Are editors doing enough to stop heroin deaths?

Have you seen any pothole-filling crews in Hackensack?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Newspaper readers are accustomed to seeing light, bright and tragic stories on the same front page.

But Page 1 of The Record today sets a new low, devoting more space to a new Jets quarterback than to the rising number of heroin deaths in Bergen County (A-1).

Couldn't Editor Marty Gottlieb find room in today's thin Sunday edition for a sidebar on whether customs officials, state lawmakers, local police, parents and the media are doing enough to stop drug overdoses?

Deep in the text on the continuation page (A-8), where Caitlin Reiter's heroin addiction and tragic death are described, a throwaway line continues the paper's one-dimensional portrayal of Paterson as a drug bazaar.

Second thoughts

Well, at least the morons in the Woodland Park newsroom are having second thoughts about their light treatment of the theft of $460,000 in parking-meter revenue in Ridgewood (A-1 and L-1).

"Questions are being raised" about the plea deal with a former village employee who is "likely to be spared any jail time," The Record reports today, quoting famed defense attorney Frank P. Lucianna and Ridgewood Mayor Paul Aronsohn.

Thursday's front-page story referred to admitted thief Thomas Rica as a "coin collector," and compared the weight of the stolen quarters to nine Honda Civics.

Joke is on voters

A third front-page story today reports on all of the jokes about Governor Christie in the wake of the politically motivated George Washington Bridge lane closures, resulting in four days of gridlock in Democratic Fort Lee last September (A-1).

Of course, the joke is on readers and voters who were let down by the media, which didn't uncover the scandal before the GOP bully was elected to a second term in November, in what was the lowest turnout ever for a gubernatorial election.

More road kill

Gottlieb and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza continue to treat readers with contempt by publishing Staff Writer John Cichowski, the confused reporter behind the Road Warrior column.

Today's rambling discussion of mass transit -- from buses to trains to ferries -- makes flawed comparisons and shows Cichowski's ignorance about service problems he has rarely addressed in more than a decade (L-1).

Reporting that NJ Transit diverted nearly 700 bus riders caught in a massive traffic jam to a trans-Hudson ferry, Cichowski wondered whether the agency was "responding to withering customer complaints" about delays at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

But the ferry diversion was in the morning; the long lines at the PABT are in the afternoon and evening, so there is no way they are related.

Water on brain

The idiot also reports that paying private ferry services to carry bus riders is "certainly cheaper" than expanding rail service by building new rail tunnels under the Hudson, a project killed by Christie in 2011.

But Cichowski doesn't seem to know Amtrak, the federal passenger railroad corporation, is completing the tunnel project, which won't increase bus capacity into the city.

Only another express bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel can do that.

Cichowski's previous column also was confusing, and focused on highway lighting, not poorly lighted streets where pedestrians are killed routinely by drivers who get away with murder by claiming, I didn't see him.

Cursing the Road Warrior's dim bulb


Celebrating hard work

For a change, the featured obituary on the front of Local today is about an ordinary, previously unsung African-American woman:

Levonia Chaney, who died this month at 104, was the great-granddaughter of a slave who worked as a seamstress and lived in Hackensack, where she and her husband, a porter, put two sons through medical school and saw their daughter become a music teacher (L-1). 

An editorial today questions the lack of security at the new World Trade Center, where a New Jersey teenager was able to climb up to the iconic building's antenna mast (O-2).

Good for Justin Casquejo of Weehawken. Too bad he or someone like him didn't do the same at the mall in Short Hills, where a young lawyer was murdered, or Westfield Garden State Plaza, the Paramus shopping center invaded by a gunman who fired random shots before committing suicide.

More Ung nonsense

If you believe Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, restaurant goers have no "pet peeves" concerning the low quality of the food they are served or the ridiculously high prices for a glass of wine (BL-1).

The problem may be that she doesn't have to pay for her meals; the paper's expense account has completely spoiled her.

On Friday, The New York Times gave a rating "just shy of excellent" -- its top endorsement in New Jersey -- to Terre a Terre in Carlstadt, where Ung claimed she was served seafood that "smelled and tasted past their prime."

Contrast The Times' review to Ung's lukewarm appraisal:

New American amid the salt hay

Clashing accounts of Christie's town hall meeting

This poor soul on River Street in Hackensack, and a counterpart on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, have been trying to steer business to a tax-preparation business during the bitter winter, including days with sub-freezing temperatures. How desperate do you have to be to take that thankless job?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The Record's front page today carries conflicting accounts of Governor Christie's community meeting in Mount Laurel, the South Jersey town at the center of court mandates on affordable housing the GOP bully continues to defy.

Editor Marty Gottlieb dispatched Staff Writer Melissa Hayes and political Columnist Charles Stile to Thursday's meeting -- in a familiar double teaming that accomplishes little more than to confuse readers (A-1).

Stile, with his endlessly boring analysis of Christie's every word, and other political columnists are probably most responsible for the voter apathy that led to the lowest turnout in a gubernatorial election in history last November.

Inconsistencies

More troubling are the clashing accounts of the meeting:

Christie is "losing the fight to control the message," according to the headline over Stile's Page 1 column today.

But Hayes reported:

Police removed student activists shouting questions about Bridgegate and bungled Sandy aid; Christie refused to address affordable-housing and environmental advocates, and the governor received "raucous" and "thunderous" applause.

