Editors should be calling on Trump to admit his mistakes

From cartoonist Jeff Darcy of The Cleveland Plain Dealer (cleveland.com).

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Amid new revelations about GOP presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump's groping, The Record's front page focuses instead on spousal abuse by an obscure athlete.

Trump has succeeded in distracting the news media with his pledge to accept the outcome of the Nov. 8 election -- but only if he wins (A-1 and A-8).

The New York Times calls the wacko racist billionaire an "enemy of democracy," and Op-Ed Columnist Dave Leonhardt declares:

"Trump has adopted the language of despots -- lie-filled accusations meant to delegitimize both his opponent and the country's entire democratic system of governance."

Contrast that with The Record's wishy-washy editorial on Trump and the integrity of the election (A-18).

Meanwhile, Karena Virginia, 45, of Monmouth County became the 10th woman to publicly accuse the GOP groper of unwanted physical contact -- saying he grabbed her arm and touched her breast during a chance encounter at the 1998 U.S. Open (A-7).

Sports lead

Leading the paper with a sports story is always wrong, but it's especially bad journalism now, when the nation is facing the possibility of seeing a sociopath and sexual abuser of women elected president.

Tara Sullivan's column -- "Giants need to admit their mistakes" -- even knocked the Bridgegate trial off Page 1.

Informal dining

Check your gas tank and make sure you bring your cholesterol-lowering pills with you, if you intend to visit Sette, a wood-fired pizzeria in Totowa recommended by Staff Writer Elisa Ung (BL-14).

Ung, the paper's chief restaurant reviewer, advises readers not to miss the cannoli pizza.

Prosecutors: Christie knew traffic jam was to punish mayor

A 2013 cartoon from the New York Daily News lampoons Governor Christie's direct role in the George Washington Bridge lane closings -- confirmed today by federal prosecutors at the trial of two former Christie administration officials.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Federal prosecutors told a jury in Newark today Governor Christie "knew that his close associates were involved in a plan to shut down lanes ... as it was happening and that the closings were intended to punish a local mayor for declining to support him," The New York Times is reporting.

"It was the first time Mr. Christie, a Republican, has been accused of knowing about the scheme as it unfolded," the newspaper says.

"The prosecutors made the assertion during opening statements in the trial of two former Christie administration officials" charged with closing upper level George Washington Bridge access lanes in September 2013 and then covering it up. 

The GOP thug was found guilty long ago in the court of public opinion.

Bloodthirsty NRA just shrugs off deadliest mass shooting

An image of racist Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was on display in January at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, where armed National Guard members have been posted since 9/11, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You'll have to search for mention of the evil National Rifle Association in The Record's extensive coverage of the massacre at a gay club in Florida.

An unsigned editorial, referring to the shooting inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, notes:

"The slaughter  of elementary school children was a crime that cried up to the heavens for justice. The National Rifle Association shouted louder" (A-8). 

The reaction of the NRA is so predictable reporters didn't even bother to ask for a statement on a gunman using an assault-style rifle to kill at least 50 people and wound 53 others (later revised to 49 deaths).

Assault-style weapons were outlawed in 1994, The Washington Post reports on A-3 today, but the ban expired in 2004, and Congress apparently caved into the NRA and "opted not to renew it."

More security

After the 9/11 attacks on America, we spent billions on homeland security, including equipping local police departments with armored vehicles, weapons for SWAT teams and other terror-fighting equipment.

But in November 2013, the Paramus Police Department, though armed to the teeth, didn't arrive at Garden State Plaza until after a man with a rifle panicked scores of shoppers and employees by firing rounds into the ceiling before committing suicide in the basement.

In a bottom-line decision, the shopping center, the biggest in New Jersey, didn't employ armed security guards then and doesn't now.

Would more armed security guards at malls, arenas, schools and movie theaters have prevented some of the 14 mass shootings in the past decade (A-3)?

If Pulse, the gay club in Orlando, employed armed security guards, would gunman Omar Mateen have been able to take so many lives?

Offensive column

Veteran reporter Mike Kelly offends readers today with a column that uses plays on words at the expense of the people slaughtered in the gay club on Sunday (A-1).

