Favoring polluters, bi-state transit war, 'unique' restaurant

This New York Times image from 2007 shows Paul Eugene VanDunk with granddaughter Alexis Dennison holding a photo of her mother, a cancer victim. VanDunk and other residents of Upper Ringwood blame many cases of sickness and death on toxic paint sludge and other waste dumped in their neighborhood by Ford Motor Co., which operated an assembly plant in nearby Mahwah until the late 1970s.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today is promoting a controversial plan to pave over toxic soil in several North Jersey towns that would save Ford, DuPont and other wealthy corporate polluters tens of millions of dollars.

Assurances that capping 166,000 tons of paint sludge is safe are falling on the deaf ears of Upper Ringwood residents a few months before a referendum that would force Ford Motor Co. and borough officials to remove the pollutants (A-1).

The Environmental Protection Agency would allow the waste to stay in the ground even though North Jersey's drinking-water reservoirs are nearby.

What remains unclear is what motivates Editor Deirdre Sykes and Staff Writer Scott Fallon to turn their backs on long-suffering residents, and to forcefully promote an unpopular solution to decades of corporate pollution.

With capping, Ford and the borough of Ringwood's insurers would see their cleanup costs drop to $5.4 million from $32.6 million (A-8).

At a Superfund site in Edgewater, Honeywell and other wealthy companies held responsible for the pollution would pay only $72 million, compared to $205 million for excavation.

Drop in enforcement

One story you've never seen in The Record is a dramatic decline in the enforcement of speeding laws on state highways -- even as the Road Warrior columnist obsesses over lines at the Motor Vehicle Commission and traffic jams at MetLife Stadium (L-1).

Today's front-page story should have reported Christopher Boes, 20, of West Milford might be alive, if Butler police did a better job of patrolling Route 23 and stopped such racers as the friend driving the car in which he was a passenger (A-1).

Bi-state transit war

Check out the hysteria over the war between New Jersey and New York on replacing the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan (L-1).

The two states have been arguing for decades over which one gets the most from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Originally, the agency was called the Port of New York Authority.

We're probably going to see many more stories on where a new Manhattan bus terminal should be located.

But The Record won't be asking the bi-state agency why it doesn't expand bus service by adding one or two more exclusive bus lanes into the Lincoln Tunnel.

'Unique' BYO

Staff Writer Elisa Ung is so excited about Turtle + The Wolf in Montclair, she calls the New American BYO "unique," and rates it as Excellent to Outstanding (a half-star shy of the top rating of 4 stars).

And although she praises the "quality" of the food, only the brisket she sampled was naturally raised at Painted Hills Farm in Oregon (BL-14).

So, are readers to assume the $72-a-person roasted pig and the $45-a-person fried chicken dinners are conventionally raised with harmful antibiotics?

The money you save on wine will be blown on tolls and gasoline to get there and back. And does the place serve any seafood except octopus?

Misspells name

She might have been able to provide more details on the food, if she didn't feel compelled to report details of the chef-owner's resume and identify his business partner, whose last name she misspells.

Ung calls him "Matt Greneven," but today's correction says he is "Matt Trevenen."

That's not even close. 

Maybe she drank too much of the wine she brought or was overly giddy about eating hundreds of dollars of food -- plus dessert -- paid for by Gannett, The Record's owner.

Corrections usually run on A-2 the day after the error is made, but today's notes the review "was produced in advance."

Turns out the rave review appeared online on Thursday, almost a full day before the print edition.

Editors still ignore need for more bus lanes to Manhattan

At the midtown Manhattan bus terminal, The Port Authority provides several large touch screens that make easy work of finding the departure platform for your North Jersey-bound bus, above. But once you get there, you might find a long line of fellow commuters and too few seats, photos below, as I did in late January.

Today, The Record runs a so-called analysis on Page 1 that brings expanded bus service between northern New Jersey and Manhattan no closer to reality, just like the last long story on proposals for a new terminal. 

In mid-afternoon, there were more than 50 commuters on this line to Door 1, where I boarded the No. 165 bus to Hackensack and Westwood, and others boarded the No. 166 to Englewood and Cresskill.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

During the morning rush hour, it's standing room only on NJ Transit buses carrying North Jersey commuters to their jobs in Manhattan, and in the evening, riders face delays as buses bog down in traffic jams around the midtown terminal.

Yet, long-suffering commuters know the solution would require no great expenditure of money, and could be implemented in a matter of days -- instead of the 10-year, $10 billion plan for a new terminal:

Two express bus lanes to and from the Lincoln Tunnel -- operated weekdays during both the morning and evening rush hours -- would provide more seats, and speed buses back to the terminal from parking lots in New Jersey.

The single exclusive bus lane, which operates only from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., was opened more than 45 years ago.

Us v. them

Today, The Record's car-loving editors run another long, so-called analysis on the split among Port Authority officials on whether a new bus terminal should be built in New York or New Jersey (A-1).

This story, like the last one The Record ran on a new bus terminal, doesn't advance the debate or the cause of bus riders.

Staff Writer Paul Berger, who is assigned to cover the behemoth bi-state transportation agency, likely has never ridden an NJ Transit bus to or from the city.

If he did, he could tell his office-bound editors about the promise of adding express bus lanes.

