Christie's State of the State address is no longer Page 1 news

"Trump Hackers" from cartoonist Steve Sack. New York businessman Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as president of the United States in just 10 days.



By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Did you miss the teaser at the bottom of The Record's front page today on Governor Christie's State of the State address?

From the State House Bureau, Dustin Racioppi tries to predict what mood Christie will be in when he delivers his annual address to the state Legislature today (3a).

Most of the focus is on whether the GOP thug will be "combative or compassionate," not on such issues as the "worst-funded" public employee pension system in the country.

By the time the actual speech hits The Record's front page on Wednesday, it will be old news to anyone who watches the TV coverage or follows the governor on Twitter (@GovChristie).

How's that again?

The editors made a mess of Staff Writer Christopher Maag's overwrought story on the 100th anniversary of "one of the largest acts of foreign sabotage ever committed on American soil" (1A).

The man shown in the big photo on Page 1 isn't identified by name, though he's called "Bergen County Fire Marshal" in the caption.

Bryan Hennig of Lyndhurst is planning to celebrate the heroism of Tessie McNamara, who stayed at the telephone switchboard of the exploding Kingsland munitions factory on Jan. 11, 1917, to warn others to evacuate.

No one died, so readers are not sure why so much space is devoted to this anniversary. 

Judging from the dull headlines, the copy editor must have been lulled to sleep by the overly long story, and forced to write the main headline minutes before deadline:

"ANNIVERSARY

OF SABOTAGE"

In the story, Hennig is identified as a 35-year veteran of the Volunteer Fire Department in Lyndhurst, but not as a county fire marshal (6A).

The reporter stops short of comparing the German attack on the Lyndhurst shell factory to Russian sabotage of the 2016 presidential election.

Local news?

In his 14th year as the so-called Road Warrior, Staff Writer John Cichowski continues to give the cold shoulder to all of those long-suffering NJ Transit commuters and even drivers stuck in growing congestion at the Hudson River crossings.

I'm not sure what anyone's reaction to painting a blue line in the street to honor police departments has to do with transportation (1L).

Page 3L of today's Local section speaks volumes about the poorly executed redesign of the print edition by Gannett editors holed up in the Neptune design center.

The page is a mass of type, with only a thumbnail photo and a few headline words to break it up.

They stand in the way of greatness

Governor Christie mocks Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney for being in shape. (Getty Images)

Everyone on Wall Street and Main Street knows that New Jersey desperately needs more -- not less -- tax revenue, as The Record's front page reports once again today. 

But Governor Christie continues to push for a tax cut that will benefit his wealthy supporters most of all.

Oh, The Record long ago stopped including in its Christie stories who would get the biggest cut in income taxes. 

A middle-class family would save about $80 in the first year, enough to buy a bag of groceries.

Instead, the editors continue to give Christie a front-page pulpit for his ridiculous plan, and regurgitate even the most outlandish B.S. from the GOP bully.

You'll find this illogical statement deep in the text of the main A-1 story today:

"Christie argues that an income tax cut would help the economy by bringing businesses to New Jersey (A-8)."

Marty makes it worse

Editor Marty Gottlieb and his Trenton staff continue to ignore reality: 

It's our enormous governor -- with his rabid, no-tax policies -- who literally stands in the way of New Jersey once again becoming a great state.

At least an editorial today notes "it's the arithmetic that counts, not the politics" (A-12).

But what readers remember is Christie's relentless P.R. campaign -- plastered all over the front page almost every day.

In the newsroom

In the Woodland Park newsroom, two enormous editors stand in the way of The Record once again becoming a great local newspaper.

In the last decade, local-news editors Deirdre Sykes and Tim Nostrand have squelched any meaningful coverage of the obesity epidemic in New Jersey or what state health officials are doing about it.

Look at the story on obesity and health-care costs at the bottom of Page 1 today. It's based on a new "study."

You'd think that after years of staring at their ugly, bloated bodies in the mirror, the lights would have gone off in Sykes' and Nostrand's heads about the need to report on obesity.

Instead, they just sought solace in eating more food.

Screw all commuters

The third major story on A-1 today shows Sykes and Nostrand have given up all pretense of trying to ease the commute of tens of thousands of readers.

A story on Route 3 construction is on the front page, but not because of the continuing inconvenience to commuters.

