News media gawk at Trump as a new Hitler rises among us

The Aug. 10 front page of the Daily News called on the New York businessman to quit the race for the White House.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record and other news media are giving a wall on our southern border as much legitimacy as any other public-works project, including new Hudson River rail tunnels and a new Manhattan bus terminal.

You won't find any fact checking in today's front page report on wacko racist Donald J. Trump's visit to Mexico or yet another speech on immigration filled with hysteria, half-truths and outright lies (A-1).

Even though the Mexican president "made clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall," the GOP presidential nominee insisted they never discussed payment (A-6).

Hitleresque

Trump's vow to deport 11 million illegal aliens and bar any Muslim from entering the country isn't that far from Hitler's purification of the Aryan race and the extermination of 6 million Jews.

At least in Israel, the government justified spending billions on a "security fence" to keep terrorists from killing citizens, but thousands of Palestinian workers enter the county each day to do work Israelis refuse to do. 

Mexicans are definitely not the criminals and rapists Trump insists they are, and illegal immigration from that country is at historic lows, though you won't see that reported in The Record or other media.

Many generations of Mexican-Americans live in California, Arizona and other states, and thousands of them came to the U.S. long before Trump's grandfather emigrated from Germany.

Deportations

Nor will the media report President Obama is driving civil libertarians crazy by deporting more illegal aliens than any other president.

The Woodland Park daily also refuses to cover the dysfunctional legal immigration system's high fees and endless delays, which prompt many immigrants to enter the country illegally.

Instead, The Record reports Trump's rants with a straight face.

It's likely Trump would shaft U.S. citizens by forcing them to pay for an unnecessary wall while cutting taxes on the wealthy.

Local news?

Crime dominates the Local front today in the form of a large courtroom photo of sucker-punch defendant Kristian Gonzales, 18, and flamboyant defense attorney Harley Briete (L-1).

Gonzales pleaded guilty and faces three years in prison, but readers must decide whether the violent teen or the high-priced lawyer has the more outrageous hair style.

Despicable Trump grabbed the front page today, but immigrant protesters who blocked the entrance of Trump Tower in Manhattan weren't given equal time (L-1).

They said Trump is a hypocrite because undocumented laborers worked to build the Fifth Avenue tower, and are also involved the construction of his hotel in the nation's capital.

The Oradell firehouse is shown in this image from Google Maps and NJ.com.

Road kill

Editor Deirdre Sykes, who has only four more days in the job, treats a woman killed by a car as so much road kill.

A brief on L-3 today reports Judith James, 64, of Paramus was struck and killed by a car around 10:35 Monday night in front of the Oradell firehouse.

The story adds nothing to Wednesday's L-3 caption under a photo that showed pavement marking left by investigators, and gave the woman's name and age.

But Sykes and overworked police reporter Stefanie Dazio say nothing else about the victim, including whether she was married, had children or grandchildren.

Also missing is how well the street is lit or whether she was in the crosswalk.

The driver was identified, but Oradell's Keystone Kops are quoted as saying the investigation is continuing and no charges have been filed.

This brief is like so many others The Record has published, but it never dawns on Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin to call for stiffer penalties when cars kill people, especially if the driver gets off by claiming he or she "never saw" the pedestrian.

Lives of two athletes are worth more than dead pedestrian's

A Park Ridge police car (Credit: flickr.com)

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's sensational front page leaves readers of The Record wondering whether two college athletes from Morris County threw their lives away by ignoring a basic safety measure: 

Not using their seat belts. 

Their luxury SUV hurtled off Route 287 in Mahwah on Sunday, ejecting both of them from the vehicle and killing them (A-1).

Meanwhile, Editor Deirdre Sykes seems to be saying that the lives of former Don Bosco Prep students Sam Cali and Leo Vagias, both 19, are worth more than a pedestrian who was run down and killed by a driver in Park Ridge on the same day.

That person is treated as so much road kill, with Sykes burying the story deep in the local section.

