More P.R. for the worst N.J. governor ever

Summit Avenue and Passaic Street in Hackensack at 8:19 a.m. this morning.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Editor Marty Gottlieb and his gang of political writers at The Record have already written off challenger Barbara Buono in November's gubernatorial election.

The onetime Paris-based international editor for The New York Times  loves delving into the past and trying to predict the future -- anything to avoid confronting the sorry mess Governor Christie has made in New Jersey.

Crystal-ball column

Today's Page 1 political column portraying Christie as a rabid sports fan leaves out any discussion of state issues in favor of grooming the GOP bully for a presidential bid in 2016.

Columnist Charles Stile tries hard, but he's not much of a writer.

His last paragraph only fortifies the image of Christie as an overweight fan whose favorite foods are pizza and beer:

"Poverty [in New Jersey] is a real policy issue and it just might become part of the campaign debate. But for now, Christie is rolling down a different playing field [italics added]."

"Rolling" -- like the rotund or roly-poly politician he is? 

"Marching" down a field would have suited Stile's shameless P.R. piece much better.

'Apology' to Franklin

Two corrections appear on A-2 today, including Production Editor Liz Houlton's reluctant acknowledgement that she treated photographer Thomas E. Franklin like shit on Saturday.

The correction includes the full last sentence of a Saturday story on Franklin's iconic 9/11 photo -- a quote from him -- that was missing a few words:

"It's not about a missing flag. It's about how this [flag-raising] picture resonated with people."

And wouldn't you know the Franklin correction itself contains mistakes, typical of Houlton, the six-figure "Queen of Errors."

The correction includes only two sentences, not "the last paragraph," and the two sentences weren't written with a semicolon, as they are on A-2 today.

More GOP P.R.

More Christie public relations appear on A-10:

Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin's editorial on growing poverty in New Jersey completely avoids assigning any blame to Christie's mean-spirited budgets or his insatiable appetite for vetoing bills designed to help the middle and working classes.

In fact, the governor's name is not even mentioned.

On the facing page, an opinion piece reports New Jersey's minimum wage has increased only 10 cents in the last six years (A-11).

The piece -- by Charles N. Hall Jr., chairman of Working Families United for New Jersey -- expresses disappointment with Record Columnist Brigid Harrison's detailed political focus on the Nov. 5 ballot proposal to raise the minimum to $8.25 an hour from $7.25.

Hall says: Where is the human focus on how people can make ends meet?

More pole vaults

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' comprehensive print and photo coverage of the region's utility poles continues today on the Local front (L-1).

More than 30 wealthy Ridgewood residents -- who have no other worries in their pampered lives -- showed up to complain to the BPU about the installation of taller poles "that soar above the treetops."

Meanwhile, Local hasn't had any news about Hackensack or its schools since Sept. 3.

Second look

A concerned reader sent another e-mail to Gottlieb and management:

"In his Sunday column, the supposed know-it-all Road Warrior shows he knows nothing about human behavior and common decency regarding current tipping practices for gas station attendants.

"The Road Warrior admits he thought it would be a universal emphatic No whether anybody still tips.

"How could it be a universal emphatic No when the Road Warrior already reported in his Aug. 28 column that 1 person admitted to tipping station attendants?"

See the full e-mail on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Another frivolous Road Warrior column 

Related articles

• Poverty in N.J. reaches 52-year high, new report shows
• Editors continue to swallow Christie P.R. and B.S.
• Christie's 'Jersey Comeback' goes belly up

Editors keep on treating photographers like shit

A reflecting pool installed in one of the Twin Towers' footprints in Manhattan.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The 9/11 attack on America -- visible from The Record's building in Hackensack -- was and is the biggest story ever handled by the staff.

Reporters and photographers in the field were competing against the world media.

And the towers of smoke in lower Manhattan were framed in the windows of the newsroom on River Street, where editors worked to put out an extra and then the next day's edition.

