Readers' eyes rolling at the me generation of columnists

Although The Record and North Jersey Media Group left 150 River St. in Hackensack in 2009, the Borg family have made the property pay by charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for parking spaces leased to Bergen County during the construction of a new courthouse and to Hackensack University Medical Center.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers of The Record's Sunday edition are puzzling over the restaurant reviewer's rant about customers who wear too much cologne or perfume.

And those in search of local news can only wonder whether Road Warrior John Cichowski's column about drivers in European cities is his clever way of trying to write off his vacation on his income taxes.

I promise. 

I tried to get into the Page 1 feature story about the Paramus woman who spent 25 years searching for her Canadian birth mother, but it is just too long (A-1).

The top of the front page carries yet another story about the kindness of Gander, Newfoundland, to airline passengers diverted on 9/11 (A-1).

Staff Writer Lindy Washburn, who wrote today's story, actually was sent to Gander only days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America to pretty much write the same account that appears today.

So, that makes two stories with Canadian ties on today's front page.

Is anybody reading the other Page 1 stories -- another Charles Stile column on politics and the 2017 election for governor, or the annual end-of-season assessment of the health of the Jersey shore economy (A-1)?

Ung's rant

Few people live as high on the hog as Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, who has been eating out morning, noon and night on a Record expense account for more than a decade.

So, excuse me if I don't get the point of her Sunday column, The Corner Table, or the problem of servers and customers wearing too much perfume or cologne (Better Living front).

She claims those scents prevent her from tasting the food she is evaluating, but readers can only hope she focuses more on the basics.

On Friday, she awarded 3 stars (Excellent) to From Scratch, a small cafe and market in Ridgewood, despite shockingly high prices, unprofessional service and cramped seating.

For example, she loved a bronzino fillet served with an eggplant-tomato gratin, even though at $30, you'd pay more than at restaurants serving the whole fish.

Mind on vacation

Staff Writer John Cichowski is back from a vacation with the breathless news that drivers in small European cities are more polite and don't lean on their horns, as we do in New Jersey (Road Warrior on L-1).

Of course, he could make the same observation in downtown San Francisco during the rush hour.

But as an opinion columnist, Cichowski fails to provide any leadership in the impasse over funding the Transportation Trust Fund, and for that reason, he is of absolutely no use to North Jersey commuters.

Focus on transgender kids, abused horses ignores rest of us

Richard Stenken and Steve Eisenberg, volunteers at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, presenting their $500 scholarship to a high school junior volunteer on Friday during the 40th annual Volunteer Recognition Awards and Luncheon.

Volunteer Betty Karlsen, right, was recognized for  giving 26,000 hours to the hospital. In answer to shouted questions from other volunteers, Karlsen said she has been volunteering at the Englewood hospital for more than 48 years.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

One look at the thin Sunday edition of The Record speaks volumes about how Editor Deirdre Sykes avoids covering such local issues as school elections and property taxes.

Her major story on Page 1 today is about transgender children searching for identity -- the media's hot topic of the year (A-1).

And on the local-news front, readers get a heart-warming story on a Mahwah farm that rescues abused and abandoned horses (L-1).

You'd never know there are school elections on Tuesday in Hackensack and other Bergen, Passaic and Hudson county communities.

Or that property taxes continue to skyrocket in home-rule communities with their endless duplication of services.

They include small-town police chiefs who are paid around $200,000 a year to clip Dunkin' Donut coupons and fetch refreshments for the department. 

Campaign material from Citizens for Better Schools urges Hackensack residents to vote for candidates 1, 4 and 6 to fill three seats in Tuesday's Board of Education election. But a sample ballot shows the nine candidates' names appear without the usual numbers, below, apparently the work of the political machine that is seeking to hold onto control of the school board. So voters will have to pay attention to last names: EISEN, POWELL and SASSON.

Voters also will have the opportunity to vote "yes" or "no" on a $79 million tax levy, which supports a total school budget of $104 million. School taxes represent nearly half of the total bill. On Tuesday, polls open at 2 p.m.

Property taxes

Just when I thought my annual Hackensack property tax bill is high, I've been meeting people from Teaneck, Englewood Cliffs and Tenafly who pay far more.

An Orthodox Jewish woman from Teaneck said she is paying about $37,000 in taxes on her 5-bedroom house.

And an African-American man said he recently moved to Wayne, because he was sick and tired of paying $37,000 in property taxes in Englewood Cliffs.