"And now it's Orlando, Fla., and a nightclub with an ironic name -- Pulse," his Page 1 column begins.

"The latest mass shooting -- the deadliest in U.S. history -- is yet another beat in a disheartening national pulse...."

I'm confused. A mass shooting is a "beat" in a "pulse"? 

Then, Kelly claims "this sort of mass murder may just be America's new normal -- the new pulse of the national heartbeat."

First, the massacre is a "beat," then it's a "pulse." 

This kind of meaningless pushing around of words is typical of Kelly.

Maybe, Kelly's insensitivity toward the death of 50 people in a gay nightclub is rooted in the columnist's well-known homophobia, which was evident in his reporting from Asbury Park in 2000.

In a major piece for The Sunday Record, Kelly failed miserably as a journalist by not saying a single word about the urban gays who were leading the way in reviving the faded shore resort -- as reported by The New York Times' New Jersey section, which was published the very same day.

Clifton bigotry

The local reaction story on Page 1 today should have been given a prominent headline. 

Some readers might be shocked that at least one Clifton resident opposed the raising of a rainbow flag at City Hall, and "wondered whether flags for the Ku KLux Klan and ISIS might be next" (A-1).

The rainbow flag was popularized as a symbol of lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride and diversity in 1978.

Departing editor didn't ease crisis at our local daily paper

Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record in the Woodland Park newsroom. Reporter Lindy Washburn, the paper's chief medical writer, is at left in this photo by Staff  Photographer Carmine Galasso.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's news story on the retirement of Editor Martin Gottlieb of The Record comes at a time of crisis -- a troubled period at the Woodland Park daily the veteran journalist did little to ease.

The Record's local news content, and the quality of editing and reporting, have declined dramatically since Publisher Stephen A. Borg ordered a major downsizing in 2008, and moved North Jersey Media Group and its flagship paper out of Hackensack in 2009.

Gottlieb, who took over the newsroom in January 2012, inherited several lazy, incompetent editors, but never cleaned house.

They include Deirdre Sykes, head of the local assignment desk; Assistant Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, Projects Editor Tim Nostrand; and Production Editor Liz Houlton, who has missed hundreds of errors, typos and bad headlines.

Gottlieb also did nothing to curb several veteran columnists, including Charles Stile, Mike Kelly, John Cichowski and Bill Ervolino, printing everything they wrote, no matter how pathetic.

Local news?

Today's Local front story on Gottlieb lists as his main accomplishments:

"Leadership of The Record's coverage of the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal," and becoming "a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting for a series examining the spread of heroin in the suburbs" (L-1 and L-6).

But his hands-on editing resulted in stories, especially those on Page 1, becoming longer and less accessible to readers.

And the front page showed a far greater emphasis on national and international news.

All of that came at the expense of covering municipal news in Bergen County, especially in Hackensack, where the Borg publishing family prospered for more than 110 years. 

Today, for example, Staff Writer Todd South is reporting on a Nov. 24 incident for the first time:

Hackensack Board of Education Attorney Richard Salkin has been charged with harassment for allegedly threatening Health Department Registrar Maria Tartaglione (L-1).

'Drop dead'

Salkin was applying for a license to marry former City Clerk Debra Heck, but was told by the registrar "she could not provide the certificate because errors had been crossed out in the license form he provided and corrected in pen," South says.

"You're a piece of shit, drop dead," Salkin allegedly shouted, Tartaglione complained, according to The Bergen Dispatch, which reported the incident on its Web site on Nov. 30. "Do you want me to bury you?"

South, with the approval of his editors, has managed to avoid reporting on the city's Board of Education; the school budget, which this year exceeds the city's own; or anything else to do with the schools.

The board approved a new contract with the Hackensack teachers union on Nov. 12, but that wasn't reported until Friday, when the Hackensack Chronicle carried the nearly month-old news.

Another screw-up

Today's local-news section again shows Sykes' and Sforza's desperation to fill space, with long wire-service obituaries on an obscure Native American activist and an even more obscure crossword puzzle champ (L-6).

