Clinton has 76% chance of winning election, Times reports

HARD-LUCK ROW: A small American flag flies on this row of long-vacant storefronts on Main Street in Hackensack. Gold Ray Jewelers, the only operating business, closed in June, below. Across the street is C.J. Lombardo Co., where Jerry Lombardo also serves as chairman of the Main Street Business Alliance, which has been trying to polish the image of the city's forlorn downtown.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Despite all the bluster from Governor Christie -- who served as Donald J. Trump's attack dog on Tuesday night -- Democrat Hillary Clinton has a 76% chance of winning the November election.

"Our elections model suggests Hillary Clinton is favored to win the presidency, based on the latest state and national polls," The New York Times reports today.

On Tuesday night, wacko racist Trump was formally nominated at the Republican National Convention as the party's presidential candidate, The Record reports on Page 1 today.

Christie called Clinton a "deeply flawed candidate whose use of private email has disqualified her for the presidency" (A-1 and A-8).

But the GOP bully didn't mention his own emails and texts were erased, and his cellphone went missing for about two years in the Bridgegate scandal.

Local news?

Editor Deirdre Sykes again devotes an enormous amount of coverage to the Republican Party's suicide mission in the November presidential election (A-1, A-5, A-7 and A-8) -- much of which will never be read.

Most newsroom workers at the Woodland Park daily haven't seen a raise in years, but Sykes wasted scarce resources to send Columnist Charles Stile to Ohio, where the political reporter proves he is as boring to readers on the road as he is at home (A-7).

If you are looking for local news today, you're out of luck.

The gee-whiz collapse of a crane onto the Tappan Zee Bridge is on A-1 today as Sykes and Road Warrior John Cichowski continue to ignore worsening traffic congestion in North Jersey.

Puppy update

See the front of Local today for the latest update on the puppy mill controversy (L-1).

A feature on the healthy, sustainable food grown on Fresh Roots Farm in Mahwah is welcome (L-1), but readers turning to the Better Living section will find a completely different message.

Jersey blueberries

On BL-4 today, freelancer Shelby Vittek mars the New Jersey blueberry by providing recipes that add artery clogging butter, and cream and ricotta cheeses, as well as cups of sugar, to the glorious fruit.

The headline -- "Birth of the Blues" -- sounds clever, but the blues are all about heartbreak and misery, so the play on words doesn't work here (BL-1).

Unless that's a reference to getting heart disease from a steady diet of sugary Ricotta Cheesecake with Blueberry Compote washed down with a Blueberry Smash Cocktail.

And another feature claims a new Park Ridge restaurant, 103 Prime at Valentino's, has added "more healthful fare," but leaves readers in the dark on whether the pricey restaurant serves grass-fed beef and other naturally raised or grown food (BL-1).

Chief restaurant reviewer forgets she is a reporter first

Parking in front of Joyce Chinese Cuisine and other tenants at Kress Plaza, a strip mall in River Edge, requires the skills of a constitutional scholar to interpret all of the signs warning customers about time limits, towing and other bad news.

The Record's rave review of Joyce Chinese Cuisine in Friday's edition makes no mention of the parking restrictions or that customers who use the bigger lot in back of the strip mall won't find a rear entrance to the restaurant. This photo was taken today before the restaurant opened at 11 a.m.

The restaurant, at 478 Kinderkamack Road, also has a sign on parking regulations, above, in addition to two others on nearby stores, below.

This sign means that if you park in front of the restaurant, you have to finish your meal in 30 minutes.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Some River Edge residents were incredulous when they learned town fathers had approved a large Chinese restaurant for a Kinderkamack Road strip mall where parking is notoriously difficult.

Then, two friends joined a second couple for dinner at the new restaurant, Joyce Chinese Cuisine, and were incredulous they were charged an introductory price of $6 for a pot of tea that is free just about everywhere else.

Now that the restaurant has had its grand opening that pot of tea is listed on the menu at $8.