The victim and a second pedestrian, who was injured in the same incident, aren't identified, and there is no information about whether the unidentified driver has been charged in the death.

To make up for that, Sykes is running a large photo of a damaged barrier "at the scene of a fatal accident Sunday on Park Avenue near Park Ridge Borough Hall" (L-6).

Same bylines

Staff Writers Abbott Koloff and Stefanie Dazio handled both the story about the childhood friends who died in the crash off of Route 287 and the one about the dead pedestrian.

Dazio is the paper's overworked police reporter, and Koloff is one of the people on rewrite who produces the account that appears in the paper based on her reporting from the field and information supplied by police and prosecutors -- or not supplied, as in these stories. 

As you can see in today's report on the highway fatalities, The Record often ignores the basics -- was the driver and passenger wearing seat belts, was the driver speeding or had he been drinking?

Readers also don't know whether the Park Ridge pedestrians were in a crosswalk when they were struck.

Local news?

This wouldn't be such a big issue for readers, if Sykes didn't rely so heavily on routine police, fire and court news to fill gaping holes in her municipal news report.

As an example, look at today's huge photo of two firemen on the roof of a home in Paramus during a "fast-moving fire Monday" (L-1).

This kind of coverage changes the well-worn admonition, "Where there's smoke, there's fire" to "Where there's a smoky fire photo, there's no news."

Only stronger penalties will stop slaughter of pedestrians

On March 9, 2015, an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria, driven by a detective sergeant for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, struck and fatally injured Hue Dang, 64, a Vietnamese-American woman who was carrying plastic grocery bags as she walked toward her Hackensack apartment a couple of blocks away from this intersection.

Hackensack police filed no charges against the driver, John Straniero of Wayne, even though their official report showed Dang was struck when she was walking in or near the crosswalk on Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street, not far from Route 80.

On the evening of the accident, the woman's blood stained the pavement, above. She died on the way to the hospital. Nearly a year later, the Union County Prosecutor's Office continues to investigate. As for Straniero, 49, he retired last Nov. 1, apparently to protect his pension in the event any charges are filed against him. Dang's relatives have filed a notice they will be naming him in a wrongful death suit.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Deirdre Sykes of The Record is really milking the death of two teens mowed down by an out-of-control car for all its worth today.

Page 1 carries a heart-tugging headline:

Inseparable friends,

unspeakable agony

And right under the big, black type is a photo of the grief-stricken mother, her mouth open in a heart-wrenching wail.

The crash Saturday night in North Bergen occurred roughly 2 miles from where a 7-year-old girl "lost her life" in a hit-run crash in West New York, The Record says (A-1).

The car that killed two 17-year-olds, Noel Herrera  of Cliffside Park and his best friend, Bryan Rodriguez of Union City, "plowed into them after jumping a curb ... and ripping through a metal fence."

Although three reporters worked on the story, it is missing any detail of whether the driver was speeding, racing another car or collided with another vehicle -- typical of The Record's pathetically poor accident reporting.

Nor can readers expect the editors of the Woodland Park daily to call for stiffer penalties against drivers in pedestrian deaths, likely the only way to cut down on the slaughter nearly six years after a revised crosswalk law took effect.

Driver doing 74 mph

Today, NorthJersey.com reports the unnamed driver charged in the deaths of the two teens "may have been traveling 74 miles an hour," nearly three times the speed limit.

Staff Writer John Cichowski has reported on the revised crosswalk law and pedestrian deaths in many of his Road Warrior columns.

But he also has quoted drivers saying they'd like to run down jaywalkers.

He's demonized red-light cameras, which deter speeders who run lights and injure or kill others, and virtually ignored stop-sign runners.

Sloppy reporting

The Record's stories on pedestrian deaths often omit whether a pedestrian was walking in a crosswalk when hit or even if there is a crosswalk at the intersection.

That was the case with Staff Writer Stefanie Dazio's March 11, 2015, story on the death of Hue Dang, 64, who was struck and fatally injured two days earlier at Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street in Hackensack.

