Bus station story on Page 1 is full of heat, but no light

Workmen were so repulsed by the design of this Woodland Street house, on the East Hill of Englewood, they abandoned the site.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's coverage of mass transit in the past decade or more has been decidedly negative, and today's front-page story on a new bus station in Manhattan is no exception.

Who can forget the anti-light rail stories penned by onetime transportation reporter Tom Davis?

Or the editors ignoring the lack of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains in recent years, and refusing to call on the Port Authority to add a second reverse bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel.

Staff Writer John Cichowski transformed the Road Warrior commuting column into a pulpit for drivers, running hundreds of emails from crackpots whose only interest is to see their names in print.

Now, transportation reporter Christopher Maag is tackling a proposal for a midtown Manhattan bus station with a maximum of controversy and a minimum of intelligence (A-1). 

It starts with the headline:

"A busload of cash"

The minimum cost of $7.5 billion stands alone in the story without any information on how much the Port Authority might be able to land in federal grants or what air rights sold to apartment or office developers might fetch.

There is nothing here on how many cars expanded bus service would take off the road, reducing pollution and boosting worker productivity.

The bi-state agency's midtown Manhattan bus terminal hasn't worked for years. The only solution is to replace it, and The Record should get behind the proposal.

In one of his first major acts in office, Governor Christie killed new Hudson River rail tunnels, setting back expanded train service a decade or more.

No one expects Christie to come out in favor of the Port Authority spending billions on a new bus station, but at least the GOP bully should stay out of the way.

The agency isn't tax supported, and will use grants, toll money and fees from airports and seaports to pay for the new terminal.

Hiding heroin

Among all the Law & Order stories the editors used to flesh out today's Local news section, the one about a male suspect hiding 40 bags of heroin in his sock caught my eye (L-2).

Today, Cliffview Pilot.com carried a similar story, but with a spin only former Law & Order Editor Jerry DeMarco could put on it:

"A pregnant Pennsylvania woman accused of stashing 89 folds of heroin in her vagina during a traffic stop [on Route 208 in Glen Rock] was due in court tomorrow...."

See: Summons, no bail for pregnant woman


Sloppy editing

The first paragraph of a story on the main Business page reports Tesla Motors sells "$100,000 luxury vehicles" (L-7).

But later, the story reports the all-electric cars sell for $71,000 to $140,000.

Maybe the reporter and editor averaged the price of different versions of Tesla's Model S.

It's not enough to criticize the PA behemoth from afar

The Record has written thousands of words criticizing the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, but no reporter has actually boarded a bus to the city or joined the long lines of home-bound commuters who face delays on the platforms, where spring-loaded seating resembles a torture device outlawed by the Geneva Convention, above.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

How does a North Jersey newspaper cover the region's crowded public transit system?

If you are Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record, you buy into what the lazy local assignment editors have done for decades:

You send reporters to cover the meetings of the mass-transit agencies, including NJ Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

In recent months, thousands of critical words about the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan have merely parroted complaining letters to the editor, a state legislative hearing and the experiences of the bi-state agency's new chairman.

Rouse et al.

Commuters will cheer news the Port Authority board on Wednesday voted to approve $90 million in emergency repairs this year (A-1).

But that emergency spending could have come a lot sooner, if only the paper's transportation reporters actually rode mass transit and reported on the quality of the service, as the New York papers did for years with their subway columns.

A couple of years ago, Staff Writer Karen Rouse did report firsthand on the afternoon stampede for trains at New York's Penn Station, but Rouse apparently has never actually tried to get a seat on a city bound train or bus during the morning rush hour.

She also refused to ride the decrepit local buses in North Jersey -- relied on mostly by people who can't afford cars -- in the years before NJ Transit replaced them with new "talking" buses.

Boburg, Cichowski, Sforza

Shawn Boburg, who covers the Port Authority, has never reported on the need to expand the PATH commuter rail system or the reverse bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel -- two parts of his beat.