Starry eyed

You won't learn any of this by reading Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's rave, 3-star review of Joyce Chinese Cuisine in The Record on Friday (BL-16).

But there is lots of gee-whiz reporting on the "more than $1 million" the owners spent to turn a vacant space "into an elegant restaurant" -- when every restaurant reviewer knows or should know readers can't eat the wallpaper.

Difficult parking at a suburban restaurant and an $8 charge for a pot of Chinese tea are two turnoffs that will keep me away no matter how good the Sichuan food might be at Joyce Chinese Cuisine. 

Lan Garden on Route 46 west in Ridgefield also serves Sichuan cuisine, and that restaurant, which is now having a soft opening, and Lotus Cafe in Hackensack have plenty of convenient parking out front.

Today's paper

Don't expect The Record to do any serious reporting on some lawyers' outrageous hourly rates or the roughly one-third they collect after huge monetary settlements of civil lawsuits.

In fact, Staff Writer Kibret Markos has filed numerous stories on settlements of many hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars without ever mentioning how much of that goes to the lawyers.

The rare byline of Jean Rimbach apears today over a front-page story on the $615,000 in legal fees Bergen County will be paying for two county police officers who were found not guilty in a police shooting (A-1).

On Aug. 16, The Record also reported in a Page 1 story the law firm that whitewashed Governor Christie's role in the George Washington Bridge scandal has billed "taxpayers" $6.5 million.

Hourly rates

Doesn't the county or state have the right to ask a judge if the fees are reasonable? Is that being done in these cases?

What about an investigative story on lawyers' hourly rates and whether they effectively deny due process to plaintiffs who cannot afford to pay for representation?

And are any lawyers in North Jersey actually doing significant pro bono work? 

Local news?

There is so little local news in today's paper a reporter was asked to write a story even after finding out no North Jersey activists are demonstrating over the shooting of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Mo. (L-1).

On L-6 in Local, the local-assignment editors scrambled to fill huge holes with wire-service obituaries of two people no one has ever heard of.

Friday's paper

Page 1 of The Record on Friday read like a regional edition of The New York Times with stories on Ferguson, Mo.; the beheading of an American journalist in Syria, new DEA limits on a painkiller, Ebola and the national 'knockout' game (A-1).

In Local, the only real news was the death of Violet Cherry, former director of Englewood's Health Department (L-1).

Her obituary shared L-1 with a story on "a study" of a DPW access road in Paramus.

And why didn't head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, do more with a Teaneck Police Department tradition of bidding goodbye to retirees with a parade and party (L-2 photo)? 

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

First Christie rat abandons sinking ship of state

David Wildstein, Governor Christie's appointee to the Port Authority, orchestrated early September lane closures that caused gridlock in Democratic Fort Lee, above and below. Now, Wildstein claims Christie knew about the lane closures as they happened, but he hasn't disclosed the "evidence."

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The Record's front-page photo today shows Governor Christie with two of his appointees to the patronage mill known as the Port Authority, which runs bridges, tunnels, ports and airports in the bi-state region.

The photo was taken during the early September George Washington Bridge lane closures that have been viewed as political revenge in Democratic Fort Lee.

Now, former Port Authority executive David Wildstein, who appears with Christie in today's A-1 and A-10 photos, is the first rat to abandon the sinking ship of state.

Did Christie lie?

Basically, Wildstein is saying Christie lied during his two-hour news conference three weeks ago, when he said he had no knowledge of the lane closures engineered in e-mails between Bridget Anne Kelly, who was the governor's deputy chief of staff, and the Port Authority.

Wildstein's claim that he has evidence Christie knew of the lane closures -- as they were happening -- broke first on The New York Times Web site after 3 on Friday afternoon, setting off a scramble in the Woodland Park newsroom.

Today's banner headline shows the effect, incorrectly calling Wildstein an "ex-aide" of the GOP bully. That's a stretch.