The crosswalk was never mentioned, but a police captain was quoted as saying, "It's unclear where Dang was standing" when she was struck.

That was the first and last story about the Vietnamese-American woman's death at the hands of a detective sergeant for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

Sloppy editing

Sykes, who was in charge of the local-news section at the time, completely missed the lack of reporting on whether Dang was in or near the crosswalk when she was run down by John Straniero.

And the paper never did a follow-up, even when the investigation was transferred to the Union County Prosecutor's Office or when the detective retired last Nov. 1.

Sykes, Cichowski and other newsroom staffers at The Record treated the Vietnamese-American woman, who once worked as a supermarket cashier, as if she was so much road kill.

County lawman quits as pedestrian-death probe drags on

Hue D. Dang, 64, was walking in or near this Jackson Avenue crosswalk in Hackensack last March 9, when she was struck and fatally injured by an unmarked car driven by John C. Straniero, a detective sergeant in the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. Hackensack police investigated, but brought no charges against him in her death. 

Dang was struck only blocks from her apartment on Hudson Street in Hackensack. This photo shows markings left by investigators, and the woman's blood staining the pavement, right. At the urging of Eye on The Record, the Union County Prosecutor's Office took up the investigation, which still is open.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office detective sergeant whose car struck and fatally injured a Hackensack woman has retired.

John C. Straniero, then 49, apparently was driving to his home in Wayne last March 9, when he started to turn right on Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street in Hackensack, near Route 80, and struck Hue D. Dang, 64.

The Vietnamese-American woman, who was carrying plastic grocery bags, was pronounced dead at a hospital less than an hour after the 4:45 p.m. accident.

After Hackensack police cleared Straniero of any wrongdoing, Eye on The Record contacted the state police and Attorney General's Office, which asked the Union County Prosecutor's Office to investigate further.

That probe is ongoing, a spokesman for the office said this morning, but he would not discuss why it is taking so long.

See: Union prosecutor to review Hackensack death

Single story

The Record published a single story about the accident on March 11, but Staff Writer Stafanie Dazio didn't mention the crosswalk or whether the woman was in it when she was hit.

When asked this morning, Maureen Parenta of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office said Straniero had retired.

Parenta, the prosecutor's communication director, wasn't available later in the day to provide any details.

The victim's family has filed a notice that it intends to sue the detective in her death.

The report filed by Hackensack police shows the approximate location of the unmarked car and the woman after she was struck on Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street. But the diagram is at variance with markings on the pavement made after the accident.

Local news?

Readers looking for local or even regional news on Page 1 of The Record strike out again.

Unless they're as consumed as reporters are with how Governor Christie will do at the Iowa Caucuses on Feb. 1, local readers threw away their money today.

The headline over Charles Stile's boring political column contains the phrase "turn silent," leading many readers to wonder when the burned-out reporter will do just that (A-1).

For the second day in a row, Local reads more like a police blotter, with a couple of court stories thrown in, than a section devoted to news of Bergen County towns. 

The lead story is about more gun violence in Paterson, and Bergen readers are cheated even more by six other Passaic County stories, both long and short (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

Third story on small-plane crash still doesn't get it right

Abma's Farm & Market in Wyckoff was closed on Labor Day.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers know Labor Day is what editors call "a slow news day," but that's still no excuse for the third story in four days on pilot Jack Rosenberg.

The Spring Valley, N.Y., man is shown in a Page 1 photo today, recovering in a hospital bed from broken bones and other injuries, wearing what looks like a skull cap.

The Record's story not only doesn't say whether Rosenberg is an Orthodox Jew or if the slice of pizza he ate was kosher (A-6), it raises other questions.

Why is the Woodland Park daily doing a third story on the crash, and why is it all over the front page?

What's the big deal? 

Don't all small-plane pilots who go down after their engines conk out try to avoid injuring or killing other people on the ground?