Doesn't that sound like Christie still is firmly in control?

And the photo on the continuation page shows perhaps three dozen of his biggest supporters, presumably well-heeled residents, smiling broadly, with hardly an African-American, Hispanic or Asian Indian in sight (A-8).

Poor editing

The story is poorly edited: Bridgegate, the scandal over the George Washington Bridge lane closures in Fort Lee, is rendered as bridgegate, with and without single quote marks; and a word appears to be missing in a quote from Christie claiming the demonstrators only want "attention" (A-8)

Also on Page 1, I'm looking forward to the day when a photo of rifle-totting Shyanne Roberts, 9, lands back on front pages after she wipes out a middle-school class in Gloucester County (A-1).

Three more corrections appear on A-2 today.

P.R. octopus

An editorial on A-18 notes that Thom Ammirato, the $78,000-a-year spokesman for the city of Hackensack, also holds two other jobs, paying him more than $56,000, and does public relations for the Passaic County Republican Party and two Republican state legislators.

Now that's multi-tasking in the great New Jersey tradition of holding many public jobs at the same time.

Utility pole news

Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza again managed to squeeze in a gee-whiz photo of a utility pole shearing, by the same photographer who took the first (L-6).

As usual, the cause of the accident in Paramus is missing from the photo caption, as is the driver's name or whether he received a summons.

Stomach turning

With the rise in organic and naturally raised or grown food, readers want to know more about the origin of the meat, fish, vegetables and fruit they eat.

But since he took over as publisher, Stephen A. Borg has given them less, first killing the paper's award-winning Food section.

Then, he hired three lazy food editors in succession and a dessert-obsessed restaurant reviewer who spend most of their time promoting celebrity chefs and cookbooks.

Inviting Heimlich

In today's lukewarm, 2-star review of Vale Bar & Grill in River Vale, "thick, ropy calamari got caught going down my throat," wrote Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung, who apparently was so ravenous she didn't stop to cut the squid into bite-size pieces.

Last week, Ung didn't bother to report that the short ribs and other meat served at Terre a Terre in Carlstadt are naturally raised or organic and free of harmful animal antibiotics.

And the sea bass and shrimp she said "smelled and tasted past their prime" might have been smoked by the chef, Todd Villani, who worked in the kitchen of Aquavit in Manhattan, where smoking and pickling of seafood is common.

Bridgegate scandal darkens Christie's image

In Hackensack, Euclid Avenue residents are still waiting for the crews who are supposedly out filling potholes, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Governor Christie's poor performance on delivering Sandy aid gets a good working over in two stories in The Record today, including a Page 1 story listing "a litany of grant-funding problems" (A-1 and A-3).

Before the Bridgegate scandal broke in January, Staff Writers Melissa Hayes and Herb Jackson, among other reporters, spent most of their time reporting on how Christie's every action or inaction affected his presidential ambitions.

The A-1 story on applicants' complaints by Hayes and Staff Writer Karen Sudol, and the A-3 NJ/DC column on flood insurance misinformation from Christie don't even mention his White House potential.

Thank God.

Lots of Passaic news

Today's Local section shortchanges Bergen County readers, who find four Passaic County stories (L-3, L-5, L-6 and L-7).

Two of the stories are from Woodland Park, where The Record's newsroom found a home in a nondescript office building overlooking Route 80 after fleeing Hackensack in 2009.

Don't miss the riveting account of an increase in Woodland Park water bills (L-5).

Restaurant promoters

The Better Living editors have been knocking themselves out promoting restaurants and trying to get readers to feel sorry for their many wealthy owners, hoping for lots of advertising revenue in return.

Today, the cover story on Cafe Matisse and other fine-dining places ending their bread service to save money and cut down on waste ignores the practice in many Manhattan restaurants that continue to serve bread for free (BL-1).

A staffer circulates with a large basket of rolls or sliced bread and focaccia, and offers customers one or two at a time.

This story, and Sunday's BL-1 column on customers who steal "stuff" from restaurants, is among the anti-consumer propaganda The Record has published for years.

Unrepentant

As the paper's chief restaurant reviewer, Staff Writer Elisa Ung, who reported thefts from The Dog and Cask in Rochelle Park, is supposed to represent customers who want to know where their food comes from and how it is raised.

But in many of her appraisals, Ung seems not to know or care whether the humongous steak she ate was grass fed and raised without harmful additives.

Why should she worry?

She thinks she is going to live forever, and The Record always pays the tab, even if that hunk of meat costs more than $50.

Really low pay

The pieces today and Sunday also serve to keep the focus off the starvation wages restaurants pay their servers, and how customers are expected to tip generously to make up the difference.  

How much did restaurant owners contribute to candidates for office to institutionalize that scam? 

Fishy rating

On Friday, Ung again gave a "Good" rating to a restaurant where she experienced major problems, including shrimp ($20) and sea bass ($25) that "both smelled and tasted past their prime."

When she told chef-owner Todd Villani of Terre a Terre in Carlstadt about the smelly seafood, he said the shrimp and sea bass had come to the restaurant right "from the docks." 

Something is wrong here, though I'm not sure whether it is with Ung or the chef.

Then, she recommends sticking to meat and vegetable dishes, and praises a pork chop, beef tartare and short ribs, but says nothing about how they were raised.

Housekeeping

Eye on The Record's search function is working again, as is the search function on my food blog.