Now, he's cut his property tax bill in half.

Meanwhile, a woman who lives in Tenafly said she is paying $40,000 a year in taxes on an admittedly large home and property.

Yet, when is the last time Sykes has assigned a reporter to one of the hottest, most controversial local topics around? 

Today's paper

The most compelling piece on the front page today is the moving obituary for Petrina Di Cosmo, 95, a Fair Lawn woman, "who mothered her own kids, a slew of foster kids and just about any kid who came her way" (A-1).

Di Cosmo, who was universally known as "Mom," is shown in a Page 1 photo with her mixed-race son, Anthony, whom she adopted when she was 57.  

Christie and guns

For a refreshing change, Mike Kelly gets right to the point in the lead paragraph of his Sunday opinion column on Governor Christie making it easier for people to carry guns (O-1).

Still, the veteran reporter, who has been writing a column for more than 25 years, needs to work on his sense of outrage.

The strongest comment he can muster on O-1 is this lame sentence:

"Well, he [Christie] seems to have his own agenda."

Second look

Readers had an especially hard time fathoming Road Warrior John Cichowski's April 8 column on auto-emissions testing, and this abomination was on the front page no less.

In an email to management that also was sent to Eye on The Record, a reader from Hackensack said:

"The Road Warrior's front page column on Friday, April 8, lived up to its stellar reputation for being clueless & misleading, offering up classless & humorless jokes, presenting quotations of insensitive, exaggerated, and completely out-of-touch rantings from his readers, who appear to be stuck in what can only be described as "The Twilight Zone" from the 1960's since it has little bearing on the reality of today."

Then, the reader compared Cichowski to Donald Trump, the front-runner in the race for the GOP presidential nomination:

"Road Warrior and his Record handlers seem to now be emulating Donald Trump, who gets away with the most classless, exaggerated, unsubstantiated, and laughable false statements. To their small cadre of fooled believers, the Road Warrior and Trump can do no wrong. For those living outside their foolish bubble, the Road Warrior and Trump are regularly mocked and represent what is the worse in people and journalists, some of whom unconditionally reward both of their over-the-top and out-of-touch views and supposed 'facts'."

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.

Christie takes yet another vacation from being our governor

In Monday night's North 1, Group 4 boys basketball final in Hackensack, the Morristown High School Colonials took an early lead, above, but ultimately lost to the Hackensack High School Comets, 67-64.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

With NJ Transit rail workers threatening to strike in less than a week, Governor Christie going on vacation reminds me of the old Mose Allison song:

"Your mind is on vacation, but your mouth is working overtime." 

It's bad enough Christie was more interested in running for president than in running New Jersey, where problems of his own making seem only to get worse, not better.

Or that he could care less that rail workers have been without a contract for five years, and doesn't seem interested in granting them modest raises in order to avert a strike set for 12:01 a.m. Monday.

But in covering the labor dispute, The Record of Woodland Park hasn't been able to hide the deep-seated, anti-union bias of the Borg family, owners of North Jersey Media Group's flagship paper.

Christie's last public appearance on Monday before leaving for a vacation isn't on Page 1, as it should be.

After endorsing fellow racist Donald Trump, the GOP bully recently claimed he went "back to work." 

Christie's latest break from governing isn't even mentioned in the headline on A-4.

Union 'demands'

The rail workers unions are asking for an average 2.57% raise over seven years of a new contract, and for their health insurance payments to be capped at 2.5% of their base salaries (A-4).

That doesn't seem to warrant The Record reporting, "Unions have demanded ...." or quoting NJ Transit officials calling the union proposal "excessive."

Nowhere in the strike-threat coverage have you seen The Record report NJ Transit is in financial trouble and had to raise fares because Christie cut millions of dollars in state subsidies to the agency to balance his budget. 

Of course, the Borgs' can hardly be called objective, and the staff seems to have gotten the message, from transportation reporter Christopher Maag to Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin.

The Borgs defeated any attempt to unionize pressmen or other workers, and in the last few years, they have denied raises to even the hardest-working newsroom staffers.


Mind on vacation

Road Warrior John Cichowski, The Record's lazy commuting columnist, would be writing about more training for teen drivers on the same day as coverage of a funeral for a 7-year-old girl killed by a hit-run driver in a crosswalk (L-1).

This week also saw the deaths of two 17-year-old boys, who were mowed down by a speeder's out-of-control car.