Flawed story 

And why was first-day coverage of the crash on Friday missing the crucial details about Rosenberg deliberately turning his crippled plane away from cross-country runners and others on a Tenafly field?

Or, as the overworked police reporter, Staff Writer Stefanie Dazio, put it:

"As Jack Rosenberg looked out the window of his small plane ... hurtling 60 [mph] to 70 mph over the Cresskill and Tenafly border and saw dozens of young faces on a school field that would have made a perfect landing site, the father of seven knew he'd have to find another spot" (A-1).

Even my shortened version of that lead paragraph is enough to choke a horse.

Small-plane menace

Small planes like the one Rosenberg was piloting seem to crash all too often, usually with fatalities. 

When they're not crashing, small, medium and large planes, and the noise they make, have a huge impact on the quality of life in Bergen County, especially if you live in Hackensack, Teaneck and other towns near Teterboro Airport.

One story on Rosenberg would have been enough, but The Record's reporters and assignment editors never seem willing to hustle and do the legwork needed for such thorough reporting.

The two follow-ups corrected an error in the first account that Rosenberg contacted air-traffic controllers at La Guardia Airport; it was Teterboro Airport.

Overlooked pilot

Instead of a rehash and regurgitation of pilot Jack Rosenberg's crash, some enterprising editor should have put the obituary of a Tuskegee Airman on the front page today.

You'll find the compelling life story of Calvin Spann, 90, a former Englewood resident, literally buried in the back of Local (L-8).

The obit illuminates how African Americans in North Jersey still face discrimination today.

As a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps, Spann flew 26 combat missions, including the longest bomber escort mission of the 15th Air Force.

When Spann returned home, he wanted to become a commercial pilot, but the major airlines wouldn't hire African Americans.

The sub-headline on Spann's obituary says incorrectly he "faced segregation after war." 

He "found a job in pharmaceutical sales and settled in Englewood," the obituary notes.

Spann faced discrimination, but the black and Hispanic children attending Englewood schools today still face segregation in the elementary and middle-school grades.

Virtually all of the white children in Englewood attend private schools, and officials have sought to desegregate only the high school.

Slaying suspect's life in Heights shows neglect of elderly

Once again, Center Avenue and Main Street in Fort Lee became a traffic nightmare on Monday -- squeezed down to one lane -- but this time crews weren't tearing up the street, installing pipes or utilities, and crudely patching the surface until the next project. After two or more years of work, Main Street is finally being repaved.

The new surface at Main Street and Anderson Avenue in Fort Lee.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Let's put aside how the lazy, incompetent editors at The Record turned a 3-minute court hearing into the lead story on the Local front today.

John C. Wisse, 83, a homeowner in Hasbrouck Heights, appears to be another old person who has been neglected by the media and government officials (L-1).

According to his neighbor, Wisse didn't have the "assistance of relatives or a home-health aide," and another neighbor brought him meals.

Wisse, the suspect in the slaying of his tenant in a two-family house, "walked hesitantly into the Hackensack courtroom," and didn't even speak, Staff Writer Allison Pries reports.

His not-guilty plea in Superior Court was entered by attorney Robert Galuntucci, but there's no word in the story on whether the lawyer lowered his usually hefty retainer or hourly fee to represent Wisse.

Dissing the elderly

The Record has confined its reporting on the elderly to those dying slowly in nursing homes or the seniors who mistake the gas pedal for the brake pedal, sending their cars into buildings or other people, often with fatal consequence.

Local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza love it when an elderly man goes off his rocker, grabs a gun and kills one or two other poor schmucks.

That gives the lazy pair an excuse to sensationalize the coverage of such cases, and continue to neglect the hard-hitting municipal reporting readers are looking for.

And Editor Martin Gottlieb, who is in his mid-60s, hasn't shown any concern over the large number of senior citizens suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's disease, and the North Jersey programs for them.

Paterson news

Also in Local today, five major stories on Paterson show that Sykes and Sforza continue to do a better job covering Silk City than Hackensack (L-1 and L-3).