The befuddled Road Warrior, John Cichowski, is hopelessly lost in the suburbs, and the so-called commuting column he has written for more than a decade has been taken hostage by drivers whose sanity is questionable. 

Anti-transit reporting

Of course, none of this is a surprise to readers who remember long, anti-light rail stories aimed at Englewood and Tenafly readers from then-reporter Tom Davis that were ordered by Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza, himself a failed transportation reporter.

Lines of home-bound commuters are as long as ever at the Manhattan hub, but the Port Authority did install touch-screen terminals on the main level that show bus routes and, more importantly for occasional users, the number of the gate where they can catch a bus.

I haven't seen that improvement reported in The Record.

Today, an editorial on the new Port Authority chairman, John Degnan, and emergency terminal repairs is careful to avoid reviewing all that Governor Christie has done to hurt mass transit (A-12).

Forgotten responsibility

I chuckled at Boburg's lead paragraph this morning:

"For years, the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan has seemed frozen in time, a forgotten giant in the agency's vast portfolio of transportation facilities" (A-1).

Indeed. The terminal has long been forgotten in the Hackensack and Woodland Park newsrooms, too.

More corrections

Three long corrections appear on A-2 today, including a rare error in a local obituary.

Today's edition lists more things Christie opposes

At Tuesday night's Hackensack City Council meeting, the audience included two members of the losing slate in last May's election; fired Municipal Prosecutor Richard Salkin; and sitting next to him, Lynne Hurwitz, who is said to have been the power behind the throne when the Zisa family ran the city that was derided as "Zisaville." Their presence and an occasional attack on the current administration is what is known as sour grapes with a vengeance.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Page 1 of The Record today reports a scramble to enroll for new insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act that Governor Christie did his best to sabotage in New Jersey. 

On A-3, Christie blasted the public employees union for disrupting the dog-and-pony show he put on in hard-hit Union Beach to hide how badly he bungled Sandy aid.

But Rutgers students wanted to know why $4.8 million in federal Sandy aid is going to the developer of a 240-unit high rise in New Brunswick, in exchange for providing 48 affordable units (A-3).

Christie opposes all other affordable housing in New Jersey.

SUV lover

And an editorial today reports the breaking news that "Governor Christie has shown little or no interest in promoting mass transit" (A-12).

That has been evident since the GOP bully took office in January 2010, but this is likely the first time the Woodland Park daily has actually stated it. 

Why is The Record showing such lukewarm support for finding the money to extend electrified light-rail service to Bergen County?

It appears to be part of a pattern of promoting commuting by car and ignoring all of the service problems encountered by NJ Transit bus and rail users.

Today's editorial notes "the crush at many gates inside the Port Authority Bus Terminal during the evening rush is unbearable" (A-12). 

But those strong words are based on angry letters from commuters, not on reporting by the lazy transportation editor and reporter or the clueless, car-centric Road Warrior.

Gridlock at Main and Anderson streets in Hackensack on Tuesday morning.

Anti-light rail stories

In fact, several years ago, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza guided then-reporter Tom Davis when he wrote at least two anti-light rail takeouts for The Record.

And in 2012 and 2013, The Record reported the exaggerated claims of Tenafly officials who opposed extension of light rail to their town, without bothering to seek rebuttal from NJ Transit.

More road kill

On the front of Local today, the addled Road Warrior foams at the mouth about dark highways.

Of course, the column he should be writing is one condemning poorly lit local streets, such as River Road in North Arlington, where a 74-year-old waitress was struck and killed by a car.

"The driver never saw her," a police captain told The Record (L-1).

When Jerome S. Some was killed crossing Prospect Avenue in Hackensack last October, a sister of the 87-year-old businessman told a reporter a street light was out.

That driver also said she didn't see Some, founder of a uniform company on Main Street.

Today's story about the death of Barbara Gangi, who worked the early shift at the Arlington Diner, says nothing about street lighting or whether River Road and other antiquated local streets in North Jersey are adequately lit.