Page A-2 carries Houlton's correction of a Road Warrior column last Sunday, in which Cichowski tried to drum up business for a volunteer ride service for seniors.

Unfortunately, the addled, error-prone reporter published the wrong telephone number, and none of the editors who looked at his story actually dialed the number to see if it was correct.

1971 to 2016

Gottlieb, 67, began his journalism career in 1971 as a municipal reporter covering Bergen County towns for The Record.

Then, he worked as a reporter or editor at the Daily News, The New York Times and the Village Voice before returning to the Daily News and The Times, the latter in 1995, working there until he was named editor of The Record in January 2012.

Today's story says he will leave The Record in January, four years after he arrived, basically his way of cruising into retirement.

His departure from The Times, where he was global editions editor from 2008 to 2011, has never been explained.

Local schools, government? Readers come up short again

SIGN CONFUSION: At this Hackensack intersection, where a Wawa is under construction, the sign says South River Street, but another sign near the traffic signal, below, calls it "South River Road."

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Should a local daily newspaper like The Record lead the paper with "chaos" among do-nothing Republicans in Congress?

Or a long column on a protest in front of the White House over lax gun-control laws, even though it involves an Oakland rabbi whose father was shot to death way back in 1999?

Is there anything else to read on Page 1 today?

Editor Martin Gottlieb, who thinks he still works at The New York Times, runs an inconsequential story about a man who feeds homeless cats in the Meadowlands, and an even sillier piece on Mets fans using social media (A-1).

Couldn't Gottlieb find anyone who feeds homeless humans?

This is an irresponsible waste of space on the page that should be reserved for the most important local or regional news of the day.

Local news?

But The Record, it seems, has given up covering most of the local governments and school systems in its circulation area, relying instead on sensational crime and court news to fill its Local section, as it does today (L-1, L-3, L-5 and L-6).

And that's the case despite the impact those schools and governments in nearly 90 towns have on the property taxes that seem to go up with little if no improvement in services to residents and businesses.

Tenafly police

An editorial today praises a three-year contract for Tenafly police, who will get no raises and have to wait longer to reach the highest salary tier (A-22).

"This ruling is ultimately positive for the region at large and is exactly what needs to happen in other municipalities, if there is hope of reining in property taxes," the editorial trumpets.

But in the news story on the arbitration ruling in Thursday's Local section, Tenafly officials couldn't say how much the police contract will save the borough, and there was not a single word on how any savings would affect property taxes.

The editorial also ignores all of the tax appeals that have forced some towns, such as Hackensack, to issue bonds to pay property owners who have filed successful challenges to their assessments and bills.

So, even if a town saves money by denying raises to police officers or other municipal workers, those savings could be wiped out by other factors in home-rule communities, which aren't known for efficiency, let alone competent managers.

Worth the detour?

Staff Writer Elisa Ung continues to explore the outer fringes of the circulation area in her restaurant reviews.

Today, she reports on Yuki, an expensive Japanese restaurant in an Oakland strip mall -- more than 18 miles from Hackensack -- and it doesn't even have a Japanese sushi chef or owner (BL-16).

With authentic Japanese-owned restaurants in Fort Lee and Edgewater, why would any reader in central Bergen County want to drive so far to experience the discourteous customer service Ung complains about?

She was so upset, she suggested "takeout may be the way to go." Yet, she rates the place Good to Excellent (2.5 stars).

Go figure.

With N.J. going to hell, A-1 pro hockey news is shocking

Today's Hackensack Chronicle reports the Atlantic Street Park is officially open, but on Thursday, workmen were still putting the finishing touches on the space, above and below.

New parking meters on Atlantic Street, right, were covered with plastic bags on Thursday, and an officer in a marked police car ordered me to move after I parked there to take pictures.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

New Jersey continues to struggle under an absentee governor, but Editor Martin Gottlieb couldn't care less.

Page 1 of The Record today is dominated by a silly sports column and the 12-year-old photo of Lou Who?

Gottlieb, who once worked at The New York Times and lives in Manhattan, continues to show contempt for the concerns of the vast majority of New Jersey residents as Governor Christie focuses most of his energies on his failing presidential bid.