Scoops the world

Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin scored the scoop of a lifetime with his photo of three firemen raising an American flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center, advancing the story and offering a glimmer of hope that America was down, not out.

But in Hackensack, the Borg family and the editors let down Franklin by burying his iconic photo on a back page on Sept. 12, 2001, and they are still treating him and the rest of the photo staff like shit.

Dissing Franklin

On A-2 today, the editors run two corrections -- including a fix for a screw-up in a Mike Kelly column  -- but couldn't care less about repairing a major production error on Saturday.

A story on Franklin's 9/11 photo that began on Saturday's Better Living cover ended in mid-sentence, cutting off a quote from the photographer about the meaning of his incredible image to others (BL-3).

Why wasn't the last sentence of his quote run in complete form today, on A-2?

Ambulance chasers

Page A-2 also is where the SHOT OF THE DAY appears.

But the images aren't the best from the local photography staff, as they should be, but from AP photographers in Bangladesh and other far-off  places.

For the past few years, Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi and others have been employed as so many ambulance chasers by the incredibly lazy local editors, Deirdre Sykes, Tim Nostrand and Dan Sforza -- who use images of fender benders and non-fatal rollover accidents as filler.

More 9/11 coverage

Today's 9/11 anniversary coverage appears on Page 1 and the covers of Opinion and Travel.

Editor Marty Gottlieb and Staff Writer Shawn Boburg dredge up a 27-year-old deal on the World Trade Center naming rights (A-1).

Who cares? What does this mean to me?

Boburg completely ignores other Port Authority actions, rubber stamped by Governor Christie, that affect hundreds of thousands of North Jersey residents -- the bistate agency's refusal to expand mass transit and risk losing revenue from exorbitant tolls and parking fees.

More boring politics

In another silly political "ANALYSIS" on the front-page today, are readers expected to take seriously charges from Tea Pot crackpot Steve Lonegan that his opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, is an "extremist"?

Unfortunately for Staff Writer Melissa Hayes and the headline writer, state Sen. Barbara Buono never uses the word "extremist" in describing Christie, the GOP bully (A-1).

Buono says Christie is "anything but" the social moderate he likes to call himself (A-6).  

And as another story shows, Christie simply hates minorities -- poverty in New Jersey continues to grow, especially in Passaic County (A-3).

On Friday, to balance the lead A-1 story on Christie hiding important tax-revenue data, The Record ran another front-page story, an upbeat account about the governor's meeting with  schoolchildren in Monachie.

When asked why he wanted to be governor, Christie didn't compare himself to such predecessors as Jon Corzine, but said "he thought he could do a better job ... than some of the politicians he put in prison" as U.S. attorney (Friday's A-6). LOL.

Wrong tip

On the front of Local today, Road Warrior John Cichowski has a light column about drivers who tip gas station attendants, ignoring all the poor gas jockeys who have been murdered for a fistful of dollars (L-1).

Why is "The Addled Commuter" wasting readers' time again?

The editors didn't think much of the obituary for Franklin Lakes artist Cornelia "Corny" Baker, who died "recently" at 84, demoting it to L-3.

Did layout minion Jim Cornelius, also known as Corny, have anything to do with that?

More on chefs

On the Better Living front, another column by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung ignores challenges faced by consumers and focuses instead on two local chefs' menu ideas (BL-1).

Why is the column called The Corner Table? 

Another screw-up

Did anyone stick with Mike Kelly's rambling column on the naming of the new World Trade Center all the way to the end (O-1)?

Of course, the biggest question is why does "The Shit-Eating Grin" call the tower "1 World Trade Center" when it is described as "One World Trade Center" in Boburg's story on Page 1 today?

These are the kinds of problems that are supposed to be fixed by Production Editor Liz Houlton, the six-figure "Queen of Errors" and supervisor of the copy desk.

But as readers saw on Saturday -- with the fractured quote from Franklin, the photographer who can't get any respect -- the Borgs continue to pay Houlton, despite all the paper's production screw-ups.