In the text, on Page 1, a copy editor made a second mistake, missing a lower-case "legislature."

Political spin

And instead of assigning a reporter to write an "ANALYSIS," Editor Marty Gottlieb called on the columnist who is the paper's chief political hack, Charles Stile, to assess whether Christie's "career is in tatters" (A-1).

Stile has given the governor so many journalistic blow jobs in the past four years, everything he writes now is suspect.

Super bullshit

The lead Page 1 story says a letter from Wildstein's lawyer, first disclosed by The Times, "landed like a bombshell two days before North Jersey hosts its first Super Bowl ... and three days before massive amounts of records subpoenaed by an investigative committee of the state Legislature were due for delivery."

Three more Wildstein sidebars appear inside on A-6 and A-10.

The Record's editors had the good sense to put the third, 8-page "Super Bowl Special" section this week inside the paper, instead of wrapping all that mindless publicity around other sections, as they did on Thursday and Friday.


Weak local report

But Dan Sforza, the incompetent deputy assignment editor, still needed two Super Bowl stories on L-1 to fill out the local-news section.

Instead of more pro football nonsense, Sforza should have given better play to:

The tributes to Harriette Townsend, a beloved crossing guard in Leonia killed in a house fire (L-1); and efforts by Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. to get the United States to accept more refugees from the Syrian civil war (L-3).

'Insufferable hype'

Congratulations to Staff Writer Kara Yorio for telling readers how to escape the "insufferable hype" of endless Super Bowl coverage from The Record and other media (BL-1).

But Yorio is wrong on advising readers to take mass transit into the city on Sunday. 

The day of the Super Bowl has always been known as a paradise for drivers as millions stay glued to TVs at home and in bars and restaurants.

Delayed bargains

One downside of a North Jersey Super Bowl is that Manhattan's biggest dining bargains have been postponed until after the game.

The city's famous Winter Restaurant Weeks -- which usually begin in late January -- won't start until Feb. 17 and will be shortened by a week, ending on March 7.

North Jersey residents and out-of-towners are being denied three-course lunches for $25, plus tax and tip, compared to $40 to $45 for the same food ordered a la carte, and three-course dinners for $38.

More of the same old blah, blah, blah

A window at Barneys on Madison Avenue. Fashion Week in Manhattan is coming to a close today.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Compared to his previous efforts, there's little discernible difference in Mike Kelly's front-page column today on the 12th anniversary of 9/11.

In more than two decades of trying at The Record, Kelly has never developed a distinctive voice or the strongly opinionated point of view readers look for in a columnist.

If it wasn't for the outdated thumbnail photo, complete with shit-eating grin, the Kelly column reads like another, long news story (A-1).

His awkward writing is evident in the first paragraph of today's piece, when he has Tom Acquaviva of Wayne standing "in silence for a few humid moments."

A bad smell

A "few humid moments"? Kelly's phrases are indistinguishable from farts.

The paragraph ends with "the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, which most of us know as Ground Zero."

"Most of us" is a reference to reporters and the media, who adopted the phrase in 2001 and argued over whether it should be written with capital letters (The Record) or lower case (The New York Times). 

It's no wonder that more than a decade ago, news copy editors on River Street in Hackensack -- weary of Kelly's bad writing -- had to be ordered by their supervisors to edit his long, boring columns and slap on a headline.

Inside transit

Another Page 1 story today amounts to the same old blah, blah, blah about the incompetent administrators at NJ Transit (A-1).

But The Record's office-bound editors and reporters  continue to ignore the mass-transit agency's basic failing where the rubber meets the road: 

It's inability to provide enough rush-hour bus and train seats for commuters, aggravated by Governor Christie's anti-public transit policies.

Bergen corruption

The off-lead today -- new federal charges against Joseph A. Ferriero, onetime chairman of the Bergen County Democratic Party -- explains why even many Democrats helped put a Republican county executive in office (A-1).

