Gottlieb, minions putting little under tree for local readers

Slow-moving landscaping trucks are one of the biggest hazards on local streets. On Monday morning, I got stuck behind this one on Woodland Street, appropriately enough, between Palisade Avenue in Englewood and Clinton Avenue in Tenafly, a distance of more than one mile.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Martin Gottlieb leads today's paper with another in a seemingly endless series of stories about human-bear run-ins, even though tens of thousands of readers have never seen one of the furry creatures.

On Dec. 12, Gottlieb even ran a detailed front-page story on how bears are butchered for human consumption. Gee-whiz.

Page 1 today is dominated by a sensational crime story, as it was on Monday -- one a cold case and the other the murder of a Palisades Park man in his Jersey City store (A-1).

Local news?

On the Local front today, the vast majority of readers search in vain for municipal news from their town, as they did on Monday.

Instead, four of the five stories on L-1 today are crime or court news or news about the police.

The editors are so inept they screwed up the name of the police chief in Rockaway Township, where The Record and Herald News are printed, according to an A-2 correction.

Page 1

Reporting on the poor job Governor Christie is doing in New Jersey seems to come in dribs and drabs.

Today, the front page reports that a panel he created wants to make it easier to carry a concealed weapon and speed up permits (A-1).

Speeding epidemic

Superior Court Judge Margaret M. Foti lectured a man sentenced to 6 years in prison in a road-rage death about the epidemic of speeding -- a story ignored by Road Warrior John "Wrong Way" Cichowski for more than a dozen years (L-1).

"There is no one out there driving on the roadways today who has not experienced someone speeding by at 80, 90, 100 miles per hour and to turn to the person next to you and say, 'That guy is going to kill someone.' It's frightening," Foti told Thomas Vanderwelt of Saddle Brook.

"And speed limits are there for a reason," the judge said. "They are there to save lives."

Pothole chronicles

In his ground-breaking reporting on long lines at the Motor Vehicle Commission and his annual awards for the biggest potholes, Cichowski not only has ignored speeding, but failed to uncover declining enforcement.

In November, Eye on The Record reported that the number of speeding tickets issued on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway had dropped dramatically:

More speeding, fewer tickets

Best restaurants?

The Better Living cover on the top 10 North Jersey restaurants in 2015 contains glaring omissions (BL-1, BL-2).

Critic Elisa Ung never says whether any of the restaurants serve the kind of grass-fed or naturally raised beef, pork and lamb that would justify their high prices.

And there is not a word about the sweet, artery clogging desserts she sampled at all of them -- the kind of food most of her readers avoid like the plague.

Monday's paper

When Gottlieb or his minions put another one of Tara Sullivan's awful columns on Page 1, readers know the editors are scraping the bottom of the barrel, as they did on Monday.

Of course, Sunday is a slow-news day, but there was even more irrelevant filler inside the paper, such as car, bus or plane crash news from several states on A-3.

Worst U.S. president backs N.J.'s worst governor

A rainy day in Hackensack.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Governor Christie continues to tell lies about his first term -- all of which are swallowed whole by The Record of Woodland Park -- so it's no surprise he sought the endorsement of former President George W. Bush.

W, you'll remember, told some whoppers of his own to get us into the ruinous war in Iraq (A-1).

Christie and Bush have other things in common besides being Republican and telling the Big Lie: 

The GOP bully's no-tax policies have wrecked the state economy (see L-7 today), and the inept Bush pushed the nation into the recession.

On Page 1 today, The Record quotes Christie telling the media at the Republican Goobers Association meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., he will use a message of "bipartisanship" to get other GOP governors elected.

This allegedly is the same message he used to win a second term on Nov. 5, reports Staff Writer Melissa Hayes, who sounds like she is already on the aspiring president's payroll.

Governor Veto

Hayes makes no mention of all of those highly partisan vetoes Christie unleashed to undo progressive legislation passed by the state Legislature's majority Democrats -- from a tax surcharge on millionaires to a hike in the minimum wage.   

What was the point of Christie, now chairman of the goobers group, inviting Bush to lunch on Thursday? According to The Record's story, the ex-president said nothing quotable (A-1 and A-4).

Kelly still gazing

Columnist Mike Kelly is back with more on the media's obsession with reporting where everyone was when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 50 years ago today.

In the past few weeks, The Record has been publishing readers' recollections, and ignoring the real question:

Will such conservatives as Tea Party fanatics, financed and armed by the trigger-happy National Rifle Association, ever try to take out another liberal president?

I notice two things about Kelly's Page 1 column: 

He's sticking with that dated thumbnail photo with his unflattering, shit-eating grin, and he continues to struggle as a writer, using "gazed" again for probably the thousandth time (fifth paragraph on A-1).