In fact, almost the entire local-news section today is filled with court or police news.

Front page

Readers welcome more local news on Page 1, which Gottlieb often treats like a regional edition of The New York Times, where he once worked (A-1).

But Sykes' and Sforza's local-news section has so little depth you can see what happens when Gottlieb takes stories about Franklin Lakes and Palisades Park, and runs them on the front page, as he does today.

Local devolves into a section filled with court, police and fire news, and accidents, robbing property tax payers of the scrutiny they hope the Woodland Park daily would give the officials running their towns.

A-2 correction

Today's correction refers to a four-paragraph story on Saturday's L-3 reported and written by Stefanie Dazio, the overworked police reporter, who does most of her work by telephone.

The story misstated the Old Tappan address "where a car involved in an accident was found and the identity of a suspect," according to the correction.

Dazio had five bylines on Saturday. Today, the Local section workhorse has three bylines and a credit line.

'Governor FedEx'

An editorial today calls Governor Christie's proposal to track immigrants who overstay their visas like FedEx packages as "both impractical and repugnant" (A-8).

The editorial mentions that Samantha Smith, the spokeswoman for Christie's presidential campaign, is the daughter of FedEx founder Fred Smith.

But in reporting the story, The Record and other media haven't asked Christie whether -- in the unlikely event he wins the GOP nomination and election -- he would award a sweetheart contract to FedEx to convert package-tracking technology into immigrant-tracking technology.

A reader, Carl A. Singer of Passaic, says in a letter to the editor he'd like to see a FedEx tracking number on the GOP bully to know "when he's actually in New Jersey doing the job he was elected to do" (A-8).

But WNYC-FM has been tracking Christie for many months, and all Singer and others have to do is click on the following link to find out whether the governor is in the state he was elected to serve:

The Christie Tracker

More reporting of news, views from everywhere but here

The Fort Lee street they never finished. That's the impression residents and visitors get from all of the digging, jack-hammering, patching and tearing up of Main Street in the past couple of years. On Monday, the block of Main Street with the post office, restaurants and a bakery was completely closed.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I get it. Even a minor victory over Governor Christie's regressive policies is front-page news.

That's why a deal with Senate leaders to scrap the controversial Return Home New Jersey program is on Page 1 of The Record today.

But this A-1 story involves only a few hundred developmentally disabled adults living in other states, and leading the paper with it is inappropriate.

Meanwhile, with so many better food-shopping options available in North Jersey, the bankruptcy of A&P means little to anyone who doesn't work at the 25 stores that may close (A-1).

So, why is this story on A-1?

Two corrections

A correction on A-2 today notes The Record, in a story on Sunday's Local front, "misidentified the location of a birthday celebration for 90-year-old veteran Vito Trause."

The story also misidentified one of Trause's longtime friends, Bobby Keane.

On Sunday's L-1, Staff Writer Colleen Diskin, a newsroom veteran, reported the party was at the "local Knights of Columbus Hall," a reference to Washington Township.

But on L-6, Diskin reported "the parade was followed by a party on the back lawn of the American Legion Hall."

The correction says Knights of Columbus Hall is correct, and longtime friend Bobby Keane -- who arranged "a siren-blasting escort" by police and firefighters -- was referred to incorrectly as "Danny Keane."

Just goes to show that even when Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza focus on local news, six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton's lax standards and lack of oversight can really screw things up.

Trump editorial

The story on Vito Trause, a prisoner of war, appeared on the same day the media went bananas over Donald Trump's derogatory comments about another POW, U.S. Sen. John McCain (Sunday's A-1).

Today, an editorial slams Trump's inane comments as an "insult to all POWs" (A-8).

And what about two big factual errors in the 90th birthday story about Vito Trause? Aren't they insulting, too?

Local crash news

If you're looking for local news today, check out the L-1 photo of a two-car accident in Fair Lawn and the photo by Tariq Zehawi, the staffer who has been ordered to chase ambulances for more years than I care to remember.

