes in New Jersey's criminal justice system to readers of The Record today.

But imagine the dilemma of a faceless Gannett editor holed up in a production center in Neptune, where he or she had to come up with a Page 1 headline that is both bright and right.

Well, the headline certainly is bright, if not downright sensational:

"Get out of
jail free,
or court
reform?"

What an abomination, not to mention inaccurate.

"Get out of jail free" sounds like a reference to Monopoly, the board game, but the phrase also strongly suggests that convicted criminals will go free once the changes go into effect on Jan. 1.

Unfortunately for the inept headline writer, all of the people who will remain free while awaiting trial are innocent until proven guilty, a bedrock of our legal system.

Numerous errors

Since Gannett's drastic November downsizing of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, bad headlines and errors seem to have increased.

Today, for example, a photo caption on 4A refers to the "Bronx section of New York," when everyone knows the Bronx is one of New York's five boroughs.

On 2BL in Better Living on Wednesday, a story on the expected opening of Azucar Cuban Cuisine in Closter says you'll be able to spot the restaurant easily by a "black 1950 Chrysler parked in front (pictured)" -- except no photo of the car appears with the story.

Also on Wednesday, the lead news story on Page 1 carried a totally meaningless headline:

"Court
fight
reveals
Christie's
planning

"Details on PATH station
ceremony offers glimpse
of governor's preparation"

The reaction of most readers: 

So what?

Borgs take money and run, staffers brace for Gannett's ax

Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, former chairman of North Jersey Media Group, may be spending a lot more time at home on the East Hill of Englewood, above, now that Gannett Co. acquired The Record, Herald News, NorthJersey.com and other assets. To keep active, he might consider volunteering at the nearby hospital and medical center, as so many idle seniors do.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

It may go down as one of the fastest disappearing acts in the long, checkered history of American print journalism.

Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg angered North Jersey Media Group employees by skipping "the all-hands meeting on Wednesday where it was announced that ... The (Bergen) Record, Herald News and other papers were sold to Gannett, ending four generations of family ownership," Keith J. Kelly of the New York Post reported.

"Borg, in a memo, said it was a 'bittersweet' ending for 86 years of family ownership of the 121-year-old daily," said Keith, who on June 16 broke the story of the sale to Gannett.

"Although Gannett assured ... staffers that they were all retained in the acquisition, most employees fear it is only a matter of time before pink slips start flying," Keith noted.

"Gannett already owns the Asbury Park Press and five other [daily] papers in New Jersey and is infamous for cutting costs and staff locally and centralizing operations to boost [profit] margins," the Post story concluded.

[The New York tabloid reported months later that Gannett paid nearly $40 million in cash for North Jersey Media Group, the Borgs' newspaper publishing company.] 

Stephen A. Borg

The Post reported only Mac's son, Stephen A. Borg, who was president and publisher of The Record, "attended and spoke at the meeting," but I couldn't find a media account that actually quoted the younger Borg.

When the marketing whiz took over from his father in 2006, he called every employee to Hackensack for a meeting to introduce himself.

The first words out of his mouth were: "I'm not in this for the money."

Then, in a puzzling move, he showed a slide of his $2 million home in Tenafly. That house soon was replaced by a $3.65 million McMansion bought with an NJMG mortgage several months before the biggest downsizing in company history. 

Later, he also was overheard saying no employee in the newsroom should be making more than $40,000 a year, and in recent years, he imposed a freeze on raises.

Clearly, the Borgs, including older sister and former Vice President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg, have taken the money and run -- perhaps to their summer home in the Hamptons.

Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg of Englewood in 2014, left.

Reaction

Reacting to the absence of the elder Borg at Wednesday's staff meeting in Woodland Park, former employee Lou Lumenick wrote on Facebook:

"They [the staff] certainly have every reason to be angry!"

Lumenick recalled Mac Borg's botched attempt to buy the Asbury Park Press in the 1980s, and how the millionaire's "boorishness turned off the family that owned it. They eventually sold to Gannett."

"And now the bruised and battered Record has been absorbed by the job-choppers at Gannett. My sympathies to my friends at The Record, where I toiled for 18 years before my return to The [New York] Post in 1995."

Disappearing act

The day after the sale was announced, Thursday, the Woodland Park daily contained no mention of North Jersey Media Group. 

Nor did readers find the usual editorial page listing of Borg family members past and present, including Publisher John Borg (1922-48) and Editor Donald G. Borg (1932-75).