Also on A-1

Another Page 1 story today -- on the growing number of female funeral directors -- is puzzling given how obituaries of locally prominent people rarely appear on the front page.

I guess Gottlieb knows how many geezers like himself still read the paper, so he's aimed a third A-1 story on hip and knee replacement surgery squarely at them (A-1).

A story on A-3 says that in early September, all NJ Transit bus service "would be consolidated" on the midtown Manhattan bus terminal's third floor.

Why wasn't that done 10 years ago?

End the column

Readers of the Road Warrior column know Staff Writer John Cichowski is so desperate for material he'll print any and every email from readers, whose exaggerations and inaccuracies rival the columnist's own (L-1).

Today, he quotes Dave Mackay of Ringwood as claiming he was "chased from a cellphone lot" at Newark Liberty International Airport while waiting for his wife's plane to land.

"Non-commercial drivers must pay to use these lots that are intended for people who are picking up arriving passengers, he was told," the columnist claims.

Not sure what the veteran reporter means by "these lots," because there is only one at Newark airport, and it's relatively new.

Another cellphone lot is at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Both lots are free, but the signage at Newark makes that lot much harder to find.

Cichowski's column is filled with so many errors readers don't known what is true and what isn't. 

Ending the column would be absolutely no loss to commuters.

Readers' eyes are rolling over upbeat Christie coverage

Volunteer jazz musicians entertaining visitors at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center on Wednesday.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Governor Christie was popular as late as November 2012?

That's the ridiculous assertion of The Record's burned-out political columnist, Charles Stile, who continues to try and sell the GOP bully's supposed bipartisanship in yet another Page 1 analysis of the 2016 presidential election. (A-1 and A-8).

What about the loss of $400 million in federal education aid in 2010 -- his first year in office -- followed several months later by Christie pulling the plug on new Hudson River rail tunnels and the biggest expansion of mass transit in decades?

What about repeated vetoes of a tax surcharge on millionaires and hundreds of millions in tax breaks for wealthy business owners?

Or rubber stamping higher tolls on Hudson River crossings operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an agency he packed with his cronies?

Revisionist

A second story that gives a favorable spin to Christie's actions cites "weak economic growth" as the reason Christie "slashed legally required payments to the state pension system in recent years in order to balance the budget" (A-4).

But the governor is personally responsible for that weak growth as well as lagging tax revenues.

An editorial today blames Christie for not honoring the state's obligation to make full contributions to state pensions for teachers and other workers (A-10).

The editorial notes Christie claims making next year's full pension payments "would require raising the 7 percent sales tax to 10 percent or increasing income tax rates by 29 percent."

Of course, what Christie and The Record aren't saying is that a tax surcharge on millionaires would have raised about $1 billion a year for the last several years, making those pension payments and balancing the budget a lot easier.

Page 1

For the second day in row, Editor Martin Gottlieb leads the paper with a rabid coyote or possibly two (A-1).

The poor man. 

After years of practicing journalism for The New York Times, probably the best newspaper in the world, Gottlieb must find the suburbs really dull.

That likely explains his frequent slide into sensationalism.

Food promotions

The job description for food editor and food writer at The Record calls for someone who is willing to wildly exaggerate the greatness of restaurants and other food businesses that advertise in the Woodland Park daily.

That's the only explanation for why Food Editor Esther Davidowitz would call Callahan's a "legendary North Jersey hot dog restaurant" (A-1 and BL-1).

Maybe, she is referring to legendary heartburn or diarrhea.

Her Better Living cover story carefully omits describing the harmful preservatives, antibiotics and hormones that go into Callahan's deep-fried beef hot dogs.

Jon Hanson

I didn't see anything in The Record on this report from International Business Times:

"New Jersey rules require Republican Gov. Chris Christie's administration to cancel investment contracts with firms whose officials raise or donate money to the governor’s political campaigns. But his administration has paid more than $16 million in pension fees to the financial firm that was led by Christie’s chief fundraiser and top donor, Jon Hanson.

