Finally, here is Super Bowl news to celebrate

Miller's N.J. Ale House on Route 4 in Paramus didn't call Fish for a seafood delivery. Imagine the possibilities: Bully Beef Building Maintenance, Pork Barrel Electricians and Lamb & Lion Plumbers.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

If you can survive the boring front-page Tara Sullivan column on an assistant pro football coach with the improbable last name of "Studesville," there is really big Super Bowl news in The Record today.

Woody Johnson, the filthy rich owner of the Jets, who play in New Jersey but refuse to drop New York from their name, says it would be at least a decade before we could possibly see another Super Bowl in the Garden State (L-1).

First "Studesville," which sounds like "Studsville," and then "Woody," undoubtedly a phallic reference.

Isn't that grand? A respite of 10 whole years before the vast majority of readers have to wade through all this upbeat crap about pro football in every section of the Woodland Park daily.

In the interim, readers can only hope The Record does a little tougher reporting on wealthy team owners' response to compensating football players for all of the brain injuries they suffer (A-8 editorial). 

Mass hysteria

Let's hope the Page 1 "expose" about Port Authority Chairman David Samson's ties to a luxury apartment development doesn't derail a $256 million reconstruction of a nearby PATH station in Harrison that he approved (A-1).

The PATH project would be one of the few improvements in a commuter-rail system that has languished under the Port Authority's well-known anti-mass transit policies -- a story The Record won't touch.

More Bridgegate

A Page 1 Charles Stile column and an A-3 story on the legislative probe round out today's Bridgegate scandal package.

Everyone involved seems to have received subpoenas except Governor Christie himself (A-3).

In his usual awkward style, Stile says Christie's staffers "have been hit with subpoenas" and the governor "has been served a heavy dose of comeuppance."

We also learn Christie "stormed into Trenton four years ago vowing to follow the advice of his 'tough as nails' Sicilian mother" that it is better to be feared than loved.

Still, Stile won't call Christie a "GOP bully," the name he has earned just about everywhere else.

But his Sicilian mother also must have given young Chris a love for pizza.

He became as soft as lard, if you believe the governor's claim he knew nothing about his staff plotting in early September to close George Washington Bridge local access lanes in Democratic Fort Lee.


Mahwah tax cut?

On the Local front, Mahwah residents who opposed a 600,000-square-foot shopping center at Routes 17, 287 and 87 were decades late in citing "traffic, environmental and quality-of-life issues" (L-1).

And given all the nincompoops elected or appointed to run Mahwah and every other home-rule town in North Jersey, residents probably can't even expect any property tax relief when the project is completed.

Lots of questions

An L-2 story about a bank robbery doesn't explain why Valley National Bank on Dean Street in Englewood had $66,000 in its vault. 

Was it expecting a run on the bank or laundering large amounts of cash from illegal activities?

Another story on L-2 doesn't say Paterson laid off police officers in 2011 after Christie cut aid to poor cities, leading to a rise in crime in an already violent community.

The only photo of Christie in the paper today appears on  L-3, where he is seen trying to overcome his love for pizza in a table tennis game at the Boys & Girls Club of Newark.

Who won?

You won't find the outcome in the story or the 
photo caption.

Sunday paper sells out to big advertisers

Image via Wikipedia
Garden State Plaza. Does the parkway "meet" Routes 4 and 17 in the same place?

The Record's crack assignment desk forced Lindy Washburn, one of the medical writers, to prostitute herself by covering the debut of a "high-tech" parking system at Garden State Plaza -- and it put the story on Page 1 today.


The word must have come down from Publisher Stephen A. Borg in the front office -- where he maintains a "front" for serious journalism. It's payback time for Macy's and other major retailers that fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to advertise in the paper.


I can recall leafing through the first copies off the press in Hackensack, looking for typos and other errors, and hearing News Copy Desk Co-Slot Nancy Cherry say about all of the full-page store ads, "Thank, God, for Macy's. Thank, God, for Macy's."


Going out on a limb


The centerpiece on the front page is a story that is about six weeks overdue -- regulators don't really monitor whether utilities prune trees to avoid the disaster that occurred after the pre-Halloween snow storm.


Poor first-day coverage of the storm contributed to the trick-or-treat firing of Francis "Frank" Scandale after more than a decade as editor.


More A-1 space is wasted on those nine thugs from the Wayne Hills High School team charged with aggravated assault.


Interim Editor Doug Clancy, who lives in neighboring Pequannock, thinks Bergen County readers are hanging on every word about the "weeks of controversy."


Fat of the land


On A-3 today, a story reports former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff joins a former federal judge, a former attorney-general and others in landing a lucrative consulting contract.


Staff Writer Shawn Boburg reports the Port Authority has quietly doubled Chertoff's $300,000 fee and given him six months more to complete a study. Chertoff said his dog ate his homework. 



Leave it to head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes to put a positive spin on school-busing cutbacks in a story that leads her Local section today.


Of course, the story doesn't mention the lack of school busing in Hackensack may have contributed to the death of a 12-year-old Middle School student killed by an NJ Transit train as he was walking home along an unfenced stretch of track last year. 