Now, on A-2 and the editorial page every day, the words "part of USA Today Network" appears under The Record's stylized masthead type.

Tom Donovan, a Gannett Co. employee, is listed on the editorial page as "Interim President" just above longtime NJMG employees Deirdre Sykes, editor of The Record, and Alfred P. Doblin, editor of the paper's editorial page. 

Coverage of sale

In the Woodland Park newsroom, employees read and re-read Thursday's front-page story in The Record, especially the sentence reporting the "acquisition will bring about $90 million in annual revenue to the [Gannett] company."

Why would the Borg family, which has always put personal gain before the health and welfare of their employees, sell a publishing company that was bringing in $90 million a year?

They wouldn't and it wasn't.

That $90 million in revenue can be realized only if Gannett gets rid of a substantial number of the 700 to 800 workers that remained at NJMG, which once employed more than twice that number before the Borgs abandoned Hackensack, where they prospered for more than 110 years.

Down the shore

Gannett executives can start accomplishing that by moving production of The Record to Neptune -- former headquarters of the Asbury Park Press -- where the company is already putting out its six other New Jersey dailies.

That could mean pink slips for six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton, Copy Desk Supervisor Vinny Byrne and an unknown number of news, layout, copy and photo editors who have been working in an office building overlooking Route 80 in Woodland Park since 2009.

Many of those employees have been at The Record for two or three decades or more.

Governor Christie

The acquisition also leaves unresolved the conflict between The Record and the six other Gannett dailies and The Star-Ledger, the state's biggest newspaper.

All but The Record demanded the resignation of Governor Christie after he endorsed wacko racist Donald J. Trump for president. 

The Record's editors even refused to mention in their news columns or editorial page that those seven dailies had condemned the GOP bully.

The Woodland Park daily's favorable coverage of the worst governor in state history may be rooted in the close family and business relationship between the Borgs and Jon F. Hanson, the real estate mogul who was chief fundraiser during Christie's two gubernatorial campaigns.

Editors clash on Orlando killings: Hate crime or terrorism?

New York Post front pages from last Tuesday, above, and last Monday, below, contained clashing portraits of Omar Mateen, who used a military style assault weapon and a handgun to kill 49 people in an Orlando, Fla., gay dance club last Sunday.

A week after the slaughter inside Pulse nightclub, The Record of Woodland Park and other news media continue to struggle with whether the U.S.-born ISIS sympathizer was committing a hate crime against the LGBT community or was a terrorist.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers of The Record are pulled this way and that by today's front-page package on the slaughter inside a gay dance club in Orlando, Fla.

A week after Omar Mateen gunned down 49 people, readers aren't sure whether he was a Muslim terrorist or a Muslim who hated homosexuals or a little bit of both (A-1).

A news story from Asbury Park reports the advocacy group Garden State Equality used its annual fundraising walk to honor the victims of the Pulse dance club attack.

Below the fold, Staff Writer Mike Kelly continues to portray Mateen as an extremist in a column that recalls the 9/11 hearings in 2004, and then launches into a tedious exploration of a so-called debate on what words to use to describe a Muslim terrorist.

The Record's editing and production staff missed a major error in Staff Writer Matthew McGrath's story on the Garden State Equality walk -- the attack in Orlando was a week ago, not the "six days" ago that begin the second paragraph on Page 1.

Local news?

On the Local front, Staff Writer John Cichowski jumps through hoops to try to interest readers in a story on pedestrian safety at NJ Transit rail stations (L-1).

The veteran columnist actually left the office to cover a dog-and-pony show the state's mass-transit agency staged in Secaucus to dramatize the danger of walking and burying your head in a smartphone.

NJ Transit has come a long way, and no longer labels people who are killed by trains, including suicides, as "trespassers."

Cichowski pats the state agency on the back for being "proactive" by building fences in two communities.

But he doesn't mention a long stretch of track in the middle of Railroad Avenue in Hackensack that remains unfenced even though a middle school student was killed by a train there in 2010. 

LOL moment

On the Business front today, a large photo of apartment construction on Main Street in Hackensack provides a laughing-out-loud moment for residents (B-1).

In the foreground, Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi captured one of the many homeless men who roam around the city not far from the Bergen County shelter, where they are served three meals a day.

The story doesn't mention the Borgs are planning to unload 19.7 acres in Hackensack on an apartment developer in return for $20 million or more -- a deal that presumably will go forward even if they sell North Jersey Media Group and The Record to the Gannett company, as reported last week.

