Future of Gannett journalism: 5 times more ads than news

NJ Transit buses in the exclusive lane to the Lincoln Tunnel are driven against the flow of westbound traffic during the morning commute. The Port Authority has ignored calls for a second XBL, as the lane is called, and never explained why exclusive bus lanes don't operate in the evening, too.

For decades, this portion of Route 495 to the Lincoln Tunnel has been called the helix. On Wednesday, The Record's so-called commuting columnist labeled it a "bridge," and raised an alarm about a rehabilitation project that won't start until late next year at the earliest.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I might actually try reading the Thanksgiving Day edition of The Record now that I've caught my breath after wrestling with what felt like 5 pounds of advertising inserts.

I quickly bundled them up for recycling, along with Sports, leaving me with four news and feature sections, containing pages that appear to carry more advertising and less news than before Gannett redesigned the print edition.

Stephen A. Borg, the former publisher, was no slouch when it came to advertising and marketing, and he even created a North Jersey Media Group unit that staged food-truck and other events.

Those events were promoted in the paper and covered by the news staff.

With the sale of NJMG to Gannett for a reported $40 million in July, the Borgs now call themselves Fourth Edition Inc., and work out of their old offices in Woodland Park.

Today's paper

It's front-page news when President-elect Donald J. Trump doesn't appoint another middle-aged white man or white supremacist to his Cabinet (1A).

Today's A-section has news on 4A, 8A and 9A that would normally appear in Local.

Local news?

Since Gannett let go more than 200 NJMG employees, reporters and editors for daily and weekly papers now work out of the same newsroom.

That means readers of the local-news section have been seeing many unfamiliar bylines, which belong to reporters from the weeklies.

Generally, they are younger and less experienced, and make a lot less money than reporters for The Record and Herald News.

Wednesday's paper

Staff Writer Christopher Maag, who covered NJ Transit and the city of Hackensack for The Record, had a Page 1 byline on Wednesday that identified him as "columnist."

No thumbnail photo of Maag appeared, as with The Record's other columnist. 

His story on "one family's journey from Syria to Paterson" is a tearjerker, especially if you've been following the horrific news from Aleppo and other towns that are being destroyed during the civil war.

The focus was on Ghussoon Zouabi, 39, who recalls the food shortages in Syria and who has been cooking non-stop since she arrived in South Paterson for her family, for the homeless and for others.

"When we got to my parents house [in Paterson], the kids opened the fridge and pulled all the food out and ate it. I sat on the floor and cried."

Zouabi arrived in the United States in March 2013. 

Last year, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Governor Christie called for a ban on all Syrian immigrants to New Jersey, including children, but it has been widely ignored.

Route 495

Staff Writer John Cichowski appears to be the only columnist who continues to use a dated thumbnail photo, which is probably a decade old.

On Wednesday's Local front, his Road Warrior column quotes commuters who use Route 495 to the Lincoln Tunnel.

But Cichowski isn't concerned about congestion in the exclusive bus lane, the lack of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit buses or how Route 495 was closed for an hour in each direction when Trump left Manhattan for his New Jersey golf club last week.

Instead, the addled reporter looks more than a year ahead to the start of a major rehabilitation of the Route 495 helix, which he refers to as a "bridge" (1L).

Editors give belated nod to mass transit

Traffic has reached the point of no return.

A "looming" traffic nightmare on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge is expected to boost mass transit use, The Record reports on Page 1 today, in belated recognition of the region's bus and rail service.

Car-centric coverage by the editors and their transportation writers, including Road Warrior John Cichowski, makes readers think "bus" and "train" are synonyms for the F-word.

Daily nightmare

Commuters are caught in traffic nightmares every weekday and an overburdened mass-transit system can't provide much relief now or in the immediate future, especially after Governor Christie killed a major expansion of rail service.

 

Buried in today's GWB story is a "never mind" on the massive traffic jams The Record predicted in March in connection with repair of Route 495, the so-called helix to the Lincoln Tunnel (A-4).