Related articles

• It's raining on Christie's Jersey shore parade
• More words, but not always the right ones
• Readers scream, Who the F cares?

Now, here's a local chef worthy of celebration

For the print oriented, signs are impossible to ignore, including this one in the men's room of a business in Allendale, above, and another on the West Side of Manhattan, below. Thanks to Rosh Hashana celebrations, there were fewer traffic jams and more seats on NJ Transit trains on Friday. 

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

I read every inspirational word of today's Page 1 story in The Record about Darryl Dela Cruz, a chef  who will be teaching former drug addicts and the homeless in Paterson skills they can parlay into a steady kitchen job (A-1).

Since Publisher Stephen A. Borg folded The Record's Food section in 2007, there have been few such stories, but lots of mindless promotion of so-called celebrity chefs and their restaurants.

I recall in 2009, Staff Writer Elisa Ung purportedly gave readers an inside look at the launching of Bobby's Burger Palace in Paramus, praising the use of "chef's quality" beef. 

But in truth, Chef/Owner Bobby Flay was intent on ignoring the welfare of his customers and using low-quality Certified Angus Beef raised on antibiotics and growth hormones to fatten his bottom line.

Ung is still at it, breathlessly reporting on Friday's Better Living cover that the new owners of the Saddle River Inn "take ambitious risks."

But her review doesn't bother saying whether the $42 filet mignon or the $45 sirloin are naturally raised.

More 9/11 lies

Today's front page is weighed down by a Mike Kelly column that appears to kick off the paper's 9/11 anniversary coverage (A-1).

A few photographs would suffice to update readers on the long-delayed opening of the 9/11 Museum, not the thousands of words pushed around by "The Shit-Eating Grin."

A second 9/11 story on today's Better Living cover skillfully ignores the most shameless day in the history of the newsroom on River Street in Hackensack (BL-1).

"The story behind a photographer's iconic image" is the headline over a report on "The Flag," a CNN investigation of what happened to the American flag that was raised over the rubble of the World Trade Center by three firemen on Sept. 11, 2001 (BL-1).

The real story

The Record's story never reports then-Editor Frank Scandale blew it by running Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin's photo of the flag raising on the back page of a section -- not on Page 1, as he was urged to do by Rich Gigli, the paper's photo editor in 2001.

That decision likely killed any chance of Franklin winning the Pulitzer Prize for Photography.

It's no wonder Franklin declined to be interviewed for the CNN documentary.

Today's story reports:

"The photo, published first in The Record on Sept. 12, 2001, subsequently ran on the cover [front page] of the New York Post -- without crediting Franklin -- and the cover of Newsweek. 

To add insult to injury, the story ends in mid-sentence (BL-3), another great job by Production Editor Liz Houlton, the six-figure "Queen of Errors."

In recent years, Vice President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg has spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to sue anyone who uses the Franklin photo -- even with full credit -- claiming violation of the newspaper's copyright.

That's noteworthy, because higher-ups cited the high cost of remaking  the front page on Sept. 11, 2001, as the reason the iconic photo wasn't run on A-1 -- in one of the biggest journalistic blunders ever.

More missing

An editorial on A-11 today reminds readers how The Record has completely ignored the issues in the gubernatorial campaign as it has cranked up the public relations machine for Governor Christie's second term.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, apparently took a 3-day weekend, judging by today's Local section.

Readers looking for local obituaries instead find an incredibly long story about a Hitler bodyguard who escaped the firing squad and lived to 96 (L-6).  

Error addict?

The Road Warrior column on Friday was filled with mistakes, and a concerned reader suggests Staff Writer John Cichowski -- "The Addled Commuter" -- has become addicted to error:

"In his Friday column, the Road Warrior repeatedly and deliberately misquoted a judge and misrepresented clearly stated assessments and facts in a court decision.

"The case was about whether a remote cellphone texter can be held partially liable in a civil suit if a person who read the text while driving caused an accident involving injuries or property damage.