It's no secret

On the Better Living front today, Staff Writer Elisa Ung divulges two North Jersey chefs' "secrets" for losing weight, and provides four of their recipes (BL-1 and BL-2).

Except readers don't learn any "secrets," only stories of self-control and choosing lots of vegetables, fruit and naturally raised meat over all of the artery clogging dishes and sugary desserts the paper's chief reviewer promotes in her weekly restaurant appraisals.

Still, one element of Ung's column deserves praise, and that's the clever headline:

"WAIST NOT"

Me, me, me

A second column from Kelly labels as "nonsense, pathetic nonsense" the notion that if more law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry guns, "murderers like Omar Mateen could be stopped before they fired off too many shots" (O-1 and O-2).

But before readers see that rare opinion, they have to plow through Kelly's describing his journalism experience over a four-decade career:

"I was 23 years old when I covered my first mass murder," Kelly says in his first sentence.

Later, he reports, "This columnist has been caught in street gun fights in the Middle East."

Give me a break.

Publicity hungry medical center scars a Zika baby for life

Zika Fever Virus from a mosquito is linked to the microcephaly birth defect -- an abnormal smallness of the head -- mostly in South America.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

As I stared at the photo of a newborn girl with an unusually small, deformed head and her eyes shut tight, I wondered why The Record is running the image on the front page today.

By releasing the photo, publicity hungry Hackensack University Medical Center is invading the privacy of the baby and her mother, who was infected with the Zika virus in Honduras (A-1).

Is this the baby photo the mother dreamed about? 

Or, will the image haunt the girl for the rest of her life as "the first baby born in the continental United States with microcephaly traceable to the Zika virus," according to The Record. 

Does her birth in Hackensack make her a U.S. citizen, and expose her to sensational media coverage for years to come?

Bad neighbor

Residents of Hackensack have long regarded HUMC as a bad neighbor, because the non-profit pays no taxes on property worth $257 million -- shifting the burden onto long-suffering homeowners.

Of course, the sprawling medical center can do no wrong, according to the editors of The Record.

North Jersey Media Group -- publisher of the Woodland Park daily -- saw no conflict when Vice President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg sat on the hospital board, HUMC advertising appeared regularly on North Jersey.com and the local news staff covered one unpopular expansion after another in Hackensack.

Today's Page 1 story on the Honduran mother and baby carries the bylines of two medical writers, Mary Jo Layton and Lindy Washburn.

Assisting them was Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado, one of the few Hispanics in the newsroom.

Hackensack news?

One look at today's local-news section tells Hackensack residents they apparently no longer live in the circulation area.

Looks like Editor Deirdre Sykes ran out of room for Hackensack news after running three major Silk City stories from Joe Malinconio of the Paterson Press (L-1 and L-3).

She also ran the long obituary of a vaudeville comedian know one has heard of, and devoted a quarter of a newspaper page to dozens of rescued cats (L-6).

Medical freak doesn't tell readers heart disease is No. 1 killer

UNEVEN KEEL: At low tide this morning, the USS Ling was stuck in the mud of the Hackensack River and listing. The New Jersey Naval Museum is closed and not conducting tours of the World War II submarine, which is tied up to North Jersey Media Group property at The Record's old headquarters in Hackensack. According to rumors, Publisher Stephen A. Borg and NJMG Vice President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg can't agree on the company's role in saving the sub.

The Borgs, owners of NJMG, are planing to sell land along River Street in Hackesack to an apartment developer, including parking lots. It isn't known whether the family also will sell Borg Park, where the sub and museum are, and land where a diner now operates.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You'd never know heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the United States from medical coverage in The Record.

The Sunday edition's Page 1 takeout on a medical freak who is awaiting a second heart transplant in 20 years certainly doesn't hammer home that message.

Frank Bordino, 70, is atypical, and has little in common with the hundreds of North Jersey residents who get new heart valves or have as many as five coronary bypasses every month.

Despite the tens of thousands of words devoted to him, readers are no closer to understanding the genetic, dietary and other factors that cause heart attacks.

That's a colossal waste of space.

And there isn't much else to engage readers today.

Boring politics

The front page offers two boring pieces on New Jersey and national politics, including another story on a presidential campaign we're sick of reading about (A-1).

Staff Writer Christopher Maag is no longer assigned to cover NJ Transit, judging by his Page 1 stories today and Saturday on "portable churches," and New Jersey's high suicide rate, respectively.