Now, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg reports, the Port Authority plans to do the work between 10:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. on weeknights, so the roadway can be reopened for the morning rush-hour commute.

Second bus lane?

But Boburg still has not asked agency officials why they have ignored repeated calls to add a second reverse lane into the tunnel to relieve crowding on Manhattan-bound buses.

The best thing on A-1 today is a touching obituary for Steve and Polly Gerdy, a Little Falls couple married for  64 years. They died 17 hours apart in separate hospitals.

Keep on trucking

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes ordered an artistic photo of an overturned truck in Fort Lee blown up as big as possible to fill a huge hole on the front of the Local news section (L-1).

Sykes also needed stories about an OTB parlor and a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Giants and Jets to plug other holes in municipal-news coverage (L-1 and L-3).

Hackensack reporter Stephanie Akin helped cover a hearing in Superior Court -- the only connection to her beat being the location of the courthouse (A-1).

Second look

One driver who contributes to daily congestion is Irvin Gordon, a Long Island man who claims to have rolled up nearly 3 million miles in his 1966 Volvo.

On Monday's A-5, a photo shows an overweight Gordon wedged in the door of the sports coupe after years of driving from one fast-food restaurant to another and taking all of his meals there.

Restaurant critic thinks she will live forever

Image via Wikipedia
Mussels in a Guinness-and-lemon broth are served at Biddy O'Malley's, an Irish pub.

Readers who have heart conditions and diabetes or are just watching their weight come running every Friday to vicariously lap up all the desserts, pork and beef sampled by Staff Writer Elisa Ung in her weekly restaurant review.


Today, her 3-star appraisal of a Northvale pub called Biddy O'Malley's reminds me of a Irishman I met at the gym who blames his five heart operations on a diet of meat -- morning, noon and night (Better Living centerfold).


Ung tried no salads or vegetables and only three dishes mentioned in her review could be considered good for you -- a pan-seared salmon special (she  doesn't say whether it was wild-caught); mussels in a Guinness-and-lemon broth; and a huge fillet of cod, though deep frying it and serving it with french fries insults this noble fish, once America's favorite.


Meat galore


The Irish pub's macaroni and cheese has sausage in it, the hamburger is made with pancetta (bacon) and butter, and the naturally raised pork chop was overcooked and dry.


Cardiac surgeons love Ung, because her proselytizing about dessert is one of things that keep them in business.


The reviewer always finds room for artery clogging little nothings, and her standards for the end of the meal appear to be even higher than for appetizers and entrees: 


She loved the "pistachio bread pudding smothered in white chocolate ganache and plump, delicate cranberries" and a "Bailey's/espresso ice cream pie in a crumbly chocolate crust."


But another dessert, a chocolate hazelnut confection from an outside source, bordered on stale. Ung may think she'll live forever, but if she keeps eating dessert, she might not be able to get in the door of her next restaurant.


Today, in a mini-review on Page 19, she also recommends another "laid-back" spot, the 2-star Bahama Breeze, a faux-Caribbean chain restaurant on the highway in Wayne.


In 2009, she sampled the restaurant's mushy "jerk-chicken pasta" and ordered seared scallops, which were served raw, not once but twice. Still, she gave the restaurant 2 stars (Good).


Road kill


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes really came up with big local news today and plastered it all over the front of Local: a new water tank in Waldwick. 


Is this the fifth or sixth Road Warrior column in a row where burned-out Staff Writer John Cichowski relies on reader e-mails for his ideas (L-1)?


Chichowski is so out of touch with the concerns of anyone who doesn't drive that in discussing replacement of the Route 495 helix, he completely ignores delays for the thousands of city-bound commuters who ride buses through the Lincoln Tunnel.


On L-6, a story on mourners viewing Assembly leader Alex DeCroce, 75, omits the cause of death, as did a coverage on Tuesday of Governor Christie's eulogy to his mentor.