"The money -- far more than previously disclosed -- flowed to Hanson’s company, Prudential Financial, and its related funds that the state pension system has invested in. The new information, obtained through an open records request by International Business Times, comes as the Christie administration is facing a government investigation into whether it has fully disclosed all fees paid to financial firms -- some of whose executives have made donations to GOP groups backing Christie." 

Hanson is a close friend of the Borg publishing family, which owns North Jersey Media Group and its flagship daily, The Record.

The real estate company Hanson founded recently backed the sale-leaseback of NJMG's printing plant in Rockaway Township, a deal worth about $30 million.

More really bad news for commuters, state environment

Removing winter's grime at a hand car wash on Route 4 in Englewood.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's story today on former reporter Michael Drewniak, who just left his damage-control job with Governor Christie, surely will have you hurling at the breakfast table.

In his inimitable style, Drewniak (rhymes with "maniac") managed the news by confirming on Tuesday he was leaving as Christie's chief spokesman, but not saying he was taking a six-figure job at NJ Transit, the state mass-transit agency (A-3).

Staff Writer Christopher Maag, the paper's chief transportation writer, doesn't even attempt to explain why Drewniak is qualified for "a newly created position ..., overseeing policy, strategic planning, technology, safety and capacity for all bus and train services," according to an NJ Transit press release on Friday.

As Christie's mouthpiece since 2002, what does Drewniak know about mass transit after spending all his time riding in enormous SUVs driven by federal marshals or state troopers?

Stonewalling

Nor does Maag say how Drewniak's annual salary of $147,400 as NJ Transit's "chief of policy and strategic planning" compares to what he made working in the Governor's Office.

Christie got his money's worth when Drewniak helped stonewall the media and officials investigating the politically inspired George Washington Bridge lane closures.

Drewniak also defended the GOP bully's decision to kill the Hudson River tunnels in October 2010, denying NJ Transit rail commuters more rush-hour seats into the city.

And he stood by the governor when Christie snatched hundreds of millions in leftover tunnel money to fix New Jersey roads and bridges, rather than raise the gasoline tax. 

Funding crisis

The governor's refusal to raise that tax then and now means the state's Transportation Trust Fund for repairing roads and bridges, and improving mass transit, may run our of money in a few months.

Finally, Drewniak bears an uncanny resemblance to the former editor of The Record, Francis "Frank" Scandale, who presided over a drastic reduction in local-news coverage in more than a decade of running the Hackensack newsroom.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg showed Scandale the door on Halloween 2011, two days after a snowstorm paralyzed North Jersey. 

Scandale was blamed for The Record's pathetically weak coverage of the storm by a skeleton weekend crew.

Christie sellout

The Christie administration reportedly is putting the fossil fuel industry and the governor's White House ambitions ahead of the environment by settling an $8.9 billion lawsuit against Exxon Mobil for only $250 million (A-1).

The Record reports Christie, while he was chairman, raised nearly $18 million for the Republican Governors Association from the oil, gas and utilities industries in the first nine months of 2014 (A-8).

An in-house Exxon attorney also donated a total of $3,200 to the RGA.

The Woodland Park daily doesn't explain how it was scooped by The New York Times on settlement of the suit over pollution at the Bayway Refinery in Linden and another site in Bayonne.

Tennis, anyone?

Today's feature on the 30th anniversary of the law mandating wearing of seat belts in New Jersey seems an odd choice for the Better Living cover (BL-1).

Odder still is the byline, freelancer Neil Amdur, a former New York Times sports reporter who may know Martin Gottlieb, The Record's editor and himself a former Timesman. 

Bloomberg.com lists Amdur as editor-in-chief of Tennis Week magazine.

Bob Simon

Amdur reports Bob Simon, the veteran CBS newsman, was unbuckled and became "a back-seat bullet" when his limo crashed in Manhattan on Feb. 12. Simon died of his injuries.

Contrast that with reporting by Staff Writer John Cichowski, who used his Road Warrior column to contrive an elaborate scenario in which Simon would have survived, if only the Lincoln Town Car he was riding in had rear side curtain airbags.