Still, Maag's suicide story is incomplete, failing to explore whether the hike in suicides is tied to Governor Christie's continuing war on the middle class.

Local news?

Today's local-news section leads with a story from Hackensack, where Prospect Avenue high-rise residents have declared victory over a plan for a medical-waste disposal plant near them (L-1).

Those Hackensack residents are mostly seniors, and today, Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to ignore the challenges facing them and other older drivers (L-1).

They are probably wondering what Cichowski's coverage of the driving test for teens has to do his column's commuting mission or anything else relevant to their lives.

June candidates

Today, the editors list candidates in the June 7 primaries for county and municipal offices (L-3).

Let's hope that unlike a similar listing of April school board candidates, we'll be seeing stories on the issues involved before we have to vote.

New Yorkers?

On the Opinion front, Mike Kelly offers another boring column on the battle for the hearts and minds of New Yorkers in last week's Democratic presidential primary (O-1).

Hey, Mike, you're working for a major New Jersey paper. Why are you covering New York?

Bergen County readers aren't interested in New Yorkers or even the Atlantic City residents you also wrote about recently.

They want you to explore local issues, including colossal voter apathy, and the attempted political comeback of the Zisa family in Hackensack.

Editors giving Hackensack residents very short end of stick

Behind Hackensack High School, an eye-level tree branch has the potential to injure a parent, student or other pedestrian, especially if he has his head down as he walks up the inclined sidewalk and doesn't see it.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's edition of The Record has Hackensack residents again turning pages to find news of their city, the most populous in Bergen County.

Way back on L-3, in Local, they'll find a story about a Hackensack police lieutenant who won't be the city's first black captain, as expected, because he failed part of the exam.

That's certainly embarrassing, but some readers question why Staff Writer John Seasly seems to enjoy rubbing in the failure of the officer, James Prise, who will remain a lieutenant.

At the same time, he or one of his editors is responsible for dropping from the story the title, first name and middle initial of City Manager David R. Troast. 

Only "Troast" appears three times in the story. 

This is the same reporter who misspelled the last name of Richard L. Cerbo, who spoke at this week's council meeting and appealed for a tax cut.

New reporter

Seasly took over the Hackensack beat this year, and mostly has covered City Council meetings, writing about downtown development, the city budget, the Police Department and other related news.

He's completely ignored the biggest school system in Bergen County, and didn't cover the issues or candidates in this week's Board of Education and school budget election.

Of course, Seasly may not be the one to blame at a newspaper that has been editor-driven for decades, and now is being led so poorly by Deirdre Sykes.

Like many young reporters at The Record, Seasly takes his marching orders from an assistant assignment editor, who remains anonymous, spends most of his or her time sitting behind a computer and may not know anything about Hackensack.

Korean BBQ

Today's "Good" to "Excellent" review of a Korean barbecue restaurant has Staff Writer Elisa Ung again displaying her ignorance of the harmful antibiotics, growth hormones and low-quality feed used to raise the vast majority of beef in the United States.

That's a disservice to readers who might actually believe that any meat labeled "prime" also is, as Ung says, "high-end" or "better quality" (BL-16).

What would truly make the meat superior is if it came from cattle that were grass fed, and were raised without antibiotics and hormones, but as usual, Ung doesn't say. 

And the restaurant, Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong in Palisades Park, loses points for using gas grills, not the more authentic charcoal.

Ung also omits mention of whether the restaurant requires you to buy two orders of meat, pork or poultry (at $22.99 to $35.99 each) in order to have them cooked at the table, as most Korean BBQ places do.

Nor does she say whether non-meat eaters can order shrimp to cook at the table, wrap in lettuce leaves and enjoy with kimchi and other Korean side dishes. 

All in all, here is another review that smacks far more of promotion than journalism.

Hackensack Chronicle

The Record's poor job of covering Hackensack since a major newsroom downsizing in 2008, followed by North Jersey Media Group completely abandoning the city in 2009, is bad enough.

But the Hackensack Chronicle, the NJMG tabloid delivered with The Record on Fridays, is so stale the weekly is of little use beyond lining a litter box.

The Chronicle didn't cover the issues in Tuesday's school election or report on the attempted political comeback of the Zisa family, who backed two of the three winning candidates.

The lead story today is about City Council action at Monday night's meeting.

School election results won't appear until next Friday, if then.