"The Road Warrior introduced a crazy assessment that implied the texter knowingly promoted addictive texting behavior by the driver, even though the plaintiff's lawyer and none of the four judges hearing the case ever raised such nonsense.

"The Road Warrior's misstatements of quoted text from the court's decision is cause for even greater concern that a reporter is unable to do his job and is intentionally misleading his readers.

"The Road Warrior incorrectly reported or made up figures about the National Safety Council 2011 estimate about cellphone-related crashes.

"Some psychiatrists consider excessive and frequent misrepresentations to be addictive behavior.  Is The Record's management encouraging such behavior by the Road Warrior?"

To read the entire e-mail to editors and management, go to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:


Road Warrior can and does tell lies

Related Articles

• Editor should hang his head in shame
• Good riddance to bad rubbish
• Stephen Borg fingered as 'the real problem'
• On 9/11 anniversary, newspaper stumbles

Shopping story trumps black man's death

Image via Wikipedia
Is there really any connection between a mega-mall in Minnesota and the American Dream Meadowlands in North Jersey except in the minds of The Record's editors?

The Record's lazy assignment desk hasn't bothered to answer several questions surrounding the death of African-American Malik Williams, 19, including why a man "armed with tools" was shot five times by two police officers on Dec. 10.


So, it's no surprise 30 demonstrators joined his mother in a protest march Friday evening, on the same day coverage of Williams' funeral was the main element on the front page of the Woodland Park daily.


But do readers find the protest on Page 1 today? No. Shopping is more important.


Thanks to interim Editor Douglas Clancy and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, they get an ill-conceived story that tries to gauge the potential success of an enormous shopping and entertainment complex in the Meadowlands -- just across the river from New York  City, one of the world's biggest markets -- by sending a reporter and photographer to the middle of nowhere.


Night and day


I worked in the same newsroom with Staff Writer John Brennan and Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin, and can't imagine what they talked about on this silly assignment to the Mall of America in Minnesota.


Like me, I'm sure many readers didn't get past the front page of Brennan's long-winded story, but the news copy desk appears to have screwed up the time element in the A-1 caption. 


The reporter said he visited the mall "last week" and "last weekend," but the caption says the photos are "scenes from the Mall of America ... on the next-to-last weekend before Christmas."  Shouldn't that be the "last weekend" before Christmas, which is tomorrow?


What a waste of time, money and space -- as the editors force the news staff to scrape and bow before a potentially huge advertiser.


Gunning for drunks


Why is a Port Authority police officer shown in a front-page photo today armed with a shotgun while looking for "drunks and dangerous drivers" on the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel?


Along with the protest over the police shooting of Williams, the front of Local today reports the parents of a 9-year-old boy fatally injured by a car will donate his organs "as living memorials to him."


But the editors continue to ignore the challenges facing older drivers, and why their vision and driving skills aren't re-tested periodically. 


The boy was killed by a 79-year-old man who apparently didn't see him, but was charged only with failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.


Another fatal accident involving an elderly driver is reported matter of factly by the assignment desk, with no attempt to explore possible changes in the law that would hold such a driver criminally responsible for the death.

Good riddance to bad rubbish

Image via Wikipedia

The Pulitzer Prize eluded Editor Francis Scandale during his decade at The Record.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

After more than a decade of mediocrity as editor of The Record, Francis "Frank" Scandale has been given the old heave-ho by Publisher Stephen A. Borg.

When Borg took over in mid-2006, Scandale had already been editor for about five years and had tried to reverse falling circulation with coverage aimed at 20-year-olds. 

Calling that a "failed strategy," Borg embarked on a series of major editorial decisions that reshaped the daily, then headquartered in Hackensack. 

Still, Borg promoted the editor to vice president, and paid him more than $200,000 a year. 

The end came on Halloween, two days after a snowstorm that paralyzed the region. Coverage in The Record by a skeleton weekend crew was pathetically weak -- typical of Scandale's recent performance.

Scandale, 54, came to The Record from The Denver Post, where he helped the staff win a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Columbine massacre. 