Zehawi got everything in the photo -- it almost looks posed -- but overworked police reporter Stefanie Dazio couldn't find out any details on the collision involving an Elmwood Park police cruiser.

On L-3 today, the local editors, Sykes and Sforza, show readers that orange is the new black and white -- three color photos of defendants in orange jail jumpsuits against an ocean of back headlines and type.

I see nothing in today's Local section on Monday night's scheduled meeting of the Hackensack City Council.

Greece again

Why are the media so fascinated with Greece?

Two more stories appear on the first Business page today (L-8), one bemoaning the 22 cents extra Greeks now have to pay to get onions on their souvlaki.

New Jersey's economy is just limping along, and Puerto Rico is facing bankruptcy, yet all we see in The Record is an endless stream of stories about Greece.

The Wall Street Journal reported in February that at the end of 2014, "Greeks owed their government about $86 billion in unpaid taxes accrued over decades, but mostly since 2009."

"Billions more in taxes are owed on never-reported revenue from Greece's vast underground economy," the paper reported.

If that holds lessons for New Jersey, where Christie has repeatedly vetoed a tax surcharge on millionaires, The Record has yet to draw any parallels.

And readers don't even know whether the many wealthy Greek restaurant owners in North Jersey, many of whom own homes and other property in their native country, are among those who have traditionally refused to pay taxes there, precipitating the crisis.

Who was at fault in death of Cresskill teen on bicycle?

On Summit Street in Englewood Cliffs, these two women and other domestic workers must walk in the roadway, exposed to potential injury from drivers, many of whom exceed the speed limit. In Bergen County's backward home-rule communities, too many streets lack sidewalks, bicycle lanes and other measures to protect residents and visitors from being injured or killed in accidents.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Another poorly reported and edited accident story in The Record today leaves many questions about who was at fault in the death of a Cresskill Middle School student riding his bicycle to school on Wednesday morning.

A story on the Local front reports Young Rok Lee, 13, "collided with a truck" that was turning from Jefferson Avenue onto Grant Avenue, not far from the middle school.

But an update posted on North Jersey.com this afternoon contradicts the print edition, reporting "a tractor-trailer collided with him, ... according to police." 

On L-1, the print edition says Lee, who was wearing a helmet, "made contact with the back driver's side of the tractor-trailer."

Yet the photo with the story shows investigators lifting up a sheet on the other side of the trailer.

Botched story

Two reporters, Deena Yellin and Stefanie Dazio, worked on the story, but neither went to the scene.

Dazio, an overworked police reporter who is chained to a telephone, is supervised by lazy and clueless editors in the Woodland Park newsroom who have botched too many fatal accident stories to mention.

This wouldn't be an issue if local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza didn't rely on police, court and accident stories and photos so heavily when they fail to find any legitimate municipal news to fill their section every day (see L-1 to L-6 today).

Of course, the Lee family likely will hire a lawyer who will file a negligence suit against the driver, owner of the tractor-trailer and possibly the borough of Cresskill for allowing such a large vehicle on Jefferson and Grant avenues.

In a comment below the story on North Jersey.com, Liz DeRuchie, a transportation planner says:

"Unless he was doing a delivery, that truck was illegally on those residential streets. Very busy at that time of the day with several schools within a block and crossing guards at every intersection. These are side streets with weight restrictions. I want to know why that sized truck was on those streets. So tragic."

Antiquated streets

Today's sloppily reported story doesn't say whether Grant Avenue or any other street in wealthy Cresskill has a bicycle lane or other measures to protect students and others who ride bikes.

In general, Bergen County's antiquated streets, roads and highways are narrow and hazardous, creating too many potential conflicts among drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists.

And despite levying some of the highest property taxes in the nation, many municipalities do a poor job of installing bicycle lanes, maintaining crosswalks, adding speed bumps, and creating turn lanes to speed the flow of traffic and cut air pollution.

For example, Forest Avenue in Paramus is a four-lane road where drivers often exceed the 40 mph speed limit and cut each other off to avoid getting stuck behind turning vehicles.