Columnist taps into racist, anti-Obama rhetoric on economy

Heavy winds on Saturday night brought down a tree, damaging at least three cars parked on American Legion Drive, near Prospect Avenue, in Hackensack, a neighborhood of high-rises and garden apartments.

This afternoon, a police officer told a young couple the tree won't be removed and they won't have access to their damaged car (the silver-colored one in the middle) until PSE&G removes live wires. American Legion Drive was closed for the same reason.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Republican Party appears to be pulling the strings of Staff Writer Mike Kelly, whose Page 1 column in The Record today demonizes President Obama and knocks his record on the economy.

Kelly focuses on "more than 100 people who had recently lost middle-management jobs at New Jersey corporations" who attended "a lecture on how to use social media" (A-1).

Kelly doesn't even mention Obama, the nation's first black president, whose every action has been opposed by the Republican majority in Congress in the greatest display of racial animosity since the end of slavery.

Trump's racism

But the columnist claims deep "social, political and financial tremors" are responsible for "the anti-immigration and protectionist rhetoric of Donald Trump," the Republican front-runner in this year's presidential campaign.

Of course, Trump, Governor Christie and the other GOP clowns clearly have been campaigning against Obama, and distorting the remarkable job he did in bringing the nation back from the recession.

War on middle class

Kelly also doesn't mention Christie or the GOP bully's war on the middle class in New Jersey.

He talks about "wage stagnation," but not Christie's veto of a hike in the minimum wage, or corporations like North Jersey Media Group, owner of The Record, eliminating raises for even the most productive workers.

He talks about "careers upended through downsizing," though not what happened to his newsroom colleagues -- including the food editor and director of photography -- who were shown the door after decades of employment at The Record.

Bad headlines

Today's headline on the Kelly column -- "Is this the end of the American Dream?" -- is especially bad because "American Dream" also is the name of the huge retail-entertainment complex under construction in the Meadowlands.

The words "American Dream" appear in large, bold type above the fold, certain to confuse readers who don't immediately start reading the photo caption or column.

On Friday's front page, a sub-headline struggled to describe the car of a Hackensack man who died the day before in the hospital after a collision with a police cruiser speeding to an emergency:

"Hackensack cruiser
hits unrelated car,
killing the driver"

I didn't know cars could be "related" to each other like humans.

See: Police cruiser pushed victim's car 40 feet

Local news?

North Jersey has so many commuting problems it's a wonder Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to find so many ways to avoid writing about them.

Today, he fills an entire column with horror stories on "roadside trash," employing his trademark exaggeration and hype in an attempt to engage readers or at least prevent them from falling asleep (L-1).

Today's Local front also carries a story on Henry and Mary Shoiket, 97 and 100, respectively -- a rare instance of reporting on seniors who aren't institutionalized or have just died (L-1).

The couple are described as longtime activists, "who have been fixtures at the weekly protests outside the Teaneck Armory for years."

Major error

On the Opinion front today, a caption incorrectly describes the large photo above the fold, and gives a wrong date for the official opening of the new World Trade Center.

The photo shows the interior of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub -- not the "main level of the new World Trade Center."

The date given, March 3, is the official opening date of the transit hub, not the office building.

Also on the O-1 today is a second Kelly column, this one on Atlantic City, that begins, "Once upon another time ...."

Like a fairy tale, this one puts readers to sleep almost immediately.

Will Hackensack residents benefit from flight-path change?

Malcolm A. Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, shared ownership of this private jet with real estate mogul Jon F. Hanson, a family friend who has been identified in media reports as chief fundraiser for Chris Christie's successful gubernatorial campaigns.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The flight-pattern change for small jets using Teterboro Airport could bring relief to Hackensack homeowners fed up with round-the-clock aircraft noise.

But in today's front-page story in The Record, Staff Writer Paul Berger focuses on reaction from municipal officials along Route 17 -- the new route chosen by the Federal Aviation Administration "to provide relief for the Hackensack University Medical Center area" (A-1).

The medical center "area," of course, includes Prospect Avenue high-rises, where some residents fear using their terraces in warm weather because corporate jets come so close on their approach to Teterboro.

Aircraft noise

In fact, homeowners in Hackensack's Fairmount section, Teaneck and nearby towns have been hounded by the roar of corporate jets and other aircraft noise around the clock for decades, in what is a major quality of life issue The Record has largely ignored.

