With N.J. going to hell, A-1 pro hockey news is shocking

Today's Hackensack Chronicle reports the Atlantic Street Park is officially open, but on Thursday, workmen were still putting the finishing touches on the space, above and below.

New parking meters on Atlantic Street, right, were covered with plastic bags on Thursday, and an officer in a marked police car ordered me to move after I parked there to take pictures.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

New Jersey continues to struggle under an absentee governor, but Editor Martin Gottlieb couldn't care less.

Page 1 of The Record today is dominated by a silly sports column and the 12-year-old photo of Lou Who?

Gottlieb, who once worked at The New York Times and lives in Manhattan, continues to show contempt for the concerns of the vast majority of New Jersey residents as Governor Christie focuses most of his energies on his failing presidential bid.

Also on A-1

Another Page 1 story today -- on the growing number of female funeral directors -- is puzzling given how obituaries of locally prominent people rarely appear on the front page.

I guess Gottlieb knows how many geezers like himself still read the paper, so he's aimed a third A-1 story on hip and knee replacement surgery squarely at them (A-1).

A story on A-3 says that in early September, all NJ Transit bus service "would be consolidated" on the midtown Manhattan bus terminal's third floor.

Why wasn't that done 10 years ago?

End the column

Readers of the Road Warrior column know Staff Writer John Cichowski is so desperate for material he'll print any and every email from readers, whose exaggerations and inaccuracies rival the columnist's own (L-1).

Today, he quotes Dave Mackay of Ringwood as claiming he was "chased from a cellphone lot" at Newark Liberty International Airport while waiting for his wife's plane to land.

"Non-commercial drivers must pay to use these lots that are intended for people who are picking up arriving passengers, he was told," the columnist claims.

Not sure what the veteran reporter means by "these lots," because there is only one at Newark airport, and it's relatively new.

Another cellphone lot is at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Both lots are free, but the signage at Newark makes that lot much harder to find.

Cichowski's column is filled with so many errors readers don't known what is true and what isn't. 

Ending the column would be absolutely no loss to commuters.

Animal editors ignore humans in our 'suburban jungle'

Spotted on Cortland Place, near Newcomb Road, in Tenafly after 8 on Sunday morning.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's editors seem obsessed with animals, the original inhabitants of our "suburban jungle," if you accept the phrase used in a clever Page 1 headline on Monday.

But the sad truth is readers can't bear all of this hype about critters displaced by development in North Jersey -- a story the paper seems to cover ever few years, starting way back in the 1980s (A-1 today and Monday).

Editors go wild 

"Suburbia is growing more wild," Staff Writer James M. O'Neill claimed in Monday's takeout.

But that's contradicted by the A-1 photo caption and sub-headline, both of which report some species are disappearing or are "virtually extinct."

Today's front page holds little interest for the human residents of North Jersey.

And the humans who work at the Woodland Park daily still struggle with preventing error from getting into the paper, especially in the Road Warrior column.

Two more embarrassing corrections appear on A-2 today.

Insulting women

Then, you turn to the Local front today, and wonder why a bloc of female lawmakers calling for financial penalties against the National Football League was deemed less important than another bear running loose in Ridgewood (L-1).

Indeed, some professional athletes have been treating girlfriends, spouses and children like so many footballs.

But sports-loving Editor Marty Gottlieb doesn't seem to notice or care.

Dissing commuters

What is the point or relevance to North Jersey commuters of the Road Warrior column on comedian Tracy Morgan not wearing his seat belt before a truck slammed into his limo van on the New Jersey Turnpike in June (L-1)?

Was Morgan's friend, James McNair, wearing his seat belt? If so, it didn't prevent his death.

The local assignment editors again rely on Law & Order news to flesh out their thin section today (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

Second look

Staff Writer John Cichowski's Sunday column was filled with numerous errors as he attempted to report on a poll about unsafe driving behavior, according to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

"The Road Warrior reported that a Rutgers-Eagleton poll indicated that 81% of drivers over 64 considered driving while eating, drinking and cellphone yakking to be very unsafe -- a much higher rate than drivers 18 to 29 (45%), drivers 30 to 49 (50%), and drivers 50 to 64 (58%).

"Road Warrior's cited survey statistics were only for talking on a hand-held cell phone. There was different statistics for talking on hands-free cell phones, as well as for eating or drinking."

Cichowski also was wrong on whether driving fatalities are rising: 

"The Road Warrior indicated that the perceptions of New Jersey residents that road safety is improving is wrong because Garden State driving fatalities are rising.

"Residents’ perceptions are correct since fatalities have decreased over the previous four years and the past decade. While fatalities are higher in 2014 than 2013, it is because road fatalities reached a record low in 2013."

For the blow-by-blow on a reporter who is setting a record for inaccuracy, see:

Readers Poll: Get rid of error-prone Road Warrior

Restaurant expose?