What nonsense, but typical of Cichowski's hype, exaggeration, distortion and clearly inaccurate reporting in more than a decade of writing the column.

Christie's chances of a White House win are fading fast

In Hackensack on Saturday, construction continued on a new Bergen County Justice Center and parking deck, above, across Court Street from Church on the Green, below. Has pile driving, heavy equipment and other work knocked loose plaster in the historic building, which dates to 1791?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

"With Governor Christie again considering a run for president, his constituents appear to be tiring of the whole routine.

"Polls taken over the last three months reveal a list of home-state complaints:

"Christie's favorability is at its lowest point, with more voters disapproving than approving of his job performance.

"New Jersey residents think he is making decisions with an eye on his national standing rather than on what is good for the state.

"They do not think he should run for president -- they are, as the slogan goes, ready for Hillary -- but most expect he will, and want him to resign if he does."

You'd expect The Record to run this appraisal of Christie, who is expected in the new year to announce his decision on running.

But you'd be wrong. The article appears in The New York Times today under the headline:

"As Christie Roams the Country,
 His Popularity Takes a Hit in New Jersey."

Slanted coverage

What readers of The Record get is more of the same largely favorable Christie coverage that has been rammed down their throats since he took office in January 2010:

In his Page 1 column, Staff Writer Charles Stile doesn't list all the negatives of a Christie candidacy, but focuses awkwardly on the GOP bully as "a candidate-in-progress" -- whatever that is --"sharpening his message and strategy" (A-1).

In reader polls, Stile finishes a close second behind Mike Kelly on fracturing the English language.

Awful headline

Even the headline leading The Record's front page today soft pedals what Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo did in vetoing changes at the behemoth Port Authority that were approved by lawmakers in the two states (A-1). 

Who approved the bland "Governors unveil their PA plan" as a banner headline under The Sunday Record masthead?

No. Christie and Cuomo rejected sweeping reform of politics and patronage as usual at the bi-state transportation agency.

The words "reject lawmakers' reform" appear in The Record's far smaller sub-headline, but The Times and other media focused on the governors squelching real change in how the PA is run. 

Christie and Cuomo mostly call for brick-and-mortar changes, while their state Legislatures sought to end PA board members' ethical lapses and corrupt practices. 

Thumbnail photos

We expect actors and singers to use outdated photos that show their youth and vitality, but should journalists do the same?

The thumbnail column photos of Kelly and Stile on A-1 today; Bill Ervolino on the Better Living front and the partial image of Staff Writer Elisa Ung on the same page have been in use for up to eight years.

Kelly's is especially unflattering, with his shit-eating grin. 

Ung's chipmunk cheeks now probably resemble a cow chewing its cud after she has consumed thousands of high-calorie desserts as the paper's chief restaurant reviewer.

And there's no point of showing Ung with a wine glass; the paper reimburses restaurant reviewers for their food purchases, but never for drinking alcohol, and she rarely writes about wine.

Where is the shrimp?

I was disappointed in Ung's "Best dishes I ate this year" for her emphasis on meat and dessert (BL-1 and BL-3).

And her listing of Miang Kham from Sapphire Thai in Teaneck is a real joke.

The actual dish, which I tried, contained a minuscule amount of shrimp.

Local news?

The Local news section today contains exactly one local story -- on an unidentified woman who drove her small SUV into two special police officers in Cliffside Park, seriously injuring them (L-1).

The story carries two bylines, and includes a description of the accident scene, but the reporters also relied on a statement from the acting mayor.

No one apparently spoke to residents or witnesses who might know the names of the injured officers or the identity of the driver.

The rest of Local is devoted to the year in review and an unusually high number of death notices.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, inadvertently reveal their long-held contempt for the problems of North Jersey bus and rail commuters by using only one mass-transit photo on the Local front:

It shows fans who faced delays leaving the Super Toilet Bowl football farce last February in the Meadowlands.

Funny business

How hard can the Business editors be working when their entire 8-page section today contains only one story from their staff?

Does North Jersey Media Group have to pay two veteran editors a ton of money to run wire copy? 