Seeing red

For another view of Cichowski's  confusing, mistake-ridden Sunday column on red-light cameras, see the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Stopping the facts dead in their tracks

Editors allow Tenafly to demonize mass transit

Rush hour at the Lincoln Tunnel, above; Manhattan's Penn Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, below, show North Jersey needs more mass transit, not less.

NJ Transit rail waiting hall at Penn Station in Manhattan.

NJ Transit commuters slowly making their way to an escalator that takes them to upper-level platforms and buses to Hackensack, Cresskill and other North Jersey towns.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

NJ Transit's fully electrified light-rail system takes cars off the road, eases traffic congestion, cuts pollution and saves gasoline. 

Yet, The Record has allowed Tenafly officials to turn those positives into negatives, culminating in NJ Transit's decision to scrap a plan to extend light rail to the wealthy community, which counts Publisher Stephen A. Borg as a resident (A-1 and L-1).

Mass transit can't catch a break in North Jersey, where two new Hudson River rail tunnels were scrapped by SUV-riding Governor Christie in October 2010.

NJ Transit Newark Light Rail cars crossing Broad Street to enter the Newark-Broad St. Station. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) 

Tom Davis is remembered fondly by Hackensack residents as a muckraking journalist who wrote a series of hard-hitting stories when he covered the city.

But when Davis was promoted to transportation reporter, he wrote negative stories about the extension of light rail to Englewood and other towns.

That tradition was carried on after Davis left the paper, which this year and last reported the wild claims of Tenafly officials without rebuttal from NJ Transit and light-rail commuters.

One explanation is that the current deputy local-news assignment editor, Dan Sforza, wrote at least two "highways of the future" takeouts when he was a transportation reporter.

Sforza did his best to ignore mass transit, even refusing to report on defective NJ Transit buses with screeching rear brakes that ruined the sleep of people living along such bus routes as Grand Avenue in Englewood.

Today's Local section has no news from Hackensack or many other communities, but readers will find three more engaging local obituaries on L-6.

Alliance strikes back

A public-private partnership called the Hackensack Main Street Business Alliance, also known as the Upper Main Alliance, is striking back at Eye on The Record and Victor E. Sasson.

Sasson reported in Wednesday's post he could not find the names of any Main Street restaurants taking part in Sunday's food-centered fund-raiser at The Shops at Riverside.

Sasson checked again today, and no Main Street restaurants are listed on any Web site connected to the event nor are they mentioned on The Record's Second Helpings blog.

On Hackensack Now.org, Editor Albert H. Dib, a city employee who is the alliance's executive director, wrote:

"Vsasson stated very inaccurately that the Alliance was not participating in the upcoming "Taste of Hackensack" [The correct name is  "The Taste in Hackensack"].  He made no attempt to check with the Alliance about its participation. The Alliance is participating in the event.   

"Vsasson has clearly violated this site's Registration Agreement terms not to post false or inaccurate statements. As a result, all of vsasson's future posts will be screened. For the record: This is the practice he currently uses on his own blog, wherein he screens all posts for content. [Eye on The Record screens all comments for content, not 'posts.']

 "Also, this 'Eye on the Record' topic thread has overstayed its welcome on this site and will likely be deleted in the near future. I am closing posting for this thread now." 

Albert [H.] Dib
Editor, Hackenacknow.org

Dib says on Hackensack Now that "four eateries from the Business Improvement District" are participating in the fund-raiser for the Hackensack Blue & Gold Scholarship Fund, which benefits Hackensack High School students, but he does not name them.

The alliance represents only Main Street restaurants and businesses between Atlantic Street and Clinton Place in Hackensack, and apparently does nothing for eating places or businesses in other parts of the 4-square-mile city.

Its work and half of Dib's city salary of roughly $64,000 is funded through an assessment on property owners, who must pay a property tax surcharge to the city.

One businessman calls the assessment "a grand ripoff," arguing the alliance provides services that the city properly should be supplying to residents and property owners.

Finally, editors rate our lousy transportation system

Commuters muscle their way through doors at Penn Station in Manhattan.