Of course, they would be opposed by the Port Authority, because new bus lanes would anger and displace toll-paying drivers, cutting the revenue the agency depends on to cover cost overruns in such projects as the new World Trade Center.

Sloppy editing

The lead paragraph refers to the Manhattan bus terminal as "depressing and overcapacity," but shouldn't "overcapacity" be written as two words, "over capacity"?

And "depressing" might be the wrong word for a terminal where bathrooms have been or are being completely renovated, touch terminals help you find your platform quickly and new concessions are being added.

On the continuation page today, a photo shows lines of commuters at Coach USA gates, not the NJ Transit gates that are used by the vast majority of readers (A-5).

Ford contamination

Today's lead front-page story on a Superfund site in Ringwood is further testament to the abject failure of Ford Motor Co., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the media, especially The Record, to protect the lives of a mixed-race people (A-1).

Ford dumped paint sludge and other industrial waste into Upper Ringwood mines for about four years, beginning in 1967, near a reservoir that provides drinking water for millions of people, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reports (A-5).

That's nearly 50 years ago, and now, the EPA has ordered Ford to conduct more tests on whether the reservoir, and nearby creeks and ponds, have been contaminated with high levels of benzene, arsenic and heavy metals.

The Weeknd

On TV, I watched a singer who calls himself The Weeknd (without an "e"), and looks like he is wearing a black wolf pelt on his head.

So, I am glad to see The Record's front page focus on singer Tony Bennett and jazz pianist Bill Charlap as Grammy winners on Monday night (A-1).

Local news?

There has been so little Hackensack news in The Record in recent weeks the chairman of a business group in the city had to write a letter to the editor on a big development (A-6).

Hackensack, which already has two train stations and a bus terminal, has been designated a Transit Village by the state, and that brings "high priority for state funding of transportation and planning initiatives."

The Local section delivered to Hackensack and other parts of Bergen County today continues to overemphasize news from Paterson (L-1, L-2 and L-3).

Inexplicably, the lead story on the Local front today is about a rabbi in Franklin Lakes who recited the Gettysburg Address in Hebrew (L-1).

Monday's paper

An editorial on Monday threw cold water on Republicans who want to delay the nomination of a Supreme Court justice to replace the late (though not lamented) Antonin Scalia.

But The Record should have gone further and suggested none of the GOP clowns left in the campaign have a ghost of a chance of beating the Democratic nominee in November.

As usual, there was little Hackensack news in Monday's paper, but an inspirational front-page obituary on a woman who lived in the city helped readers overlook that.

Staff Writer Jay Levin called Rosemarie Kasper, who was under 4 feet tall, "an indefatigable advocate on behalf of the physically challenged" (Monday's A-1).

On Monday's L-2, a story reported traffic across the Anderson Street Bridge between Hackensack and Teaneck will be "restricted" from today through June 28.

So does that mean the work will close the single lane?

The story didn't say.

Copy desk saves another reporter's ass

Image via Wikipedia

Lawyers for long-suffering Upper Ringwood residents settled a huge negligence lawsuit, fearing Ford Motor Co. would declare bankruptcy. Why didn't The Record ever report this legal and financial miscalculation? Above, Henry Ford in 1919.

Just when you thought the marginalized copy editors were asleep at their computers, they saved the ass of a veteran reporter who thought she could peddle the same old news in a Page 1 story today.


Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton covered a meeting of Upper Ringwood residents and EPA officials, but buried the lead -- just like the Ford Motor Co. buried toxic sludge in their neighborhood four decades ago and made everybody sick.


It almost sounds as if Layton pre-wrote the story to beat The Record's ridiculously early deadlines, then was forced to leave the real news to the continuation page. 


Did her assignment editor go home early? Where was Editor Francis Scandale?


But in a rare save, the news copy editors told the story in the headlines:

TOXIC LANDSCAPE: UPPER RINGWOOD

'We're the living dead'

EPA urges testing, but residents want buyouts

The copy editors not only saved Layton's ass, they saved the larger posterior of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes.

I read to the continuation page, A-6, and found something new in this long-running saga of government incompetence, corporate irresponsibility and media indifference:


Residents want Ford to use some of its huge profits to buy their homes so they can relocate away from the pollution.


One of the newsroom prima donnas, Staff Writer Jean Rimbach, has a rare byline today, but why is her story on a lawsuit judgment on the front page?

Clear age bias

What was the wire editor thinking? 

Why run a Washington Post story on President Obama's 50th birthday (A-5) that is full of "old" references, and reports "he still gets up and down a basketball court without reaching for an oxygen tank"?

A letter to the editor on A-8 describes the Tea Party as no editor has the guts to:

"The Tea Party is a joke," says Francis A. Tutelo of Teaneck. "... They are Republicans who don't care about the elderly and poor. They keep voting again taxing millionaires .... But the truth is: Would Republicans really tax themselves and their friends?"

Tutelo could extend his description to Governor Christie.

What's my line?

On the front of Sykes' Local section, Road Warrior John Cichowski has yet another column on long lines at the MVC. It's time for him to join a line -- the one at the unemployment office.

Readers won't find any Hackesnack, Teaneck or Englewood news today.

Look at all those morons from "Jersey Shore" on the front of Better Living today. Why does the worst of New Jersey gets such prominent play in the paper?

Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill recommends another charred hunk of beef, even though meat grilled at high temperatures has been linked to cancer (F-1, F-2).