But he fell flat on his face covering the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on America -- the biggest story of his life -- when he failed to publish Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin's unique flag-raising photo on the front page.

In the years that followed, Scandale's flawed news judgment was evident time and again, especially when he gave Page 1 play to sports and the "business of sports," pushing New Jersey and North Jersey news inside.

He also played second fiddle to head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, who many consider the real power in the newsroom.

Sykes and her clueless minions presided over the greatest erosion of local news coverage in the paper's history, especially after the move to Woodland Park in 2008.

In a trick-or-treat announcement on Monday from North Jersey Media Group, Borg said he is looking for a new editor who will show "bold and decisive leadership and relentless focus on the consumer."

Which is another way of saying Scandale had none of those qualities.

Scandale got rid of the paper's only Hispanic and black columnists, as well as the only female news columnist, and later took part in the spoiled Borg siblings' wholesale firing of older newsroom employees with 20 years to 30 years or more of service.

Now, it's his turn. It couldn't happen to a nastier guy.

Jock itch invades news meeting

Image via Wikipedia

The Bergen County Courthouse is in what town?

Editor Francis Scandale's well-known jock itch appears to have infected all of the editors in the news meeting by the looks of today's front page -- the second day in the row of above-the-fold sports.


When I still worked at The Record, Scandale said a survey showed sports was 12th on the list of what subscribers wanted to read. He ignored that then, and he ignores that now.


Governor Christie's White House ambitions also are back on Page 1 today, and the story reports a "public announcement" may come soon.


The A-1 story to the right of the big high school football photo probably has readers doing a double-take. 


Training wheels


In the same position on Friday, Staff Writer Karen Rouse reported the federal transportation debt facing New Jersey had grown to nearly $274 million, and the story contained no hint of a deal.


What a difference a day makes. Today, Rouse reports U.S. and New Jersey officials have ended their 11-month standoff over the aborted Hudson River rail tunnels, and the state can get off the hook with a payment of $95 million.



Did Rouse's sources tell her, earlier in the week, a settlement was near, but she couldn't report it? Or did her story on Friday shake something loose? Pretty strange.


Today, Rouse does her best to polish Christie's anti-mass transit image, leaving to nearly the end of her story the resultant loss of billions in federal funds, as well as tens of thousands of jobs, not to mention how commuters will be standing in the aisles on rush-hour trains for years to come.


When he killed the rail tunnels, Christie cited potentially devastating cost overruns, but also noted his overweight wife, first lady Mary Pat Christie, had complained she would have had to walk too far to make her subway connection in Manhattan.


Major Latino news


Putting aside that the sentencing of a gang leader is the most important local news today, the poorly written lead paragraph of the story confuses readers with both an "after" and a "before."


The L-1 lead says Juan Rosario was removed from a courtroom "after an expletive-filled outburst before a judge sentenced him on attempted murder charges."


This would have been much clearer: The gang leader was removed from the courtroom for an expletive-filled outburst at the judge who sentenced him.


Also, he was convicted of attempted murder, so the word "charges" are unnecessary. 


The first paragraph also says the courtroom is in "Bergen County," and nowhere else are readers told that means Hackensack. It's "Superior Court in Hackensack" or a "Hackensack courtroom," not a "Bergen County courtroom."


Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' supremely lazy assignment minions also use non-fatal accident photos to fill holes on L-3 and L-6, and the only Hackensack news is a police story on L-1.


Reliving 9/11


The story on journalists giving their eyewitness accounts of 9/11 to students at Ramapo College doesn't mention that Jim Dwyer of The New York Times once worked at The Record (L-3).


Readers also aren't told Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin's "iconic image of three firefighters hoisting an American flag" over the debris was relegated to a back page through a massive failure of new judgment by Scandale, the editor, who -- then and now -- simply lacks the gumption for the job.

9/11 is all about selling cars

The New World Trade Center is a single tower reaching for the sky.

A decade ago, Editor Francis Scandale blew the chance of a lifetime to scoop his competition with a front page carrying a unique image of hope from Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin of The Record.