I agree that Claire Insalata Poulos, founder and president of the 15-year-old Table to Table, is doing important work by collecting fresh restaurant leftovers to feed the hungry, but why does this Better Living cover story go on and on (BL-1)?

If you bother plowing through all the testimonials, Poulos sounds like she is ready for sainthood (BL-1 and BL-6).

Poulos is a natural for the work; her name "Insalata" means "salad" in Italian.

But in general, shouldn't Food Editor Esther Davidowitz be writing more about restaurants and consumers?

Instead, she makes multimillionaire celebrity chefs and restaurant owners like Mario Batali, Drew Nierporent and Emeril Lagasse seem like such swell guys for donating food they had been throwing away for decades.

Garrett blinders

On Monday, The Record published a Page 1 column on Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, and his opponent in the Nov. 4 election, but failed to report the arch-conservative initially opposed spending $50 billion for Superstorm Sandy aid.

On Tuesday's A-6, Columnist Herb Jackson was outed by the campaign of challenger Roy Cho, a Hackensack attorney.

The six-term Republican's reelection campaign, it turns out, sent out a postcard claiming "Scott Garret worked to bring immediate relief to Sandy victims."

Editors are in a tizzy, but not over local news

Two bus shelters and an NJ Transit ticket machine are all the services available to commuters who rely on the Anderson Street rail station in Hackensack, above, during the glacial construction of a new building, below. I didn't see any activity behind the fence on Tuesday afternoon, but a man in the bar next door said the site is an active one.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The Record's coverage of local news continues to suffer as Tea Party crackpots hold the media and the country hostage during a partial government shutdown.

The only national park in North Jersey to close in the crisis is the litter-strewn Great Falls in Paterson, so why is so much of the front page today and Tuesday devoted to a brouhaha that hardly affects us?

Today's front page also focuses on Tea Party ire with so-called Obamacare, jammed Web sites and other glitches -- not on the pent up demand of poor schmucks without health insurance or people who can't afford to buy coverage from greedy employers like North Jersey Media Group (A-1).

A lot is missing

The lead story in Local today is so poorly reported and edited that readers who saw TV news video of a road-rage accident on the West Side Highway are shaking their heads in disbelief (L-1).

Video on Channel 2 News on Tuesday night clearly showed a Range Rover accelerating and literally driving over motorcycles and their riders, but The Record reports only that the SUV "rammed several motorcycles."

More errors

Also on L-1 today, addled Staff Writer John Cichowski continues to allow a single moronic reader to dominate the Road Warrior column, and commits several errors in reporting on a special E-ZPass that gives discounts to drivers of hybrid cars (L-6).

Today's minor commuting problem, which Cichowski hypes and exaggerates, is "long, long detours." On Sunday, he hyped to no end a lone reader's complaint about glare from a 47-story high-rise going up in Fort Lee near the George Washington Bridge.

On L-6 today, Cichowski reports only 2,000 motorists have signed up for a Green Pass, the special E-Z Pass that gives toll discounts to drivers "whose cars get good mileage."

That's likely because he has rarely, if ever, mentioned the discounts since they went into effect in 2008.

What an idiot. Only hybrid cars, plug-ins and electrics get the required 45 mpg, but Cichowski doesn't mention that, and he is also wrong on the amount of the discount and where it is available.

With my Green Pass-equipped Prius, I get a toll discount of 10% off peak on the Garden State Parkway, 30% off on the New Jersey Turnpike and I pay only $4.75 off peak at the GWB, other Hudson River crossings and other bridges, such as the Goethals.

Local yokels

Local carries no Teaneck, Hackensack or Englewood news today, as Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza wilts under the demands of his once-cushy job now that his boss, Deirdre Sykes, has been sidelined with a mysterious health problem.

On Tuesday, Sforza managed to scare up three Englewood stories, all from the police blotter (L-2 and L-3), but continued to ignore the struggles of the city's downtown and its notorious traffic congestion, a solution for which has managed to elude the police for years (more turn lanes).

The last big story from Hackensack reported that two bricks had fallen from the facade of a Prospect Avenue high-rise -- as Hackensack reporter Hannan Adely has been asked to cover 9/11 stories and other general assignments.

Dead news

Local today and Tuesday is filled with Law & Order news.

The not guilty plea of former Bergen County Democratic boss Joseph Ferriero could have been covered in a few paragraphs (L-1 on Tuesday).

Ferreiro is a perfect example of why the Democratic Party in Bergen County resembles a fish -- it stinks from the head down --and explains why lifelong Democrats liked me voted for a Republican county executive.

The last two expanded local obituaries I saw ran last Wednesday and last Thursday -- retired Superior Court Judge Harvey Smith, called a preservationist; and Joan Schaefer of Bergenfield, founder of a girls athletic league.

They were worthy subjects, but like many locals whose life stories appear in The Record, they made plenty of headlines when they were alive.

I'm wondering if the editors aren't setting the bar too high, excluding many of our neighbors from special attention when they die.