Today, as I was driving back to Hackensack, I was shocked to see a young couple walking in the roadway because a short stretch of Forest didn't have any sidewalk.

Doom and gloom

What is Editor Martin Gottlieb's excuse for today's doom-and-gloom front page, the kind of sensationalism you'd expect from a New York tabloid?

The main story reports drug overdoes were the leading cause of accidental death in New Jersey in 2014, claiming twice as many lives as auto crashes.

Let's hope lazy Sykes and Sforza don't start running photos of the homes where these deaths are taking place or where police use a rescue drug to save people "in the throes of an overdose" (A-1).

Big error

The Record acknowledged a major error on Wednesday's A-2, correcting a Page 1 story on Tuesday that said public schools face flat state funding for a seventh year.

The correction quoted the New Jersey Treasury Department as saying "state aid to schools is expected to increase from $8.5 billion in 2010 to a proposed $9 billion for the 2015-16 school year."

Church massacre

Let's hope The Record and other media play up the inadequacy of our gun laws and call for reform in reporting today's massacre at a historic church in Charleston, S.C.

The easy availability of guns is a national disgrace.

Editor touts 'quality' journalism -- readers aren't convinced

On Friday night, downtown Ridgewood was filled with restaurant and movie goers, and others stopping at Starbucks Coffee on East Ridgewood Avenue, above. This Starbucks gives away used coffee grounds for the garden.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers interested in how The Record has changed in the past few years shouldn't miss Editor Martin Gottlieb's appearance on a weekly cable show produced by Montclair State University.

Most notably, Gottlieb boasts of "quality coverage," "quality of the product," "a sense of quality"  and "quality of reporting and editing" when referring to the daily he has guided since early 2012.

The interview for the half-hour show, Carpe Diem, was conducted by another journalist, Merrill Brown, director of Montclair State's  School of Communication and Media.

Brown only lobs softballs at Gottlieb, a former New York Times editor and reporter, and sounds as if hasn't read the Woodland Park daily recently or noticed all of the errors -- corrected and uncorrected -- and serious omissions in stories.

Corrections

Today, for example, four corrections appear on A-2 of The Record, including a major problem likely caused by the inattention of Liz Houlton, the six-figure editor in charge of production.

It seems the entire page of Memorial Day listings in Friday's paper was "incorrect," and the correct page was run today (L-3), including a story by Mary Diduch.

Another correction noted a Page 1 story incorrectly reported Elmwood Park police were considering body cameras for officers; the department has already purchased them.

Cub reporter

Gottlieb noted he got his start in journalism at The Record in the early 1970s, covering Oradell, River Edge and New Milford, and was mentored by Susan Servis-Scilla.

As an example of the paper's "quality," Gottlieb cited circulation figures, noting that when he left in 1973, The Record was selling 150,000 copies daily.

When he came back in 2o12, Gottlieb said, the circulation was 148,000 daily. 

But he didn't mention that figure includes the Herald News, which long ago was made an "edition" of The Record, apparently for the purpose of padding the flagship daily's circulation and keeping advertising rates high.

Today's paper

Let's hope Gottlieb's "quality" boasts didn't include the many flawed accident and pedestrian fatality stories The Record publishes, including the one on L-1 today.

The story reporting an off-duty Fort Lee police officer was ejected from his vehicle in a head-on collision on Friday is missing an essential detail:

Was Police Officer Laki Pothos, 32, wearing his seat belt, and if not, will he receive a summons?

The story carries the bylines of the overworked police reporter, Stefanie Dazio, and Staff Writer Nicholas Pugliese.

Still, there is not a single word on the cause of the accident, although the reporters seem to blame the cop, saying his Jeep Wrangler "collided with a ... Nissan Altima" being driven by a 65-year-old man (L-3).

Was Pothos, the cop, using his mobile phone or texting? Did something break on his vehicle, causing him to cross over the line and hit the poor old guy's car?