What the editors are really worried about is the work not being finished in time for the Super Toilet Bowl, a football game scheduled for 2014. 

Lazy news gathering

Sykes and Nostrand are so inept, they squandered their staff on four full days of reporting on the death of Barbara Vernieri, who was murdered on Friday before her East Rutherford home was set on fire.

The story was slowly reported four days in a row on A-1 -- not three, as I wrote earlier -- and Tuesday's account ended up demoting Mitt Romney's insulting remarks to somewhere inside the paper.

Now, a day after the entire country was discussing Romney's campaign, The Record finally puts the controversy on Page 1. 

Laziest columnist

If two lazy local-news editors aren't enough, the lazy Road Warrior columnist continues to ignore the needs of commuters by searching out every obscure story or simply relying on e-mails from readers.

Today's entire column by Staff Writer John Cichowski is about "Route 23 signage" and a single reader's e-mail (L-1).

Sykes, Nostrand and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza had so little local news today they were forced to lead Local with Christie's remarks on the state Supreme Court.

Christie coverage lacks objectivity

Image via Wikipedia

Say the magic words "car pool" anytime and pay only $2 to cross the George Washington Bridge.

Editor Francis Scandale worked with two reporters to give Governor Christie the upper hand on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today. 

Instead of leading the major element on Page 1 with the claims of police and firefighters at a protest in front of the State House on Thursday, Staff Writers John Reitmeyer and John P. McAlipin use the first five paragraphs to lay out Christie's up-yours, in-your-face response.

"They're choosing their own greed over the betterment of the public," the Republican bully said of public-safety workers.

It's only when you get to the continuation page -- if you even read that far -- that you find the unions' claim that layoffs of police officers in Paterson and other communities have led to more crime.

Image via Wikipedia

Copy editors don't help 

The news copy desk's confused handling of headlines and captions doesn't help.

The main head is a nice play on cops' and first responders' uniforms, "Uniform anger," but the over line is a room-clearer:

DUELING ATTACKS IN CHRISTIE'S FIGHT WITH PUBLIC UNIONS

"Dueling attacks"? How clunky can you get? Shouldn't it be "dueling claims"? The copy editors are supposed to be word people, not "turd" people.

And the caption under the main A-1 photo says the protest is over "cuts they say will hurt public safety [my italics]," when cops were laid off in Camden, Newark and Paterson weeks or months ago.

Doing P.R. for Christie

Christie has tried hard to convince the public only deep cuts in public-employee benefits will allow him to balance the budget, and he's offered property tax rebates, a modest restoration of the education aid he slashed and other sweeteners to everyone else -- thus pitting resident against resident.

The Record has been complicit in this effort, with editors, columnists and editorial writers praising the governor's style, even as they occasionally take exception to his budget cuts affecting middle- and working-class New Jerseyans.

And they allow Christie to define news coverage, as they do today, and keep the focus off his poor financial record: 

Refusing to tax millionaires or raise the low gasoline tax; blowing $400 million in federal education aid; and pulling the plug on the Hudson River rail tunnels after the state had already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a sorely needed mass-transit project.

Editors and reporters have never asked Christie at meetings with the paper's Editorial Board why he hasn't capped the salaries of police chiefs, or why he collects his full $175,000, instead of the $1 a year Jon Corzine took home to Hoboken. So who is greedy?

Office-loving columnist

Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski writes today about the addition of more E-ZPass lanes on the turnpike (L-1), but I haven't seen a word from him on the new buses that are being phased in to replace some of the white elephants on NJ Transit's local routes.

If he wants to write exclusively about issues affecting drivers, he should at least tell readers they are entitled to an unpublicized $2 "car-pool" toll at the George Washington Bridge and other Hudson River crossings at any time of the day, if they have three people in their car, and urge them to call their E-Z Pass provider and register for the discount.

The normal Port Authority tolls are $8, $6 off-peak and $4 for hybrid cars.

Elsewhere in head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado covers a Board of Education meeting for the first time in many months and produces two stories -- one on school cuts (L-3), the other on the superintendent's early retirement (L-7).

I understand that after all that unusual effort, Alvarado received oxygen therapy at Hackensack University Medical Center. Two stories in one day? The poor woman.