Cichowski's last column was about a railroad crossing.

In the more than a dozen years Cichowski has been pretending to be the paper's commuting columnist, he has ignored increased crowding on NJ Transit buses and trains; Christie's and the Port Authority's refusal to expand mass transit; and mounting traffic congestion at the Hudson River crossings.

He's also missed a dramatic decline in speeding enforcement on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway.

Columnist should have reported carbon-monoxide threat

On Woodland Street and Palisade Avenue in Englewood, snow covered the right-turn lane this morning. Driving between Hackensack and Tenafly and back today, I saw many potentially dangerous spots on streets and highways, including Routes 4 and 80, where plows did their usual half-assed job even though we pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation.

In Hackensack, Euclid Avenue between the railroad tracks and Main Street was down to a single lane, and cars on Main could not turn right onto Euclid, normally a wide, two-lane street.

Not far away, the bus stop on Anderson Street in Hackensack, between Main and River streets, above, was covered by a snowbank. On Teaneck Road in Teaneck, a woman who wanted to walk under Route 4 despaired that the sidewalk hadn't been cleared, forcing her to use the pavement, inches from passing cars.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In October, Record Columnist John Cichowski warned "absent-minded drivers of modern cars" who park in a garage "you might not wake up in the morning," if you forget to push the off-button of your keyless ignition.

But this winter, Cichowski, The Record's so-called Road Warrior, forgot to warn drivers of another potentially deadly carbon-monoxide threat -- warming up a car when the exhaust pipe is covered by snow.

Two die in car

And on Saturday, a 23-year-old mother and her 1-year-old son died inside an idling car on a Passaic city street as the husband tried to dig it out of the snow left by the blizzard of 2016, as The Record reports on Page 1 today.

Deep in today's news story, the paper reports "the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning in a snowbound car is one of several wintertime hazards on the list of safety tips published every year by ... Rutgers University" (A-6).

Yet, a day after the woman and her son died, and her 3-year-old daughter was listed as "very critical" in a Paterson hospital, Cichowski's lighthearted column on snowstorm risks was silent on how to safely dig out a snowbound car (Sunday's Local front).

He did have a warning for pedestrians:

"When skipping along in Timberland boots, people are not nearly as light-footed as they are when wearing Nikes. They tend to fall, too, so stopping for them in time is harder than ever."

Really? Boots would make them more sure-footed in snow -- not less. 

Just that excerpt shows why thousands of readers call Cichowski a moron, and demand the firing of his editors, Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, who have allowed the addled columnist to waste readers' time for more than a dozen years.

Snow clearing

After every winter snowstorm, drivers realize what a terrible job municipal crews do in clearing corners, crosswalks, bus stops, sidewalks over or under highways and other places that can keep pedestrians safe.

Still, after every winter storm, The Record's supremely lazy and incompetent editors, as well as Cichowski, never issue report cards to Hackensack, Teaneck and all the other towns that do a half-assed job of clearing streets and intersections.

This morning, on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, drivers were lucky if both lanes were clear in each direction.

This morning on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, one lane was covered by snow as drivers approached River Road.

Highways, streets

On Route 4 east, the deceleration lane for the Jones Road exit ramp in Englewood was covered by snow, forcing drivers to slow down in the travel lane and turn sharply right, setting up the possibility of getting rear-ended.

On Route 80 west, drivers exiting in Teaneck, near the Glenpointe complex, also found the deceleration lane covered by snow.

On local streets, such as Euclid Avenue in Hackensack, between Main Street and the railroad tracks, you could assign partial blame for the terrible snow clearing on apartment dwellers who leave their cars parked on the street during a storm.

But ultimately, city planners were shortsighted in caving into developers and approving multi-family housing without enough off-street parking spots.

Columnist Mike Kelly is wrong again on Christie, Obama

At Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, a photo of jazz legend John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was put up in a corner of the lobby where volunteer and paid musicians entertain visitors. The trumpet virtuoso, who lived in Englewood, died in the hospital on Jan. 6, 1993, from pancreatic cancer. A memorial fund in his name covers the care of uninsured jazz musicians without the ability to pay.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Part tedious history lesson, part fiction, another Mike Kelly column on Page 1 of The Record today couldn't be more wrong about Governor Christie and President Obama.

Kelly claims both Christie's State of the State speech and Obama's State of the Union address spoke of where "each man hopes to find himself ... in the future" (A-1).

