From gorging on sweets to advice on cholesterol levels

A Shell station on Summit Avenue and Essex Street in Hackensack is selling a gallon of regular for $2.13.9, if you use a credit card, or 12 cents less than the same gasoline at another Shell station on Cedar Lane in Teaneck. Prices have stopped falling and even cheap, off-brand stations are selling regular for $1.99.9, if you pay cash.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

There were too many "mays," "mights" and "maybes" in The Record's major story on cholesterol and heart disease on Wednesday.

The Better Living cover story, promoted on the front page, is typical of the media's flawed focus on health and nutrition, and their tendency to jump all over draft reports (BL-1).

The Woodland Park daily did a disservice to those who read only the Page 1 promotion or headlines, and didn't slog through all of the quotes from doctors.

In the penultimate paragraph, the reporter finally acknowledges "the best advice is the same advice that doctors and nutritionists have been repeating for generations."

"Eat a well-balanced diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and ... fats found in ... fish, nuts and olive oil, while limiting red meat, fried foods and sugary desserts" (Wednesday's BL-3). 

So, you don't have to limit your intake of the saturated fat in butter and heavy cream, two ingredients that show up often in recipes recommended by The Record's freelancers?

It doesn't help that The Record's food pages are filled with endless copy promoting pastries, cake and chocolate or that the chief restaurant critic rarely eats a salad, but always leaves room for a huge hunk of meat and dessert.

Christie obsession

Today's front page carries another so-called analysis of Governor Christie's campaign style "while he considers a presidential future for himself" (A-1). 

There is no mention of a new Rutgers-Eagleton poll that 68 percent of New Jersey voters say the GOP bully is putting his personal presidential aspirations ahead of his public state duties (Wednesday's A-3).

This is the second dose of major bad poll news for Christie, and both times the editors kept it off of the front page.

Tuesday's A-3 carried another breathless Melissa Hayes story about Christie, who, on a visit to New Hampshire, discussed what he'd do, "if he were to run and win the presidency."

An "Analysis" of Christie's proposed state budget appeared on Saturday's front page, and Christie columns ran on Sunday's and Monday's A-1.

The media obsession with Christie often is justified by reporting he won a second term in a landslide, but editors never mention the turnout was the lowest of any gubernatorial election in state history.

Voters are apathetic, and sick of all of the Christie-White House coverage, which is turning off more and more of them.

Laughable headline

Today's Better Living cover carries a headline that has readers howling (BL-1):

Versatile chickpea

gains popularity

Chickpeas have been a staple of diets in India, Armenia, Turkey and the Middle East for, what, a hundred years?

But then a food editor scrambling for a story idea discovers them and treats her readers liked imbeciles.

New poll on Christie suggests he may very well be history

On a brisk morning in Paramus, the outside temperature of 10 degrees was tolerable, but the biting wind chill wasn't.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A new poll on Governor Christie's record low "favorability" rating could be just the excuse Editor Marty Gottlieb, Columnist Charles Stile and Staff Writer Melissa Hayes need to take their swelled heads out of their oversized anuses.

Typical of how The Record plays anti-Christie stories, the poll on the GOP bully being viewed "unfavorably" by a majority of New Jersey voters -- for the first time since early 2010 -- is on A-3 today.

Precious space on Page 1 is reserved for yet another in a endless series of speculative stories on how one of Christie's policies will affect his White House dreams (A-1).

Meanwhile, the Woodland Park daily has taken little notice of how the Garden State has become choked with weeds since Christie's ascendancy.

Port Atrocity

Thanks to the governors of New Jersey and New York, patronage, cronyism, conflicts of interest and favorable treatment have been hallmarks of the Port Authority for decades (A-1 today and Thursday).

But The Record's editors have spent little time reporting the bi-state agency's only response to increasing traffic congestion at the Hudson River crossings has been to raise tolls, not to expand mass transit.

$541 v. $460,000

Two 20-year-old Paterson women facing robbery and related charges for allegedly shoplifting $541 from Lord & Taylor in Paramus could face jail time (L-2).

So, it's strange that former Ridgewood employee Thomas Rica was given probation for his systematic theft of $460,000 in parking-meter revenue.

Today's L-1 story on Rica's non-custodial sentence and how his thievery went undetected for so long is likely the first time since the crime came to light last year The Record has bothered to ask village residents for their reaction.

Reporters and their assignment editors are much more comfortable calling up so-called experts, consultants, prosecutors, lawyers, poll directors and just about anybody else except readers and other North Jersey residents.

That certainly has been the case since Christie took office and started waging war against the middle and working classes.