A special Margulies cartoon commissioned for the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder says more than the tired, tongue-tied Kelly could ever say (A-20).

More road hype

The Road Warrior continues to use exaggeration, distortion and hype to sell his silly column, as he does today on L-1.

He calls "distracted driving the single chief cause of highway crashes and deaths," when, in fact, speeding is the chief culprit.

Staff Writer John Cichowski, the addled reporter who writes the column, continues to give a pass to speeders, who also are most likely to get caught by the red-light cameras he demonizes.

In his last column on Wednesday, Cichowski wildly exaggerated the number of rush-hour drivers who get caught in the Route 4 east bottleneck, using the larger number of people who use the eastbound roadway day and night.

According to a concerned Hackensack reader:

"Road Warrior falsely indicated that 50,000 Manhattan-bound commuters experience traffic back-ups due to the reduction in traffic lanes from three to two on Route 4 in Teaneck.

"Road Warrior confused readers since there is a TOTAL of 50,000 Manhattan bound commuters during the entire day and night. Only a smaller portion of these commuters are affected by this traffic back-up around the times of the extended morning and afternoon rush hours.

"Road Warrior went on endlessly with his misleading analysis that the primary reason for this traffic congestion was due to Teaneck’s historical efforts to prevent commercial development on Route 4.

"The sole reason for this traffic congestion was that Teaneck's previous efforts for preservation of space prevented an additional third lane for eastbound Route 4."

For a blow-by-blow of all the flaws in the column, see the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Road Warrior is suffering mental congestion

Crash diet?

In a historic first, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung didn't order dessert at The Original Mama Angelo's in North Arlington (BL-18).

Where life and death are highly profitable

A congressional proposal to end door-to-door mail delivery -- reported on Page 1 of The Record today -- would intensify the war over the four metered parking spaces in front of the Hackensack Post Office on State Street, above.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The owners of the for-profit Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center laughed all the way to the bank while stiffing nurses and the IRS, The Record reports today (A-1).

In less than three years, the 230-bed Secaucus hospital paid its owners $14.4 million, Staff Writer Lindy Washburn says.

Her shocking report identifies principals of investment syndicate MHA LLC as Woodcliff Lake anesthesiologist Richard Lipsky, Tamara Dunaev, Pavel Pogodin and Anastasia Burlyuk.

From the sound of their names, people entering the country illegally to compete for low-wage jobs that Americans refuse to do aren't the country's real immigration problem, as the media would have us think.

I'd also like to see Washburn report on salaries and profits at another hospital, Hackensack University Medical Center, whose tax-exempt status is a crushing burden for city homeowners and other property tax payers.

More partisanship

What is achieved by The Record and other media reporting every speech by President Obama as if he is still campaigning for a second term, as the Woodland Park daily does in today's A-1 photo caption?

By continuing to report on the partisan pissing matches paralyzing government, The Record cheats readers and neglects its responsibility to report on the issues they are most interested in.

Local schmooze

Another correction from the disoriented Local news editors appears on A-2 today. They can't get names right and don't know what town they're in.

Today's Local front is strong, for a change, but why focus on speeders on one Teaneck street when they are everywhere and enforcement is at an historic low (L-1)?

And why allow Road Warrior John Cichowski to encourage speeders, as he did in recent, negative columns about red-light cameras and so-called road hogs, who obey the speed limit?

Another copy desk screw-up appears in the photo caption with the East Cedar Lane speeding story. The caption calls speeding "reckless driving" (L-1).
 
Doing their jobs

Pages L-2 and L-3 resemble a Law & Order insert today, complete with a filler photo of a minor accident in place of legitimate news (L-3).

The copy desk came up with another stunning over line:

RESCUE WORKERS AID ACCIDENT VICTIM

It could just as well say:

RESCUE WORKERS DO THEIR JOBS

Why is this photo in the paper? 

Thanks, Bon Jovi

The Better Living cover story on the massive Buick Electra being used on Bon Jovi's concert stage only reminds some older readers of the unsafe cars produced by the Big Three in the 1950s, despite their size and weight (BL-1).

Football star Victor Cruz ditches Paterson

The Hackensack City Council meeting scheduled for Tuesday has been moved to July 22 at 7 p.m., according to the city's Web site. But the Committee of the Whole is still meeting this coming Monday night at 7. The meetings are held on the 3rd Floor of City Hall, above. 

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Just like the vast majority of readers, I am not one of those sports fanatics who follow every move by that other Victor.

But here is the lead Page 1 story in The Record today telling one and all that pro football player Victor Cruz is just a regular Joe.