One Friday night in September, the line at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan stretched to the level below where commuters board NJ Transit buses.

Rush-hour traffic comes to a dead stop on the Garden State Parkway.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Today's front-page story on prospects for a higher gasoline tax is the first in many years to rate the state's transportation system as "among the worst in the country with little money for repairs and improvement."

Typically, the editors of The Record have responded to increasing road, bus and rail congestion by assigning reporters to cover transit-agency meetings.

Today's Page 1 story is tricked out with photos and a graphic, but not a single quote from a commuter experiencing the crush of rush-hour travel.

Christie apologists

Much more is missing. 

Soon after he took office, Governor Christie launched his war against the middle class by pulling the plug on the Hudson River rail tunnels, the first major expansion in decades.

Christie also has shied away from pressuring the Port Authority to expand the bus system by adding a second, reverse lane into the Lincoln Tunnel.

Commuters' viewpoint?

Instead of running inane photos of fender benders to fill the Local news section, the editors could run photos of commuter hell, and actually quote drivers and rail and bus riders on what they experience.

Then, officials may finally be able to muster the political will to pass a higher gas tax, fix our roads and expand our transit system.

Good, bad reporting

Last year, Staff Writer Karen Rouse did tackle the reasons for the big crowds at Penn Station in Manhattan, but that followed a number of anti-light rail takeouts from Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza and his then-pet transporation reporter, Tom Davis.

Turn the page 

One glance at the unflattering photo of Mike Kelly, complete with shit-eating grin, and just a few words like "chortle" and "beery" are enough to turn off readers to whatever he is writing about, as in today's A-1 column on a state song.

Three corrections stand out on A-2 today, two of them from the thin Travel section and the idiotic Readers on the Road feature.

Hackensack news

On the Local front today, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes presents the first Hackensack news since March 22, a story on plans for a new Anderson Street rail station.

The story makes no attempt to explain why it has taken more than four years for NJ Transit to unveil plans for a new station, which was destroyed by a fire and explosion on Jan. 10, 2009.

And the story fails to note that in its final years, the station's waiting room was closed, and ticket machines were outside, where sun often prevented commuters from reading their screens and buying tickets.  

That meant they had to pay a surcharge to buy a ticket on board the train.

'Grateful' editors seek news handouts

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

AOL offices in Palo Alto, Calif.

 

Giovanna Fabiano, who did such an awful job covering Englewood, Englewood Cliffs and Leonia for The Record, is the latest staffer to jump ship for the online local-news site called Patch.

 

Fabiano follows in the footsteps of former reporter Tom Davis and the gorilla steps of former Night Editor Tom Troncone in joining the AOL-financed effort. 

 

Troncone was dubbed the night editor for the numerous times he would say, "Good night."

 

You have to wonder why they would leave the Woodland Park daily for this ify news operation -- unless they just got sick and tired of working for, with or under Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes, and their clueless sub-editors.

 

Now, they've got their hands out looking for tips. I found this on the Ridgewood Patch site:

"Send us a news tip

"Enter your tip here and it will be sent straight to James Kleimann, Tom Troncone, Giovanna Fabiano, and Laura Bertocci, Ridgewood Patch's (incredibly grateful) editors."

Patch editors work from home. Can't you just see Troncone getting fat on beer and preservative-laden bratwurst?

Judging from how many stories she ignored or missed in Englewood, Fabiano must have spent the last few years working from home while on The Record's payroll.

Actually, the Woodland Park daily is good training for Patch aspirants. The assignment editors under Sykes honed the art of sitting back and waiting for the news to come to them.

Leading the paper with old news

Image via Wikipedia

The shape of home rule is easy to see on this Bergen County map.

On The Record's front page today, Staff Writer Michael Gartland reports the old news of how outgoing Bergen County Democrats approved numerous lame-duck appointments and retroactive raises, but he doesn't get to the real news until the continuation page (A-8): the new Republican county executive will try to rescind them. 