Stay tuned. The Record may or may not answer any of these questions.

People of New Jersey deserve an apology, not Christie

Rush-hour traffic on Route 4 east crawling through Paramus a little after 8 a.m. today at the start of the Memorial Day weekend.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie is complaining about "media bias"? 

What a joke.

The story on A-4 of The Record today reports the GOP bully is demanding an apology from news outlets that branded him as "guilty," claiming he was cleared by three investigations into the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal.

But U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman never cleared Christie, himself a former U.S. attorney.

Fishman obtained indictments against two of Christie's closest aides and accepted a guilty plea from a third, who has pledged to cooperate with the government.

And he has refused to identify unindicted co-conspirators or give defense attorneys 1.5 million pages of documents and other evidence, which may eventually show Christie had a pivotal role in the 2013 political retribution scandal.

Shameless

Christie should apologize to the people of New Jersey for being the worst governor in the state's history, one focused on helping his wealthy supporters at the expense of the middle and working classes.

For many years, the media's "bias" was in his favor as The Record and other news outlets swallowed whole the governor's elaborate public relations campaigns:

"Reform Agenda," "Jersey Comeback" and "Stronger Than the Storm" are only three of the elaborate dog-and-pony shows the media dutifully attended and regurgitated as Christie destroyed the state's economy. 


Correction?

The correction on A-2 today appears to be in error.

"An article on Page A-1 Tuesday about an FBI presentation on terrorist propaganda misidentified the location of Bergen Arts and Science Charter [High] School. It is in Hackensack."

But the front page of Tuesday's paper makes no mention of the FBI or the school. 

Wednesday's Page L-1 did, the story carried a Hackensack dateline and reported the school is, in fact, in Hackensack.

Cops kill man

Hackensack police officers opened fire on a city man who allegedly threatened them with a cleaver, and he died of his wounds (L-1).

This police shooting is different than so many others that have sparked riots and media feeding frenzies: The suspect was Hispanic, not black.

On today's Local front, the compelling photo of an officer comforting a woman at the home where Elvin Diaz, 24, was shot is by Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi.

Sadly, Assignment Editors Dierdre Sykes and Dan Sforza have demoted Zehawi to ambulance chaser in the past few years, and he has turned in scores of non-fatal accident photos, especially gee-whiz rollovers and other filler material (see L-6 today).

Don't you wonder why the woman in the photo isn't identified in the caption?

Or why Hackensack's Fairmount section is described incorrectly as a "working class neighborhood," when it is far more varied than that, including both modest homes and multi-million dollar mansions.

In fact, Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg grew up in such a mansion at Summit and Fairmount avenues, and frolicked in a 14.2-acre forested backyard that has been preserved as Borg's Woods.

Road kill

Why did it take Road Warrior John Cichowski four days to throw water on Monday's wildly exaggerated front-page story on the probable end of self-serve gas in New Jersey (L-1)?

As in her March 11 story on a pedestrian fatality in Hackensack, Staff Writer Stefanie Dazio doesn't say whether an elderly Fort Lee woman killed by a car was in or near a crosswalk when she was struck (L-2).

Today, police reporter Dazio's byline or credit line appears on eight stories or briefs, making her the most overworked staffer in the newsroom.

But something has got to give when she handles all or most of those assignments by telephone, and it usually results in holes big enough to drive a cop car through.

Elisa and Emma

Readers can't tell whether Elisa Ung withheld a third full star from Emma in Englewood because she hated most of the desserts or because of what she calls "unpolished and occasionally confused" servers (BL-1 and BL-14).

And the paper's chief restaurant critic devotes so much space to the resumes of the consulting chef and two partners readers never learn whether the skirt steak shown in a big photo was naturally raised.

After so many years in the gig, Ung remains tongue tied, and the editor who read the story before publication must have been out to lunch:

"A much bolder sauce stampeded an already overcooked salmon dish ($22)." 

Some readers would like to stampede Ung out of the Woodland Park newsroom.