Residents can't invoke anti-noise ordinances or enforce an overnight ban on flights because federal laws governing corporate jets supersede all state and local statutes.

Mayor sounds off

The quote of the day today is from Mahwah Mayor Bill Lafloret, who complained the FAA didn't bother to send him a notice about the new Route 17 flight path, which will be tested for six months starting on April 4:

"So now we have to sacrifice our quality of life in Mahwah for the 1-percenters of private corporate jet customers trying to duck into Teterboro. It's unacceptable" (A-8).

One of those 1 percenters is Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, who co-owned a private jet with real estate mogul Jon F. Hanson, a confidant of Governor Christie's.

Rail strike?

There isn't a single reference to Christie in today's Page 1 story on a possible shutdown of NJ Transit rail operations on Saturday (A-1).

Staff Writer Christopher Maag reports "no indications of compromise" from the state's mass transit agency or the unions whose members have been working without a contract for more than five years.

Rather than mediate, the GOP bully went on vacation this week to celebrate his 30th wedding anniversary, and the sixth year of his war on the working and middle classes in New Jersey.

Meat-centric reviews

If you don't eat meat, there is little to interest you at the two halal restaurants recommended in today's Informal Dining review (BL-1 and BL-16).

Staff Writer Elisa Ung does praise "a bonus for vegetarians" at Juicy Platters -- "basmati rice, fragrant with turmeric and cumin," made with vegetable broth.

Still, Ung doesn't mention whether Juicy Platters in Fair Lawn or Kebab Platters in Clifton offers fish or egg dishes for non-meat eaters or anyone who is dying for some relief from the onslaught of kebabs, gyro and hamburgers in North Jersey. 

Star-Ledger, biggest daily paper in N.J., piles on Christie

The Anderson Street Bridge to Teaneck was how many Hackensack residents reached the Cedar Lane business district, Holy Name Hospital and Englewood. On Wednesday, with the bridge closed for repairs, Cedar Lane seemed unusually quiet, suggesting that customers are staying away. Have you seen anything about that in The Record?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

For the past decade, The Record of Woodland Park has emphasized marketing over journalism, as you can see in the paper's front-page motto:

"NORTH JERSEY'S TRUSTED SOURCE"

In fact, under Publisher Stephen A. Borg, The Record has shown time and again that its coverage of Governor Christie cannot be trusted.

Today, the Star-Ledger demanded Christie's final exit, echoing the earlier call of six other newspapers in the state.

An editorial notes the GOP bully "has made it abundantly clear that governing New Jersey is a distant second priority for him, far behind his personal ambitions." 

See: 'Resign for New Jersey's sake'

"His craven endorsement of Donald Trump is only the final blow, the moment when he lost any last shred of credibility," the editorial states.

"His fullsome praise of Trump, after his stinging condemnations only a few weeks ago, is impossible to believe."

NJMG and Borgs

Of course, The Record hasn't joined the other prominent dailies in the state, because Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin continues to hem and haw, and equivocate over Christie's neglect of his duties, his endorsement of Trump and all of the unresolved problems in the Garden State.

Doblin's strings are likely pulled by the Borgs and their powerful North Jersey Media Group. 

To call the editorial page editor a pussy is an insult to women. 

The coverage of Christie by reporters and columnists continues to focus relentlessly on politics, so every story and opinion piece is little more than "Republicans said/Democrats said."

As of June 2015, The Star-Ledger's paid circulation was 213,890 daily and 289,882 on Sunday, largest in the state, according to the New Jersey Press Association.

As of December 2013, The Record's paid circulation was 139,904 daily and 167,278 on Sunday, according to the press organization.  

Today's paper

The front page and the rest of the paper continue to ignore the rising chorus of resignation calls on Christie from other dailies.

A Page 1 story by Dustin Racioppi, a former investigative reporter at the Asbury Park Press, carries this headline:

"Criticism of Christie takes

on a virtual life of its own"

His story doesn't mention any other newspaper, but Racioppi today tweeted to his followers about the Star-Ledger editorial and provided a link to it.

Liberals rejoice

Many readers are rejoicing over another Page 1 story:

"Staring down the prospect of nominating Donald Trump for president, Republicans spiraled into a chaotic, last ditch search Wednesday for a way to save the GOP from hitching its fortunes to an unpredictable celebrity candidate without alienating his  throng of followers" (A-1).

Let's hope we are witnessing the self-destruction of Christie, the racist Republican Party and its radical Tea Party offshoot.