Handicapped writing 


Editor Liz Houlton's news copy desk missed a major error in the first paragraph of the Road Warrior column on L-1 today: Routes 4 and 17 and the Garden State Parkway do not "meet" or intersect in the same place.


The L-3 obituary on a retired bishop says he died from injuries suffered in a motor vehicle accident, but not where it occurred or whether he was driving.


There is no Hackensack news in Sykes' section today nor any municipal news from the vast majority of the 90 or so towns in the circulation area, though editors found room for yet another story on burglaries in Tenafly, where Borg lives (L-2).


Did anybody read sports Columnist Tara Sullivan, who falls flat on her face trying to re-invent language today (S-1)? Writing about two receivers, she says awkwardly:


"They grew up only a few North Jersey borders and a few high school seasons apart...."

Editors wait for news to come to them

Image via Wikipedia

Hackensack in 1894.

The main element on Page 1 of The Record today is a rare story about retirees, handed to the assignment editors on a silver platter.


Staff Writer Colleen Diskin, whose byline doesn't appear that frequently, bases the story on a "new report" from the New Jersey Foundation on Aging.


Even Edwin Kindermann, who is shown with his wife, Jane, in a heartbreaking photo above the story, virtually "walked" into the newsroom in the form of a letter to the editor he wrote about their financial plight.


It gets worse. The line over the photo, "Retirement costs soaring," isn't backed up by figures in the story comparing current to past costs. Oh, well.


It's lucky for readers the foundation put out a report. Stories about seniors, Alzheimer's disease and the challenges facing older drivers appear rarely or not at all in the Woodland Park daily.


In the lead A-1 position, another staffer reports on the burden to school districts of the state's new anti-bullying law.


The Associated Mess


But the third element on the front page is a story on how being unemployed too long can hurt a job applicant. 


It's from The Associated Press, and Editor Francis Scandale made no effort to find any North Jersey residents to help localize the story. Oh, well.


On A-11, an opinion column by Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin shows he's more effective handling such national issues as Gov. Rick Perry's ingrained racism than he is in planting frequent, wet editorial kisses on Governor Christie's ample posterior.


Little local news


Readers in Hackensack and many other towns shouldn't bother turning to Local today, because they won't find much local municipal news.


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' idea of earth-shaking news is the migration of birds that use a chimney on a Ridgewood school (L-1).


How much does sports columnist Tara Sullivan get paid for describing a losing coach's "purposeful stride," "angry grimace" and "balled fists" (S-1). What's next, whether he's constipated, too?

Related posts

• Are editors chained to their computers? (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)
• Rebooting, rehashing and remixing Page 1 (eyeontherecord.blogspot.com)

Is that all there is?

Image via Wikipedia

The Record of Woodland Park produces a meaty front page today, but disappoints on so many other scores, you have to wonder if that's the best Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes can do. 


Did anyone get past the first few paragraphs of the central element on A-1, a mother's plea that her wannabe terrorist son is really a good kid and that he was forced to do wrong by the FBI? This story is a waste of staff effort and readers' time. 

On the proposed breakup of Teterboro, do we really care what political columnist Charles Stile thinks? And why is the paper so eager to give voice to defense attorneys' claims that the convictions of Joseph Ferriero, Dennis Oury and Joseph Congilio may be overturned?

Now, look at the Page 1 promotion, "Two days that captured a nation." Is sports columnist Tara Sullivan delusional? Does she actually think millions were riveted to their TVs for an 11-hour tennis match between nobodys or that most readers actually believe the U.S. team has any chance of winning the Word Cup? Her columns today and Thursday are so full of hype as to be simply unreadable.


On A-20 and A-21 today are an editorial and an opinion column condemning the proposed breakup of Teterboro that were likely edited and written by the same man, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin. The editorial would have been enough. How does he expect to have any credibility?

There is a lot of court and crime news in Local today, but no news of Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood or a lot of other towns in North Jersey.

What's the point of continuing Better Living's Eating Out on $50 restaurant review by free-lancer Jeff Page when only two can eat for that money, in contrast to the original concept, four people eating out for $50? The paper was too cheap to make it Eating Out on $60 or Eating Out on $70, because it didn't want to reimburse the reviewer more than $50, so it cheats readers.


In today's review of a dreadful kosher burger restaurant in Teaneck, Page spends only $35.71 (and likely got reimbursed for only $35.71) and complains mightily of the service or lack of it. A good paper would have shit-canned the piece and asked for another, but frugal Features Director Barbara Jaeger probably balked at spending more money on a new review. She started the $50 review as a cost-saving measure in the first place.

And why is Food Editor Bill Pitcher reviewing A Mano, a pricey, Neapolitan pizza place in Ridgewood that has gotten a lot more ink in the three years it has been open than most other North Jersey restaurants? The only reason might be that it has a great public relations firm that nagged Pitcher for even more publicity. 

He doesn't mention the pizzas are a mere 12 inches and because of the nature of the dough, they can't be baked to a crispy well-done. And his rating of two and a half stars tells readers not to bother -- being just a half-star more than the rating given to a mediocre, faux-Caribbean restaurant called Bahama Breeze last year. Maybe Pitcher felt guilty giving in to the P.R. firm. In the end, it's readers who get screwed.