Unfortunately, Ferriero allies were the power behind the Zisa family regime in Hackensack for many years, and still have their hooks into the city's Board of Education.

More errors

As the corrections on A-2 demonstrate once again, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, her minions and Production Editor Liz Houlton create problems as well as missing them.

Houlton's copy editors have completely given up trying to ensure accuracy in the Road Warrior column, according to a concerned reader:

"In his Wednesday column, the Road Warrior continued his epic inability to correctly report and provide any valid assessments on the problems and delays in completing the Route 17 Summit Avenue exit, which finally opened on Sept. 9.

"Road Warrior only explained there were 'additional work issues' involved in the delays and repeated that the only obstacle over the last 5 months was due to activating a traffic light.

"Yet, I was able to find out from NJDOT and contractors about other specific utility and ramp work that also caused the delays.

"Road Warrior is repeatedly befuddled by math, counting and calendars since he repeatedly got the number of days it took to finally activate the traffic lights wrong.

"Why was the Road Warrior unable to get more explanations, better information, and any completion date if the DOT and contractors provided me with all of that?"

To read the entire e-mail to Houlton, Editor Marty Gottlieb and management, go to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

When will Road Warrior's light go on?

Editors drop minorities from big story

The old New York Times building. Two Times veterans now work in Woodland Park.

Editor Marty Gottlieb signed off today on a Page 1 story with a hole big enough for one of The Record's Mercedes-Benz delivery trucks.

The "ANALYSIS" of Governor Christie's war on affordable housing is fatally flawed in the first paragraph (A-1).

The story claims Christie wants to give "towns more power to decide what gets built within their borders."

Whites v. minorities

Any fool knows the real issue is whether low- and moderate-income people, including minorities, will be allowed to move into predominately white communities.

Christie is only the latest in a long string of conservative white officials who have subverted the state Supreme Court's Mount Laurel rulings, which said towns have a responsibility to accommodate low- and moderate-cost housing.

Today's long, densely written story doesn't even contain the word "minorities."

The story was probably edited on the assignment desk run by Editor Deirdre Sykes, a small-town resident whose distaste for diversity is well-known. 

Getting a grip

The big element on the front page today is about the Iranian president's grip on power.

Of course, a far better story in a North Jersey daily would be Christie's chances for reelection next year after breaking most of his campaign promises and going after the middle class.

Fur flies in newsroom

No animals were harmed in the making of the story and photo about a Ridgewood kitchen fire, but why is this minor drama all over the front of Local?

Sykes and her minions couldn't find any Hackensack or Englewood news today.

How low can you go?

Is there any connection between the enormously expensive Uniqlo ad wrapped around Page 1 today and the lavishly promotional "story" on the Japanese clothing retailer all over the Better Living front?

In the new Signature section, the editors have taken ignoring readers' lives to a new level with "IN MY OWN WORDS." 

The new feature is described as, "An occasional feature in which reporters, editors and critics write about their lives."

In view of a drastic decline in local news, do readers really want an inside look at the poor job The Record's news staff is doing?

Weary food writer

Staff Writer Elisa Ung is the first up with what appears to be a censored version of her restaurant reviewing.

There is nothing here about her obsession with sugary, artery clogging desserts or the orgasms she has over the "funk" of an enormous dry aged prime steak -- a heart attack on a plate.

She also doesn't discuss the tremendous boost to her family's finances from all those meals she enjoys on The Record's expense account, as well as the leftovers she brings home.

Finally, Ung doesn't address her Sunday column's failure to confront restaurant owners on such important issues as the broken tipping system and serving meat with harmful antibiotics and growth hormones. 

Ex-Times pals in N.J.

Gottlieb hired a pal, Alan Finder, to fill the cushy job of editing Signature, which debuted Sept. 6.

Finder, who took a buyout after 28 years at The New York Times, is married to one of The Record's graphic artists, Elaine Isaacson.

Isn't that nice.