Apparently, Cruz has signed a $43 million deal, but still eats mystery meat at the diner, drops off his own clothes at the cleaner and, get this, shows respect to the immigrant Korean owner.

What a guy.

But, hey, when did Cruz move out of Paterson and into a condo in Lyndhurst? The story raises other questions, but doesn't answer them. 

Indigestible

Editor Marty Gottlieb should know that if you are going to use the hackneyed device of a sports star's friendship with a diner waitress, you should say whether that star is a good tipper, too.

Cruz spoke out against gun violence after the elementary school slaughter in Connecticut late last year.

So, will he use a hundred thousand dollars or so of his $43 million to sponsor a gun buy-back program in Paterson, which is known for drive-by shootings and other gun violence?

The city's do-nothing Police Department and its overpaid chief certainly could use his help.

The rest of today's front page is forgettable. 

Column hog

Lane Laggard John Cichowski is back with another silly Road Warrior column, just a day after his wildly hyped Page 1 "expose" of lower-level GWB toll lanes that have been unstaffed for nearly 10 years (L-1).

Today, he blames 265 fatal crashes from 2007 to 2011 on "left-lane hogs" instead of slamming the real culprits -- the drivers who speed 20 mph or 30 mph over the limit in gas-guzzling SUVs and luxury cars, terrorizing and cutting off slower drivers.

Cichowski is so deperate for copy he bases today's inaccurate column on e-mailed complaints from some of those dangerously impatient drivers, including the improbably named Carlo Disney of Woodcliff Lake.

Healthy tweaks?

In Better Living, Upper Saddle River food blogger Kate Morgan Jackson is back with another unhealthy recipe, this time a pasta-chicken dish made with butter and with poultry raised on harmful animal antibiotics (BL-1).

A couple of tweaks -- extra-virgin olive oil instead of butter and the use of organic chicken -- would make the recipe a winner.

She also recommends cooking the pasta in "heavily salted water" when the legions watching their sodium intake have long ago stopped using any salt to cook pasta. 

Speeders get a pass from the Road Warrior

Cherry blossoms in Branch Brook Park in Newark on Saturday, when hundreds of families, including many Asian-Americans, enjoyed a chilly spring day amid the annual natural splendor.

Branch Brook Lake is stocked with trout.

Driving to Newark on the Garden State Parkway on Saturday, I set my cruise control to 60 mph, and as usual, nearly every other car passed me, exceeding the 55 mph speed limit by 10, 20, even 30 mph.

Drivers raced one another, tailgating the car in front, or weaved in and out of slower traffic. 
 
But the scariest moments came when I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw a speeding car racing  toward my rear bumper, only to swerve into the next lane at the last moment.

On Friday evening, I saw two near collisions on both the turnpike and parkway as speeding drivers dove for the center lane at the same time. 

These experiences reminded me of a message I saw one day on an overhead sign near Exit 129 of the parkway: "66% of all accidents involve speeding."

Slow journalism

Speeding also is the cause of most red-light violations, but why do readers of The Record read so little about the problem or the apparent lack of enforcement that emboldens these violators?

The reason is clear: Since late 2003, Road Warrior John Cichowski has been stuck in the slow journalism lane: on lines at the MVC or measuring potholes or fielding complaints about E-ZPass.

Today's column is about one man's experience with getting his 2005 minivan inspected (L-1). How irrelevant can you get?

Out of steam

Cichowski long ago ran out of ideas for his column, which is supposed to appear three times a week, and he refuses to cover mass transit, though his mission is to report about commuting problems.

He now relies almost exclusively on e-mails from complaining drivers who get high from seeing their names in print, as well as studies, reports and other boring statistics that he often can't report accurately. 

The only way he can produce so much copy, it seems, is to devote as many columns as possible to odd circumstances that have no meaning to the vast majority of readers.

Burned-out staffers

Today's front page is dominated by news of the Boston marathon bombing suspect and victims, including a column by another burned-out Record columnist, Mike Kelly, that no one will read.

In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, the only Hackensack news today is a reprint from Friday's edition of the weekly Hackensack Chronicle.

Police Director Mike Mordaga is proposing to hire Class II Special Law Enforcement Officers to supplement regular police officers, who are represented by a union (L-3).

City property tax payers would welcome those officers, who will be paid $15 to $20 an hour and receive no benefits, but who will carry guns and get the same training as regular cops.

Injuries have knocked out some of the 114 officers in the department, Mordaga said last week.

Another thin paper

Today's thin Sunday edition includes a Better Living section with no meaningful food coverage, and a Business section with a cover story on a small business in Bellevue, Wash.

Now, that's "local news."