Today, amid all the 10th anniversary coverage in the Sunday paper, readers are given a copy of Franklin's photo showing three firefighters raising the American flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

But the copyrighted photo -- roughly 8 by 10 inches on glossy paper stock -- is sponsored by a car dealer, and on the other side, readers find an ad for All American Ford on River Street, less than a mile from the old headquarters of The Record and North Jersey Media Group.

Is there some reason the NJMG Foundation couldn't sponsor a non-commercial distribution of Franklin's photo? How low can the Borgs go?

A week's reading

It will probably take a normal reader a week to plow through all the 9/11 anniversary coverage today, though some people will just take it straight to the recycling bin.

Many sections carry 9/11 stories, including Sports, which claims the attack on America "affected sports forever." What a hoot.

Then, there's a 20-page special section filled with the accounts of family members who lost someone on 9/11. Tim Nostrand, the Sunday/projects editor, refers to them as "survivors."

Front-page flop

Scandale gives Columnist Mike Kelly top billing on Page 1 today, and Kelly disappoints again. Would you get a load of that phony smile in Kelly's photo.

Kelly's first paragraph takes readers to Texas, where two survivors of 9/11 who once lived in New Jersey meet for dinner and .... I've lost interest already.

There are more 9/11 stories through Page A-9.

Local law-breakers

On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Road Warrior John Cichowski, a former radio reporter, peddles a column about another radio reporter on 9/11.

The main element on the page is about a motorcycle club honoring a fallen Port Authority cop after more than 75 members broke the anti-noise ordinances of every town they rode through to get to the cemetery.

Praising Mac's pal

In Business, a glowing 16-inch story about real estate executive Jon F. Hanson makes no mention of his close relationship with Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, chairman of North Jersey Media Group, or their joint ownership of a corporate jet (B-5).

In Better Living, Staff Writer Elisa Ung's Sunday column, The Corner Table, is supposed to be about challenges facing restaurant goers, but today she turns her back on readers again and writes about challenges facing a chef who runs a farm-to-table restaurant in far off Somerset County (F-1).

On the front of Opinion, readers find two self-serving columns by Kelly and Scandale on the experiences of reporters, editors, photographers and other journalists on 9/11.

Flawed journalist

Scandale's trite column is flawed from the outset, with a first paragraph that is awkwardly written and missing a word or two:

"Not in my wildest imaginations could I have envisioned what life would be like 10 years after the Twin Towers collapsed in the distance from my office window."

He meant to write that he saw the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan collapse from the window of his office on the fourth floor of the old newsroom in Hackensack.

But then Scandale isn't big enough to admit that he failed miserably as a journalist on 9/11, when he relegated Franklin's incredible flag-raising photo to a back page, instead of ordering the layout editors to tear up the front page to accommodate an image no other newspaper had.

"I remember our photo chief, Rich Gili, yelling, 'That's it!' when [P]hotographer Tom Franklin's now-famous image" appeared on the computer screen "where we retrieved our photos from the field."

Scandale doesn't tell readers Gili was waiting all day for a unique image that would advance the story for The Record and help the paper stand out among the competition, and he saw it in Franklin's photo.

Scandale also doesn't tell readers how he bowed to pressure from the bean counters, who told him it would cost too much to re-make the front page for Franklin's photo.

More than a decade after he joined the paper in early 2001, Scandale remains an uninspiring leader.

See previous post on new features director

On 9/11 anniversary, newspaper stumbles

Image via Wikipedia

Two beams of light represent the former World Trade Center's Twin Towers.

On Sept. 1, The Record began publishing a series of stories to mark Sept. 11, 2001, and today, a day short of the actual anniversary of the attack on America, exhausted readers are hit with at least four more.


The most effective story so far was lavishly illustrated with photos of the attack and its aftermath by Staff Photographer Thomas E. Franklin and others. Those images trumped tens of thousands of words of text.