No editing

Staff Writer Chris Harris, who has been covering the Rica case from the outset, apparently gets no editing.

How else to explain Harris calling Rica's methodical theft of quarters a "crime wave" (L-1).

Also, Harris reports Rica stole "more than a million quarters," but an editorial puts the loot at "almost 1.9 million quarters" (A-8).

The story and editorial also can't agree on whether the original theft was $460,000 (story) or almost $472,000 (editorial).

Hackensack news

A story on Aldi seeking to build a supermarket at 480 Main St. in Hackensack, on the site of a vacant Sears appliance store, is good news to nearby apartment residents who now rely on the grocery section of Target, which doesn't offer meat or fresh fish (L-1).

Another story on the Local front today, about residents opposing a four-story apartment building near downtown Leonia, includes a map (L-1).

But what's the point of running a map, beyond filling space, if Broad Avenue, Leonia's main drag, isn't labeled?

Indoor picnic

I wonder whether freelance Restaurant Reviewer Julia Sexton will ever realize the artery clogging lobster poached in butter, foie gras pate and creme brulee she sampled at Picnic on the Square have long been out of fashion with the older readers who make up the bulk of her audience (BL-14)?

Instead, she says the 34-seat Ridgewood restaurant, the second from Executive Chef Christine Nunn, is inappropriate for "thrifty diners."

I read the review before glancing at the byline and realizing Sexton seems to be channeling The Record's chief restaurant critic, Elisa Ung.

There is no discussion of salads or low-mercury fish or whether the kitchen is willing to prepare food without butter and heavy cream.

And I'm puzzled by Sexton finding " a large pile of arugula, avocado and mango" under a carpaccio of bluefin tuna "superfluous." 

That sounds delicious, and I wonder if Picnic serves another raw fish, such as fluke, which isn't overly exploited and has far lower levels of harmful mercury.

Sexton, who is the restaurant critic for Westchester magazine, visited Picnic three times for the 2.5-star review, and took at least one guest.

That's a ton of money for North Jersey Media Group to spend for such an uninformative report to readers.

Where is the poll on Christie?

Image via Wikipedia

The elephant is the Republican Party symbol, not the
 animal Governor Christie wants to be in his next life.

New Jersey voters are

angry -- at everyone

Today's front-page headline in The Record promises a lot, but for some strange reason the story leaves out Rutgers-Eagleton poll results for Governor Christie, focusing instead on President Obama and Congress.


Hey, Editor Francis Scandale, is it really news most people in the state blame Republicans for the recent debt-limit crisis? That's really stale.


Missing the story


Hey, Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson, why didn't you report this is the first Rutgers-Eagleton poll "to show feelings about Christie more negative than positive"?


That's right from the second paragraph of the press release from the Eagleton Institute of Politics, along with this from the third paragraph (link to full press release):


"Asked if they would vote to re-elect Gov. Christie or prefer someone else, 42 percent say they would vote for Christie while 49 percent say they would vote for someone else."


So Scandale and Jackson, don't you think a poll on Christie is more relevant to readers -- especially just three days after the governor's unpopular support for the Port Authority's toll-and-fare hikes to repair infrastructure? (The poll results were released Aug. 19, the same day the PA OK'd the hikes.)


Or are your heads up your asses, as usual?


Christie told a radio news reporter critics of his support for the hikes are "know-nothings and do-nothings," but I didn't see that in The Record, either.


More poor editing


Liz Houlton's news copy desk is at it again.


Why call a storm "wicked" in a photo overline when a single tree fell and totaled three gas-guzzling vehicles in the driveway of an Upper Saddle River home (A-1 and L-1)? 


That's not wicked; it's the revenge of Mother Nature for global warming.


Also, it's incorrect to say an SUV -- which is an inanimate object --  is "sitting" under a tree, and anyway, readers can see it is under the tree, so why waste space telling them that?


Page A-2 carries an embarrassing correction to fix the misspelling of the name of the acting head of the Hackensack Police Department, Capt. Tomas J. Padilla.


Listen to readers


As on many days, there is more interesting reading in letters to the editor on A-11 than on the front page or anywhere else, especially Local, put together by the laziest assignment desk in all of North and South America.


On L-1 today, non-profit reporter Harvy Lipman, a favorite of Publisher Stephen A. Borg, pens his one story for the week.


A day after The Record published a story on the first New Jersey Wine Festival at Demarest Farms in Hillsdale, where 10 wineries poured samples, Better Living promotes 11 wineries and vineyards in New York State.


That's not equal play from a North Jersey newspaper; that's a disservice to readers who want to support Garden State agriculture.


I can't recall a similar article about wineries in New Jersey.