Sunday edition is offering little to those untouched by 9/11

A recent photo of The Record's former headquarters in Hackensack shows the fourth-floor newsroom windows that were filled with a column of black smoke rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, as the staff put out an extra edition and worked into the night on the next day's paper.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

True. The Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center was the biggest story I and other staffers at The Record have ever worked on.

But 15 years later, the rising column of smoke I saw through big newsroom windows until night fell, and the ash-covered streets I walked near Ground Zero are but distant memories.

With a major story on nearly every section front today, The Record's Sunday edition wraps up a week of overkill -- exploring the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America from every angle imaginable.

We can only hope The Record's reporters, columnists, editors and editorial writers will return to doing something they've neglected -- putting Governor Christie's feet to the fire for more than 500 vetoes as part  of his war on the middle and working classes in New Jersey.

They should also be asking why state troopers are only now being sent to Paterson to stem the gang warfare and gun violence that has taken so many innocent lives in recent years.

Media agenda

Today's centerpiece -- "Separate stories, shared heartache" -- grows out of the demonization of Muslims by wacko racist Donald J. Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, who claims America remains vulnerable to another major terrorist attack.

In fact, Columnist Mike Kelly says, "Now, 15 years later and in the midst of a contentious presidential election ... we are still trying to stop terrorism" (A-1).

That's nonsense. In America at least, billions spent on homeland security have prevented another terror attack anywhere near the scale of 9/11.

Kelly has been so eager to claim the opposite that in June, he compared the Orlando, Fla., gay nightclub massacre of 49 people to 9/11, when 2,996 people died.

A wire service story that appeared in the paper recently lumped in last December's 14 killings in San Bernardino, Calif., with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

In his decades-long Record career, Kelly has written more about 9/11 than any other single event, and readers get the feeling he just doesn't want to let go of being involved in the biggest story of his life.

'Basket of deplorables'

A so-called Analysis from The Washington Post today makes much ado about nothing -- Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton putting "half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables'" (A-5).

She was being kind, and explained herself by noting many of Trump's followers are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it."

Who can argue with that?

9/11 and North Jersey

The most powerful element in the week-long recognition of the 15th anniversary of 9/11 is the page and a half of photos "honoring the North Jersey neighbors we lost on Sept. 11, 2001" (L-2 and L-3).

I didn't know any of them, but those faces and names tell me much more about our loss than the hundreds of thousands of words that have appeared in the Woodland Park daily in the past seven days.

On Teaneck horse owner, editor is upstaged by ex-paper

Chubby's on Queen Anne Road in Teaneck, one of the oldest barbershops in Bergen County, is offering a free mane trim to any resident who owns a racehorse.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The front pages of The Record and The New York Times today report extensively on the Teaneck millionaire whose racehorse has a shot at the Triple Crown on Saturday.

But The Times does a far better job exploring the human-interest angle, especially how Ahmed Zayat has managed to remain an observant Jew during his rise to the top of the murky horse racing industry.

In doing so, the Manhattan-based national and international newspaper tells a story that Teaneck residents, especially the township's Muslims and Orthodox Jews, will find much more engaging than The Record's report (A-1).

Isn't it rich? 

Martin Gottlieb is upstaged and outflanked by the paper where he had a stellar career as a reporter and editor before he took over as editor of The Record, where he started his journalism career in the early 1970s.

Muslim or Jew?

One startling revelation in The Times story:

"Publicly, Mr. Zayat alternately identifies as Muslim and Jewish."

Before he moved to the U.S., Zayat privatized the former state-held beer company in his native Egypt, and "pioneered a line of nonalcoholic beers that appealed to the conservative Muslim country," The Times reports.

But in 2006, he bought a $4.6 million colt and named it Maimonides after one of the greatest Jewish philosophers.

"As a Muslim, he said at the time: 'I wanted to say something with a tool I had, which was a horse. I wanted to be pro-peace, and about loving your neighbor.'"

In Teaneck

"He lives with his wife and four children in a largely modern Orthodox neighborhood of Tudor and Victorian houses known as West Englewood in Teaneck ...," according to The Times.

"They keep kosher, arranging menus in advance at racetracks and, if they cannot locate a hotel close by, they stay in an R.V. and walk to the track, as they did at the Preakness Stakes, to avoid driving on the Sabbath."

The Times story continued:

"When asked for clarification about his religion, Mr. Zayat said, 'Why is it relevant, and why does it matter? It's personal.'"

The Times story was the talk of Teaneck's Orthodox Jewish community today.

Two men discussing Zayat and the race wondered how many synagogues will leave on a TV so that congregants can watch his stallion, American Pharoah (a misspelling of "pharaoh"), in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.

Also on Page 1

Don't miss the scintillating story on the rising number of bank branches in Bergen County (A-1).

Gottlieb leads the front page with a Washington Post story on Chinese hackers hitting the Office of Personnel Management as a warning to the four federal employees who call North Jersey home (A-1).

Another Page 1 story on "more than $1 billion in ... fees paid to Wall Street money managers in the last five years" doesn't tell readers whether Governor Christie has anything to do with the giveaway.

Three reporters on one story?

The Record of Woodland Park is trying to milk the murder of a 9-year-old North Jersey boy for all it's worth. The desperate, incompetent editors assigned three reporters to the story today and put it back on Page 1, but you won't find any news in the paper from Hackensack or the other towns those reporters are supposed to be covering.

The three reporters spend so much time describing the murder suspect's mental illness, none of them questions why the boy was sent to stay with relatives in New York City on a regular basis, why he was up at 3 in the morning in his uncle's apartment or whether there was a sexual motive for the crime.

Two other staff-written stories appear on the front page, including the unusual appearance of a column by consumer reporter Kevin DeMarrais. He says cable television customers have options in the battle over higher fees for programs, but have you noticed how difficult it is to find the savings or the bargains touted by newspaper columnists such as DeMarrais, whether it is for TV service, airline fares or hotel rooms?

If you are looking for news of your town in the Local section, you won't find any, but there is plenty of crime, fire and accident coverage -- what passes for local news in the former Hackensack daily. In fact, on the front page today is a promotion for a video of a "stubborn" house fire on northjersey.com, the pathetic Web site of North Jersey Media Group. Is that all the so-called digital news group could come up with? 

If you usually ignore the Business section, you'll miss health-care news, an example of odd packaging. Shouldn't health-care and non-profit news appear in the feature section, Better Living? It took years for the lazy editors to put restaurant sanitary inspections in the Friday entertainment-restaurant section, though the list often omits Wyckoff and many other towns.

The danger of  food editor Bill Pitcher using recipes from outside sources can be clearly seen today in Better Living's so-called 15 Minute Chef (no home cook can prepare this meal in that time; it's just hype). The all-knowing Washington Post says you can't find wild salmon this time of the year, so advises us to use artificially colored farmed salmon. But wild Alaskan sockeye salmon is available frozen year-round at Costco, including the store down the street from the old Record building, Trader Joe's and other stores.

On the opposite page, an article from the Chicago Tribune sounds like "Healthy Eating 101" as it tries to persuade readers to try such nutritious foods as sardines, cabbage, tomatoes and broccoli. The "how to eat" cabbage paragraph ignores the wide availability of cabbage kimchi in North Jersey.