But the veteran reporter must have missed or ignored what Obama said about the future of the country:

How he hoped for "better politics," including an end to divisive rhetoric and taking money out of the electoral process.

Obama also urged Republicans who control the House and Senate to "do the right thing" for the American people -- hardly a message about his future.

A selfish Christie, on the other hand, has changed his stand on gun control and numerous other issues to appeal to conservative voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and other states in his quixotic campaign for the White House.

In a recent column, Kelly also echoed Christie's racially inspired campaign attacks on Obama's leadership.

More numbers

Road Warror John Cichowski, another failed Record columnist, bombards readers with more statistics about bicycle fatalities and other traffic deaths, as he has done so many times in the past (A-1).

And if the past is any guide, many of his numbers and conclusions are flawed.

Cichowski has not only ignored the mission of the column to help commuters, but spends little time reporting on North Jersey's antiquated and poorly lit street and road system, and how they contribute to bicycle, pedestrian and other traffic deaths.

Take a major thoroughfare like Passaic Street in Hackensack, Maywood and Rochelle Park -- a narrow, two-way street with few turn lanes let alone bicycle lanes, and poorly lit crosswalks.

Profile of judge

Property tax payers in Hackensack, Englewood, Teaneck, Ridgewood and other towns welcomed the profile of Vito L. Bianco, a tax court judge who stripped Morristown Medical Center of its tax-exempt status (A-1).

But reporter Abbott Koloff could have gone further and asked the Hackensack city attorney and his counterpart in every North Jersey town with a non-profit hospital why they aren't filing a suit like the Morristown action.

Sloppy editing on Page 1 trips up Koloff.

Koloff wrote the judge stripped the Morristown hospital of its "tax status," when he surely meant "tax-exempt status."

GWB conspirators

The far bigger story about Christie appears on A-3 today -- the attempt by the news media to get the names of officials who prosecutors believe were involved in the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal, but who weren't charged.

Attorney Bruce Rosen, a onetime reporter at The Record, represents eight media companies, including North Jersey Media Group, publisher of the Woodland Park daily.

"The indictment presents allegations ... of significant abuse of power and violation of the public trust by appointed Port Authority ... and Christie Administration officials," Rosen wrote in his brief (A-3).

Municipal news?

Obama may want to take money out of politics, but The Record can't resist covering challengers to U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, solely on the size of their "war chest." 

What does Democrat Josh Gottheimer of Wyckoff stand for? Readers don't have a clue (L-1).

Today's Local section carries municipal news from Englewood, Rutherford and Teaneck, but nothing from Hackensack.

You'd never know Hackensack is remaking its downtown, selling itself as an important transit hub and trying to keep allies of the Zisa family political dynasty from returning to power.

Food coverage

Wednesday's Better Living cover -- "5 foods to eat more of in 2016" -- is the latest in series of stories on a healthier diet.

Yet, on the next page, clueless freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson of Upper Saddle River included two tablespoons of artery clogging butter in a cream-free Winter Vegetable Soup.

If readers, the majority of whom are older, waited for The Record to tell them which foods are heart- and brain-healthy, they'd be deader than door nails.

Gottlieb, minions putting little under tree for local readers

Slow-moving landscaping trucks are one of the biggest hazards on local streets. On Monday morning, I got stuck behind this one on Woodland Street, appropriately enough, between Palisade Avenue in Englewood and Clinton Avenue in Tenafly, a distance of more than one mile.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Martin Gottlieb leads today's paper with another in a seemingly endless series of stories about human-bear run-ins, even though tens of thousands of readers have never seen one of the furry creatures.

On Dec. 12, Gottlieb even ran a detailed front-page story on how bears are butchered for human consumption. Gee-whiz.

Page 1 today is dominated by a sensational crime story, as it was on Monday -- one a cold case and the other the murder of a Palisades Park man in his Jersey City store (A-1).

Local news?

On the Local front today, the vast majority of readers search in vain for municipal news from their town, as they did on Monday.

Instead, four of the five stories on L-1 today are crime or court news or news about the police.

The editors are so inept they screwed up the name of the police chief in Rockaway Township, where The Record and Herald News are printed, according to an A-2 correction.

Page 1

Reporting on the poor job Governor Christie is doing in New Jersey seems to come in dribs and drabs.

