How accurate is this reporting?

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Can readers rely on transportation reporter Tom Davis? In two takeouts on the future of light rail in Bergen County (photo), he sounded more like a lawyer trying to make a case against mass transit than a journalist objectively presenting pluses and minuses. He often omits information or fails to back up assertions.


For example, on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today, he reports that off-peak, round-trip train riders have been hit by hikes of "up to 45%," but manages to find patrons who are paying only 50 cents more than the old $1.75 fare (an increase of about 30%) and $2.50 more on the old $10.50 ticket (about 20% higher).


Deep down in the story, on the continuation page, he discloses that monthly passes cost 35% less than daily tickets. He buries that information because it dilutes the impact of his biased story. And he never mentions the hikes are the direct result of Governor Christie's assault on mass transit users -- cutting state aid to NJ Transit and refusing to raise the low gasoline tax, which finances road repairs, and train and bus improvements.

Finally, he reports "restaurant workers and students say they're turning to cars and buses," but provides absolutely no support for that assertion regarding cars. Does he actually expect readers to believe the off-peak fares are higher for a commuter than auto insurance, gasoline, tolls and parking?


Of course, some of the blame resides with head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and Davis' assignment editor. Let's hope he's working with someone other than clueless Dan Sforza, who wrote about fanciful, not-in-our-lifetime "highways of the future" when he was transportation reporter, but ignored brake defects in NJ Transit cruiser buses used by Manhattan-bound commuters. 

Sforza couldn't even edit Davis' stories intelligently. A mediocre reporter makes for an even weaker assignment editor, and Sykes has some doozies working for her.


A day after the paper's consumer columnist, Kevin Demarrais, reported that the BP boycott has had limited impact, a promo headline on A-1 today declares: "Boycott hurting BP gas stations." 


You can scour Local for news about Hackesnack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other towns without success. A photo showing the car of a 79-year-old driver inside the Whole Foods Market in Ridgewood is one of perhaps a hundred such incidents in the past decade -- some of them fatal -- each chronicled with a few paragraphs. 

But does this single accident deserve to be all over the front of the local news section? The poor guy wasn't even injured. Guess there wasn't anything better. There are only eight bylines in the entire section.

You'd think some genius on the news staff would long ago have proposed a series of stories on problems facing older drivers, and the help available to them, but the former Hackensack daily appears to be an equal opportunity discriminator against older workers and older readers.