Good to see on-the-ball reporting

Image by rustytanton via Flickr

The lead story on the front of The Record of Woodland Park today isn't just another routine recitation of storm damage you usually find in the paper. This report says the nor'easter felled a tree that killed two Teaneck pedestrians on Saturday in an accident many people fear.

But there is real detail here: The victims appear to have been returning from synagogue services, so their orthodoxy prevented them from driving and exposed them to the dangers of such a wind-driven storm. You don't see this kind of on-the-ball reporting in the former Hackensack daily every day, hampered as it is by a clueless assignment desk under Deirdre Sykes. 

The rest of Page 1 carries another substantial take-out on the deficit-ridden state pension system by Staff Writers Elise Young and Dave Sheingold, who have been following this story for months. It seems Christie Whitman, the former Republican governor, is at the root of today's problems.

Unlike Young and Sheingold, Columnist John Cichowski is late to the debate -- this one over the sorry state of mass transit in North Jersey. On the front of Local, The Road Warrior finally has one the few columns he's written in more than six years on long-suffering bus riders, who now face 25% fare hikes and service cuts -- and he still refuses to check out such decrepit local buses as the 780 that runs from Englewood to Hackensack and Passaic city.

Cichowski's column fleshes out the lead Opinion piece by Zoe Baldwin of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. She writes that drivers should shoulder more of the state's fiscal burden -- an argument that hasn't been adopted by the paper's editorial writers, who, like Cichowski, appear to be held hostage by motorists.

If you want to throw up, try to get through Mike Kelly's column on the Opinion front about Ground Zero. Read this, for example:

"Ground Zero and all its shadowy issues have become like a ghost in a Shakespearean drama that just can't seem to find its bearings. All Ground Zero needs to become an even greater tragedy is the modern equivalent of ancient Rome's Marcus Brutus."

Help! I can't read more. I have to go to the bathroom and barf.