Gas savings

I heard a news report on WNYC-FM, a National Public Radio station, about the billions of dollars trucking companies are saving on diesel fuel.

One company with 15-trucks actually passed the savings onto employees, raising their salaries 10%.

No one has ever discussed the extra fuel cost of the decision, six or seven years ago, to move printing of The Record and Herald News to Rockaway Township from Hackensack-- a 60-mile-plus round trip for NJMG's thirsty Mercedes-Benz delivery trucks.

The publishing company was able to lay off more than 50 pressmen, but that must have cost a fortune in extra fuel purchases. 

Now that diesel prices have plummeted, does NJMG plan to raise delivery truck drivers' salaries?

If you are one of those drivers, don't hold your breath.

Given low turnout, why is GOP getting such big play?

Two-thirds of registered voters stayed home on Tuesday, according to some estimates, so why are the media giving so much attention to Republican demands?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Really low voter turnout and the failure of Democratic candidates to embrace President Obama's accomplishments are the untold story of Tuesday's election.

The Republicans won't regain control of the U.S. Senate until January, but they already are acting as if they are running the country, aided and abetted by The Record and other media (A-4).

"To all who didn't vote, I say shame on you for not taking advantage of a freedom we are blessed to have," Robert Daniello of Ridgefield Park said in a letter to the editor today (A-13).

"Triumph of the Wrong" was the headline on the Op-Ed column of economist Paul Krugman in The New York Times:

"So now is a good time to remember just how wrong the new rulers of Congress [the GOP] have been about, well, everything," Krugman wrote.

The column could just as well be called, "Triumph of Apathy."

Let them eat cake

The big local news today is the approval of the first drive-through Panera Bread restaurant on Route 17 in Paramus, a road that already has enough retail-generated traffic chaos (L-1).

On Friday, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung was really upset about the desserts at the 2-star Ranchero Cantina in Emerson (BL-19).

The butterscotch syrup on the flan she sampled was too sweet ($6), and the "Chocolate Outrage" was "indeed an outrage" ($7.50).

The poor woman! 

Balanced front page is more irresponsible journalism

Lunch in Manhattan sounds like a good idea. But if you park for two hours at the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal, it will cost $24.

Or you could park illegally as many do and grab a street-corner falafel sandwich.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today seems to have everything -- from the horrors of civil war in the Middle East to a silly column on whether Rutgers' football team can compete with the "elite."

There is news about Bergen County's first statue of Martin Luther King, the glacial probe of the George Washington Bridge lane closures and a cautionary tale about sexual assaults on college campuses.

This "balanced" front page is the ideal every newspaper editor tries to achieve.

The New York Times has been turning out front pages like this for decades, and The Record has been doing a good job of imitating that great newspaper since a Times veteran took over the Woodland Park newsroom in early 2012.

But given the shocking nature of the revelations about chemical attacks and other war crimes in Syria, isn't the media guilty of neglecting that conflict in order to bring readers fluff and feel-good stories?

In view of the long-established Syrian community in Paterson, what excuse does Editor Martin Gottlieb have for the superficial coverage of the civil war there?

What happened to the pressure the media should be exerting on President Obama to deal with the Syrian dictator as he did with Libya's leader?

More corrections

Three more detailed corrections appear on A-2 today -- further evidence that Production Editor Liz Houlton isn't doing her job in return for a six-figure salary.

On A-3, the story about a 9-year-old girl who was allowed to fire an Uzi sub-machine gun, accidentally killing her instructor, claims the incident has sparked a "debate."

That's nonsense. There is no debate.

The accident shows the ugly side of our gun-happy society. No 9-year-old should be allowed to fire a gun.

Truck fatalities

Three people burned to death on Route 280 in East Orange after a dump truck slammed into their car in congested traffic (L-1).

Since June, trucks -- mostly tractor-trailers -- have been responsible for killing several people, including a comedian riding with Tracy Morgan on the New Jersey Turnpike and a Waldwick police officer on Route 17 south radar patrol.

And a trucker killed himself when he slammed into the back of another rig on the George Washington Bridge.