Today, the front page reports that a panel he created wants to make it easier to carry a concealed weapon and speed up permits (A-1).

Speeding epidemic

Superior Court Judge Margaret M. Foti lectured a man sentenced to 6 years in prison in a road-rage death about the epidemic of speeding -- a story ignored by Road Warrior John "Wrong Way" Cichowski for more than a dozen years (L-1).

"There is no one out there driving on the roadways today who has not experienced someone speeding by at 80, 90, 100 miles per hour and to turn to the person next to you and say, 'That guy is going to kill someone.' It's frightening," Foti told Thomas Vanderwelt of Saddle Brook.

"And speed limits are there for a reason," the judge said. "They are there to save lives."

Pothole chronicles

In his ground-breaking reporting on long lines at the Motor Vehicle Commission and his annual awards for the biggest potholes, Cichowski not only has ignored speeding, but failed to uncover declining enforcement.

In November, Eye on The Record reported that the number of speeding tickets issued on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway had dropped dramatically:

More speeding, fewer tickets

Best restaurants?

The Better Living cover on the top 10 North Jersey restaurants in 2015 contains glaring omissions (BL-1, BL-2).

Critic Elisa Ung never says whether any of the restaurants serve the kind of grass-fed or naturally raised beef, pork and lamb that would justify their high prices.

And there is not a word about the sweet, artery clogging desserts she sampled at all of them -- the kind of food most of her readers avoid like the plague.

Monday's paper

When Gottlieb or his minions put another one of Tara Sullivan's awful columns on Page 1, readers know the editors are scraping the bottom of the barrel, as they did on Monday.

Of course, Sunday is a slow-news day, but there was even more irrelevant filler inside the paper, such as car, bus or plane crash news from several states on A-3.

Drivers took commuting columnist hostage 12 years ago

An NJ Transit bus on Main Street in Hackensack. In a dozen years of writing the Road Warrior column for The Record, Staff Writer John Cichowski has largely ignored bus and train riders, and in the process, racked up more errors than any reporter past or present at the Woodland Park daily.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In a front-page headline today, The Record's editors admit that drivers have been allowed to hijack a column that was aimed at all commuters when it was launched 25 years ago:

"Keeping drivers in the loop"

And John Cichowski, the reporter who turned his back on bus and rail users, is still writing the column today, a dozen years after he took over from the original Road Warrior, Jeffrey Page.

This Page 1 anniversary column also is flawed by the photo of a highway project that was completed about 15 years ago, and an awkward sub-headline.

I'm sure the drowsy copy editor who write the sub-headline was looking for "delays" instead of "holdups," which was two meanings (A-1).

Dissing seniors

Besides ignoring mass-transit users, Cichowski has spent little time reporting on the challenges facing his contemporaries, older drivers who mistake the gas pedal for the brake pedal with often fatal consequences.

If there is retraining available to seniors or other programs to improve their driving skills, readers haven't seen it in the Road Warrior column.

Shaky reporting

Chichowski made so many errors he inspired one Record reader to set up a Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers in an attempt to correct what the newspaper refused to set right.

And because Cichowski's reporting has been so shaky readers are questioning some of what he says today:

"It took nearly a decade to get E-ZPass to work correctly," the reporter claims, without ever elaborating anywhere in his overlong column (A-1 and A-10).

He also takes credit for a column that stopped "four mornings of horrific traffic jams" at the George Washington Bridge in September 2013 (A-10).

But Cichowski, a lazy reporter who rarely leaves the office, doesn't tell readers that he was tipped off by Publisher Stephen A. Borg, whose friend called from the bridge to complain about being stuck in traffic.

Shortcuts

Cichowski's chief weakness is relying on the eyes and ears of his readers, and publishing hundreds of their emails as the basis for many of his columns.

Their only motive is to see their names in print, and their observations and knowledge of driving laws and regulations are even shakier than Cichowski's.

Among his other failures as a journalist is his refusal to embrace mass transit as a way of cutting traffic congestion and reducing air pollution.

EV charging

A story on the Local front today doesn't tell owners of plug-in hybrids and pure electric cars how much they will have to pay to gain access to chargers in Englewood's municipal garage (L-1).

Nor does the story report on the rate of charge or whether the electricity is free. 

With employees of a Mercedes-Benz dealer using the spaces from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, public access will be limited.

Guessing game

A caption on L-1 identifies only one of the four people whose faces are clearly visible in the photo, which runs with a story on Englewood's hometown sports heroes.

