Editors turn every Christie move into a political stunt

Leonia is one of those Bergen County towns that doesn't get much coverage in The Record of Woodland Park. Dressing up the small business district along Broad Avenue is a sculpture garden, above and below.

Most of the businesses along Broad Avenue are owned and operated by Korean-Americans. Leonia borders Palisades Park and Fort Lee, both of which have even stronger Korean presences.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I've learned to ignore the lame political column Charles Stile has been writing since Governor Christie took office way back in January 2010.

But his Page 1 column in The Record today is hard to miss, especially because Editor Marty Gottlieb is using it in place of a news story on the special session of the state Legislature the governor called to fix the bail system (A-1).

This boring Stile column reads like all the rest:

The special session, Stile claims, could "polish up his resume for a likely run for president in 2016" (A-1).

"Some say the timing is good for Christie, who is trying to rebuild his image in the wake of the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal" (A-7).

Voter apathy

But on A-7, readers also find a news story on the special session that repeats much of Stile's column -- a real waste of space.

Stile and The Record avoid discussing how politics divide the nation and New Jersey, and how reporting like this simply turns off voters.

Christie was reelected last November in the lowest turnout of any previous gubernatorial election, but The Record always refers to it as a "landslide" and doesn't even mention the legions of disaffected voters.

Worst governor ever

Below the fold today, Staff Writer Scott Fallon reports that funding of open-space preservation is endangered by the poor state economy under the GOP bully.

But you have to read the entire story to get that message.

Today's editorial on anti-violence efforts by three North Jersey cities also is edited in a way to avoid placing blame on Christie for cutting state aid to poor cities like Paterson, resulting in the layoff of 125 police officers in 2011.

"Indeed," the editorial writer declares, "during the recent tenure of Mayor Jeffrey Jones in Paterson there was the feeling that, for whatever reason, the city's needs were not being heard by the powers that be in Trenton."

"For whatever reason"? What crap.

The quaint Borough Hall in Leonia.

New suicides? 

Another Page 1 story may cause more suicides on the George Washington Bridge among readers who learn a plan to build a 9-foot fence might take eight years -- twice as long as did construction of the span (A-1).

Imagine how many lives could have been saved if this fence was built during the years the Port Authority was diverting toll money to construction of One World Trade Center, with all of its delays and cost overruns.

It's hard to believe the fence won't be finished until 2022.

The story is by Staff Writer Christopher Maag, who has been neglecting his Hackensack beat.

Maag is thorough, but the story goes on and on like something you'd see in The New York Times, Gottlieb's old paper.

Hackensack news

With Maag writing about bridge suicides, the only Hackensack news today is another reporter's story on a lawsuit filed against the city by Patrolman Moise Flanagan (L-1).

Hackensack Scoop, a local blog, reported the lawsuit five days ago.

Lying to readers

If a recipe isn't healthy, The Record's editors don't see anything wrong with lying to their readers.

Clueless freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson's recipe for Chilled Fennel Soup calls for 4 tablespoons of butter filled with artery clogging saturated fat (BL-2).

Yet, Jackson writes of the soup, "with no cream whatsoever, it's as healthy as healthy can be."

OK. With no brains whatsoever, Jackson is as stupid as stupid can be.

On Broad Avenue in Leonia, retail space is being renovated behind a colorful barrier, above and below.

In New Jersey, apathetic morons stifle real change

The campaign office for Barbara Buono and Milly Silva on Cedar Lane in Teaneck.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

If Democrat Barbara Buono fails today to unseat the worst New Jersey governor ever, she can blame the legions of apathetic morons who sit on the sidelines and allow the right wing to seize the high ground.

The real poison in our democracy -- a story The Record has rarely told -- are registered voters too lazy to get off their asses and go to the polls or even apply for a mail-in ballot.

Their corrosive influence can be seen in every local and state election, but in months of election coverage, The Record hasn't bothered to interview a single voter.

Democratic edge

With a 700,000 edge in registered voters, apathy is likely the leading explanation for how a Democrat running for governor loses in New Jersey.

Of course, in 2009, when Republican Chris Christie won his first term as governor, the electorate fell for the Big Lie that he would lower property taxes.

Instead of his first term being one of compromise and bipartisanship, Christie likely employed the veto more than any other previous governor.

And The Record, which insists on calling him "popular," has distinguished itself as little more than a public-relations apparatus for the GOP bully.

What about voters?  

Instead of speaking to voters, Editor Marty Gottlieb and his gang of lazy columnists and reporters have spun endless tales, predicting the outcome of the gubernatorial election based on so-called experts, pundits, polls, politics and fund-raising totals.

I picked up a real newspaper on Monday, The New York Times, and found four large color photos of Brooklyn residents and a story on their views of the mayoral election in New York City.

Imagine that.

Steve Waldman, 65, a computer supplier, is quoted as saying the last presidential candidate he voted for was Hubert H. Humphrey, and the last mayor he cast a ballot for was Edward I. Koch.

(That's pronounced "Kotch," not "Coke," as in the evil Koch brothers behind Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing group that is financing GOP attack ads).

The Times did its interviews in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where only about half of the registered voters cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election, and less than a third voted for mayor in 2009.

A Times editorial on Monday urged New Jersey voters to approve a constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage to $8.25 an hour, starting on Jan. 1, a move the greedy Borg publishing family opposed in a Record editorial.

Christie also vetoed a hike in the minimum for low-wage workers, one of the groups he likes to screw with his mean-spirited policies.

Today's paper

What dominates The Record's front page today? Not the election. The editors are already tired of that.

The top half of Page 1 carries a big, black headline:

Gunman strikes panic

in Garden State Plaza

Of course, the "panic" was in shoppers, not in the Paramus shopping center itself.

The phrase "at Garden State Plaza" would have conveyed that, but six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton missed the clunky headline. 

Still, the real weakness in the story is that it fails to report the only one hurt was the alleged gunman, Richard Shoop, 20, the Teaneck man who police say committed suicide in the mall.


Who is to blame?

Was the paper's early deadlines or the five reporters who worked on the story or the editors to blame for that major omission?

Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza and the rest of the Woodland Park daily's local-news operation fails miserably almost every time to get to the law-enforcement sources who have the information readers demand.

This morning, the paper's Web site, NorthJersey.com, actually has the nerve to quote a neighbor of the Shoops as saying Richard was "a nice kid."

A correction on A-2 today acknowledges the misspelling of the name of a candidate in the Bogota Borough Council election. 

How sloppy can Sforza get?

Hackensack news

The Local front today reports Hackensack High School finally got a new resource officer after the school board agreed to pay his salary (L-1).

The dysfunctional Board of Education is the last remnant of decades of Zisa family rule over Hackensack. 

Sforza couldn't find enough local news to fill his section, so he resorted to a time-tested filler photo of a non-fatal auto accident (L-3).

As usual, the caption tells readers little, especially in this case, where Ridgewood police are quoted as saying the brakes on a relatively new Mazda SUV "failed."

Maybe, the driver "failed" to use the brakes and mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead.