Editors shrug as Christie continues screwing New Jersey

Traffic on Route 4 east in Paramus moving sluggishly toward the George Washington Bridge this morning just before 9, above and below. Most of the vehicles carried only a driver.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie hasn't lost his ability to control what reporters and editors say about him -- at least in The Record of Woodland Park.

Christie is refusing to discuss "his disappointing bid for the White House [and] his controversial endorsement of Donald Trump," The Record's State House Bureau reports on Page 1 today.

"After his brief and tightly controlled appearance in Trenton [on Monday], Christie sets off to campaign with Trump in Ohio and Kentucky," reporter Dustin Racioppi says.

Still, the best Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin can manage in an editorial today falls far short of outrage:

"Not good enough. Not good enough at all" (A-8).

What preceded that is a long paragraph on Christie's "unwillingness to explain, to the people of the state that elected him as a Republican who supported diversity, how he can now support a presidential candidate who would mass-deport 11 million immigrants and bar Muslims from entering the United States, and who was unable to unequivocally denounce the Ku Klux Klan when repeatedly asked to do just that on CNN on Sunday."

Really? What about Christie's bid to bar Syrian refugees from New Jersey and the nation? 

What about his mean-spirited dismissal of the only black New Jersey Supreme Court justice, John E. Wallace Jr.?

That was as racially charged as Christie's recent attacks on President Obama.  

Fatal hit-run

The hit-run death of a 7-year-old West New York girl on Monday as she was walking in a crosswalk with her mother is tragic enough (A-1).

But readers can't help recall how Road Warrior John Cichowski wrote a number of columns demonizing red-light cameras, which reduced crashes, injuries and deaths, and penalized speeders.

On columns about yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, the clueless Cichowski also quoted drivers saying they wanted to run down jaywalkers.

Local news?

Monday was the deadline for candidates to file nominating petitions for the April 19 school election in Hackensack and other towns.

In Hackensack, three vacancies on the nine-member board will be contested, and voters have a chance to vote "yes" or "no" on the district's proposed budget.

The Record covers schools in Englewood, Paterson and many other communities, but largely ignores Hackensack.

Last Wednesday, a story on the Local front called the Englewood district "the worst in Bergen County -- 76th out of 76."

Yet, Superintendent Robert Kravitz didn't address the city's elementary and middle schools, where 99% of the students are black and Hispanic.

And Staff Writer Matthew McGrath apparently didn't know enough about the district to ask what Kravitz is doing to integrate those schools.

Editors ignore wreck left by Christie, our homegrown terror

Radio City Music Hall on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Since the Paris attacks, The Record and other news media haven't explored why New York City and North Jersey have been safe from terrorism since 9/11 or whether Syrian refugees already living here have been anything but law abiding.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The front page of The Record's Sunday edition is filled with news of global terrorism, Syrian refugees and New Jersey's own terror, Governor Christie.

But Editor Martin Gottlieb and Columnist Charles Stile still are trying mightily not to alarm readers with daily reports of the nightmare the GOP bully has left behind as he pursues his White House dreams.

Stile's boring political column today focuses on the distant future, the 2017 gubernatorial election (A-1).

Readers might be confused by another Paris-related story, today's column by Travel Editor Jill Schensul on her indecision over flying there for her annual vacation (T-1).

After all, she arrived there on Wednesday, and has already described the changes in the city she calls a second home in a Page 1 column on Friday and again in today's paper (A-6).

The attack on a hotel in Mali still has not prompted the news media to explore France's colonial rule in West Africa, Algeria, Syria and other countries as the possible root of today's terrorism (A-1).

Local schools

Englewood's new superintendent is telling parents whose children attend minority schools to eat cake (L-1).

That's the only conclusion readers can draw from an interview with schools chief Robert Kravitz, a former cake and dessert executive, who doesn't mention the challenge of elementary and middle schools filled almost completely with minority students.

Staff Writer Kim Lueddeke mentions poor test scores, limited English proficiency and other problems, but says nothing about whether Kravitz is hoping to desegregate those schools, as his predecessors did at Dwight Morrow High School.  

Other stories on schools in Edgewater and Wayne have Hackensack readers wondering when Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza are going to get off their asses, and assign a reporter to look at all of the problems in Bergen County's biggest school district.

They include high salaries for administrators and thefts of computers, two of which were allegedly traced to the home of teacher, who has never been charged.

Seats for homeless

Road Warrior John Cichowski, the so-called commuting columnist, continues to ignore the lack of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit buses and trains.

Today, he goes on and on about the cat-and-mouse game between NJ Transit cops and the homeless using seats at Newark Penn Station and other rail hubs.

At a total loss on how to lure readers who long ago became bored with Cichowski, the veteran reporter compares a homeless man nervous about a cop kicking him out of a train station to "a driver parked overtime at a meter" (L-1).

Crazy Kelly

Columnist Mike Kelly already showed readers what a wimp he is on Saturday, when his Page 1 column was completely devoid of criticism or condemnation of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Today, the best he can manage is to label Christie a "crazy uncle" for saying he would not even allow Syrian orphans under the age of 5 to enter the United States (O-1).

Who is crazy? I'm betting it's Kelly, a burned-out columnist who has been pushing around words and desperately filling space for more than 20 years.

He has bad company in Cichowski and Stile. 

What can be said for a daily newspaper that gives precious space to so many stale journalists, and doesn't foster younger, more courageous voices?

See the Christie cartoon by Margulies on O-2.

Tipping guide?

Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's Better Living column on tipping today ignores a question on every restaurant customer's mind (BL-1).

Is 15% still considered the standard tip or should we be adding 18% or 20% to the pre-tax total as a matter of routine?

And when will Ung or any other reporter explain how wealthy restaurant owners managed to get regulators to go along with a system of extremely low hourly pay for their staffs and tips from customers to make up the difference?

If something goes wrong in the kitchen or the owner misrepresents the food he serves, the only recourse customers have is to stiff the server.