Stories or photos from Closter, Mahwah, Tenafly, Maywood, Clifton and Woodland Park also appear today.

But there is nothing from two of the biggest towns in the circulation area, Hackensack and Teaneck.

Teaneck tearjerker buries important fire-safety lessons

The reconstruction of the Route 46 bridge over the Hackensack River has reduced the four-lane roadbed to two lanes. The Manhattan skyline is visible in the distance.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front-page tearjerker today on the death of four children in a Teaneck house fire a decade ago has the wrong focus.

All of the important fire-safety lessons learned in that fire and hundreds of similar blazes are buried deep on the continuation page, and many readers will never see them (A-8).

Of course, Editor Martin Gottlieb couldn't know a second Orthodox Jewish family, this one in Brooklyn, would fall victim to another electrical malfunction early Saturday, and seven more children would die (A-5). 

See The New York Times' superior coverage by several staffers, including former Record reporter Nate Schweber: City's worst toll since 2007

Part of a series

Today's story on the Seidenfeld family of Teaneck is the first of three parts in what Gottlieb is calling "AFTER THE FIRE."

But the second part -- on the fast-spreading January inferno at the Avalon apartment complex in Edgewater -- will make a mockery of the Seidenfelds.

No humans died in the Edgewater fire, which has been attributed to a workman using a blowtorch, a 15-minute delay in calling 911; and, most importantly, cheap, all-wood construction that didn't prevent the fire from spreading rapidly.

The lesson in the Avalon fire is how corporate greed can trump fire safety, but I doubt that will be clear from tomorrow's upbeat story on what is being billed this way:

"Meet the ethnically diverse group of residents trying to rebuild their lives after the fire at the Avalon at Edgewater" (A-8).

Hiding errors

Today on A-1, Staff Writer John Cichowski tries to distract Road Warrior readers from all of the errors he made a month ago in his highly exaggerated column on potholes.

The confused reporter even got wrong the two telephone numbers he provided for reporting potholes on state roads, according to the editor of the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"Road Warrior won his own award for incompetent reporting when he provided two telephone numbers for reporting potholes on state roads, when, in fact, one of the numbers is for consumer surveys to qualify for promotional items, and the other is a non-working number."

The Record's copy desk and its incompetent production editor, Liz Houlton, bear ultimate responsibility for not enforcing a policy of checking every telephone number by actually dialing the number before publication.  

A week later, the Bloopers editor went to see some of the potholes listed in Cichowski's "Black Hole Awards" column, and had this to say:

"In his Feb. 22 column, the Road Warrior was frequently delusional, incompetent or lied while he gave out his annual awards for worst potholes, which he claimed he personally checked out.

"A driver claimed that the potholes on the Route 80 west center lane over Route 19 will shake the fillings out of your teeth and tractor-trailers come dangerously close to bouncing onto another lane.

"In fact, there was barely any vehicle shaking and no trucks or other vehicles losing control due to minor potholes at this left-center lane, let alone any shaking of any teeth or fillings.

"Road Warrior reported the worst pothole for a highway on Route 20 north at the Route 4 ramp and the two worst underpasses with crumbling roads under Route 80.

"In fact, there was a very minor pothole at the Route 20 spot and the two underpasses were in relatively good shape with practically no potholes."

See the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers: 

The biggest hole is in his head 

Hiding incompetence

Also on Page 1 today, Columnist Charles Stile tries to keep alive Governor Christie's lame bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 (A-1).

Stile pens political column after political column to hide the miserable job the GOP bully is doing in New Jersey.

In a letter to the editor, Ellen Stein of Closter demands that Christie send "a refund to the state of New Jersey for all the days he is away from the job" (O-3).

Smelly Kelly

How can Columnist Mike Kelly raise the racial motive behind cops writing tickets to generate revenue in Ferguson, Mo., and ignore his own town, Teaneck (O-1)?

The township's aggressive cops often lay a speed-trap on Cedar Lane and Pomander Walk that leads to traffic charges against Hackensack residents, including African-Americans.

Did Kelly bother to find out how many of the motorists cited for speeding are black, and how much revenue is generated by all the plea bargains they take to avoid points and surcharges? 

The difference is that in his Ferguson column today he had a U.S. Justice Department report to rewrite, allowing him to declare, "It's the dirty little secret in far too many communities."

What about Teaneck, Mike?