Indeed, the still and video images I have seen on TV and in the paper and on its Web site moved me and others to tears in a way text rarely does. 


With a story this big, The Record and other print media have a hard time keeping up. And who knows what's in store for Sunday.


I was just looking at the superb northjersey.com video by The Record's David Bergeland, showing family members holding photos of loved ones who died on 9/11. One man displayed his son's photo on a gold heart he wears around his neck.


A-1 trickery


Editor Francis Scandale is up to his old tricks with Page 1 today.


The terrific story by Staff Writer Justo Bautista on Iraq and Afghanistan vets living and working in our midst in North Jersey certainly belongs on A-1, but why is a retrospective on the region's Muslims relegated to the front of Local?


I guess that kind of unfair  play is guaranteed when head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes is running the laziest news operation in the universe, and can't generate any other local news.


Missing the big story


And despite the tens of thousands of words Scandale has published so far, nothing in the paper has had the impact of a "Frontline" investigation on public television, reporting the government employs 1 million people in 17,000 locations to gather intelligence and track suspected terrorists.


Is the Prudential Center story on A-3 today the first in a series on where commercials and promotional spots are filmed in North Jersey? Why is that news?


On A-9, Liz Houlton's dysfunctional news copy desk wreaks more havoc with a photo caption describing a police officer patrolling "at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on Friday."


With clueless editors like Scandale, Sykes and Houlton, 10 years have passed and nothing has changed.

Delivering another slow-news edition

Image via Wikipedia

Tolls are going up for New Jersey buses. Above, the midtown Manhattan bus terminal.

The Port Authority raised Hudson River tolls and PATH fares on Aug. 19, so why are readers of The Record just finding out today the hikes apply to thousands of NJ Transit and private buses, too?

Tolls will hit buses hard

Strapped operators may pass hike on to riders

Editor Liz Holton's news copy desk tries hard to sell the Page 1 story with those headlines, but no bus company quoted says it has decided to raise fares to compensate.

The $4 toll on buses is going up 150% -- to $10 on Sept. 18 -- and will continue to rise every year until it tops out at $13 in 2015, Staff Writer Karen Rouse reports.

There are holes in this story big enough for a No. 165 NJ Transit bus. 

Pedestrian reporting

Rouse doesn't say whether the toll hikes apply to all those commuter vans --which take the overflow from NJ Transit and other operators -- because Editor Francis Scandale told her their riders speak little English and don't buy the paper anyway.

And Rouse doesn't bother questioning Port Authority officials on what huge bus toll hikes say about the bistate agency's commitment to mass transit.

Three embarrassing corrections appear on A-2 today, including the use of an incorrect photo for a 9/11 victim. But both men are dead and can't sue.

I don't think hapless flood victims will be amused by Margulies' cartoon caption: "Shower ... Rinse ... Repeat ..." (A-10).

Water on the brain

In an OpEd piece by James Ahearn, the former managing editor doesn't mention how strongly the paper's editors oppose a tunnel to funnel flood waters to Newark Bay (A-11).

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes has argued that without repeated flooding, her local-news assignment desk -- the world's laziest -- wouldn't have anything to cover.

Commuters hoping for news besides the toll hikes on buses won't find anything today from Road Warrior John Cichowski, who is on litter patrol (L-1).

Staff Writer Melissa Hayes has another Englewood story today (L-3), her fourth in four days.

However, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado seems to be covering everything but the city she is assigned to.

I'm surprised Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais didn't call first before schlepping into the city on a bus, only to find the French tourist office had moved and is no longer open to the public (L-9).

But at least DeMarrais provides readers with more information on how online reviews on Yelp and other sites can be manufactured to put restaurants in a good light.

Second look

Most photographers aren't "word people," but Thomas E. Franklin's moving piece on 9/11 photographers on Tuesday showed he is both an accomplished photographer and an accomplished writer.

In fact, his lean, powerful style puts to shame Columnists Mike Kelly, John Cichowski and others who seem to be pushing around words or whose florid prose leaves readers dumbfounded.