Why wasn't that the lead paragraph?

You'd expect to see the Saturday swearing-in photos of Kathleen Donovan, the new executive, and the new Republican freeholders with the jump of Gartland's story on A-8, but you'll have to search the paper for them. 

It's not clear when Donovan was sworn in. The cutline on L-3 describes a "midnight ceremony" at the home of Alan Marcus in Saddle River. Marcus is not identified further.

There's more clunky packaging of the news, with the front page dominated by a story on the effort to meet the September deadline for opening the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero -- a decade after the terrorist attacks. 

Editor Francis Scandale must think readers are sitting on the edge of their seats and biting their fingernails awaiting resolution of this cliff hanger.


It's old news

Only four months ago, on Sept. 1, Scandale ran another huge A-1 package on construction at Ground Zero -- including the memorial -- written by then-Staff Writer Tom Davis, who attended a Port Authority dog-and-pony-and-propaganda show. That story included six photos by Staff Photographer Chris Pedota.

But today, reports on Governor Christie's public relations blunder in going to Disney World during the blizzard, how his 2% tax cap will affect towns in North Jersey and his combativeness are scattered over two sections. There are two stories on A-3 and a third story on the front of L-1 -- state news filing in for local news head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her minions couldn't produce.

Section ate

Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung must have exhausted herself eating and drinking in recent weeks. I couldn't find her usual Sunday column in Better Living, "The Corner Table." 

That gives readers a break from her relentless promotion of restaurants and food professionals in a column that is supposed to the voice of the consumer.

On Page T-3 of Travel, a photo of one Hispanic family (lower right hand corner) breaks the all-white monotony of "The Record on The Road" feature.

Discriminatory journalism

Image by live w mcs via Flickr

A pothole that appeared in March 2009 in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Potholes. Overgrown weeds. Damaged guardrails. Trash. These complaints from drivers -- and in the case of trash, about other drivers -- don't make for riveting news, and certainly don't belong on Page 1, except for the daily garbage can of a front page in The Record of Woodland Park.


Not only is the main headline on today's story a stupid play on words ("no brake" for "no break"), a photographer apparently couldn't find a DOT crew repairing a pothole or a guardrail, cutting down weeds or clearing trash. The headline should have read:

No break for readers

Transportation reporter Karen Rouse, who wrote the story, is stealing Desk Warrior John Cichowski's thunder in writing about potholes. He does it annually and at great length -- until readers' eyes glaze over.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes apparently won't allow Rouse to leave the office, or so it seems from all the telephone and Internet stories on surveys and reports she does. A while back, one of her Page 1 stories listed complaints about toll takers.

More troubling, Sykes, Rouse, Cichowski, Editor Francis Scandale, Assignment Editor Dan Sforza and former transportation reporter Tom Davis have for years turned their backs on minorities who can't afford cars and who have to make do with NJ Transit's fleet of decrepit, decades-old local buses -- white elephants that are literally falling apart. 

You'd think Rouse, who is African-American, would be outraged at this clear case of discrimination against local bus riders, while the transit agency routinely replaces buses on routes to Manhattan every decade or so. But no transportation reporter in memory has ever taken mass transit -- buses or trains -- and given voice to the complaints of riders.


If I didn't know better, I'd think Rouse and the others are merely doing the bidding of the advertising department, which rakes in a huge amount of revenue from ads sold to car dealers, and hardly any from NJ Transit.

Local education coverage

First, readers lost local news. Then, they lost food coverage. Now, they've apparently lost "daily" education coverage, which appeared on Page L-2 of Local during the school year, under the 2006 or 2007 edict of marketing wizard and Publisher Stephen. A. "Greedy Stevie" Borg.


Sykes has had trouble supplying enough education news to fill L-2, and has resorted to Dean's List filler, but now apparently, any old story can go on L-2, as today's page demonstrates. The layout editor even had to resort to three house ads to fill space. The "Education" bug is missing, as well.


The dominant photo on L-1 today is the aftermath of a police chase and a collision.