Today's focus on local news is welcome, but may not last

Atlantic and Main streets in Hackensack once was the site of the Washington Institute, founded in 1769 and considered to be "one of the finest educational institutions in the state, according to this marker, and "it brought recognition to the Village of Hackensack."

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Three of the four major elements on Page 1 of The Record today focus on local issues, and the local-news section actually has reports from towns on almost every page.

Although local news bores most of the editors and reporters, this is the stuff homeowners and others need to know to judge how well their tax dollars are being spent.

On Page 1 today, Staff Photographer Tariq Zehawi turned in a great enterprise shot from Hackensack's Junior Police Academy, showing he has a lot more talent than readers see in his ambulance-chasing accident photos, which are often used as filler in Local.

But Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado did a poor job of researching her story on Palisades Park's Korean residents asking for an interpreter at Borough Council meetings (A-1).

Her first paragraph mentions interpreters in municipal courts and hospitals, but that ignores the interpreting staff attached to every state Superior Court.

Trump, Clinton

The Record and other media largely continue to ignore the issues in the presidential campaign, but at least the stories about GOP nominee Donald J. Trump's racism and Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails are played on A-7 today.

The lead story -- "Chilling posts by Trump staffers" -- is from The Associated Press:

"Donald Trump's paid campaign staffers have declared on their social media accounts that Muslims are unfit to be American citizens, ridiculed Mexican accents, called for Secretary of State John Kerry's death by hanging and stated their readiness for a possible civil war" (A-7).

Catholic sex abuse

In contrast to all of the Page 1 stories about the pope and the Newark archbishop, settlement of a child sex-abuse lawsuit against Bergen Catholic High School was pushed back to the Local front today.

Still, there is no explanation why the $1.9 million settlement from last November is just being reported, nor any mention that lawyers for the victims will likely take about a third of the money (L-1).

Traffic tickets

Monday's Page 1 story on the drop in the number of tickets issued to drivers on Bergen County roads and highways is missing so much information you have to wonder why The Record published it.

Staff Writer Jean Rimbach begins by reporting that "most drivers" will welcome the decline in enforcement by the Bergen County Bureau of Police Services, but that would mean the majority break traffic laws.

That's preposterous.

In fact, a minority of drivers speed and drive recklessly, and endanger others who have enough to worry about on Bergen County's antiquated road network.

There is one reference to "a reduction in moving and non-moving violations," but nowhere does Rimbach discuss such specifics as speeding tickets.

Least productive

Typically, Rimbach spends weeks or months on such projects, under the protection of Editor Deirdre Sykes, the newsroom's mother hen, and Sykes publishes the results no matter how flawed.

The Record already missed a bigger story -- a dramatic drop in the number of speeding summonses issued by state police on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway in the past five years. 

See: 

Speeders are having a field day

Editors hit dog slayer, but not cop who ran down woman

In the more than seven years I've lived in Hackensack, the lack of turn lanes on Passaic Street at Summit Avenue constitutes an annoying bottleneck at almost any time of day, because cars can't pass turning vehicles on narrow, antiquated Passaic.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

If you're wealthy and live in a good town, you can get The Record to use Page 1 for your endless complaints about a cop who shot and killed your vicious dog.

And the editors will even demonize the officer by dredging up his past involvement in the unrelated death of a suspect in Newark more than four years ago (A-1).

But if you're a Vietnamese-American woman living alone in a shabby Hackensack apartment building and get run down by a detective as you're crossing the street, the editors won't even question why no charges were filed against the driver in your death.

That's the stark contrast presented by today's front-page story on Wyckoff Patrolman Kyle Ferreira, who shot and killed a German shepherd that lunged at him and bit his boot when he was investigating a burglary report on April 29 (A-1).

The Record reports that when Ferreira was a Newark police officer in 2010, his patrol car fatally injured a fleeing domestic violence suspect.

Cop kills woman

On March 11, The Record ran a single story on the death of Hue D. Dang, 64, who was fatally injured two days earlier by an unmarked car driven by John C. Straniero, an off-duty detective sergeant from the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

The story, reported by telephone, omitted key facts:

Dang was walking in or near a crosswalk when she was struck on Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street in Hackensack, only a few blocks away from where she lived.

The 5-foot, 100-pound woman, who was carrying a plastic grocery bag, fell and struck her head, leaving heavy blood stains on the pavement.

Hackensack police filed no charges of any kind against Straniero, 49, of Wayne, but the accident is being reviewed by the Union County Prosecutor's Office.

The Record's editors never questioned the decision of Hackensack police nor did they do a follow-up story.

Hue D. Dang's blood, right,  staining the pavement hours after she was fatally injured crossing Jackson Avenue in Hackensack. This photo, from a neighborhood resident, also shows police markings that indicate the unmarked car's right rear tire, left, stopped in the crosswalk, below.

The driver who killed Dang was turning the corner of Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street toward the ramp for Route 80 west.

Also on Page 1

The A-1 story on the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania is a huge waste of precious space. Why was it written by the paper's transportation reporter?

There is nothing sillier than a reporter who covers a court hearing on Governor Christie's sleight of hand with state pension payments, and tries to predict how the judges are leaning on the issue from their questions to the lawyers on both sides (A-1).

That reminds me of an editor in Hackensack who asked me when a jury would be returning with a verdict in a federal court trial I covered for The Record.

Local news

The Record's story on two people who were fatally injured by a Washington Township police cruiser as they were walking in a travel lane of the New Jersey Turnpike doesn't report the time of the accident early Wednesday (L-1).

But the story does say Sgt. Arsenio Pecora was involved in a training exercise at Fort Dix that ended "shortly before 1 a.m." Wednesday (L-6).

Cliffview Pilot.com reported the pair were struck by Pecora's cruiser at 1:06 a.m., according to state police.

They were pronounce dead at the scene at 4:33 a.m.

Paterson police czar has more young blood on his hands

An art gallery on Palisade Avenue in Englewood.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

At least Paterson Police Director Jerry Speziale has learned to talk the talk when another innocent young life is taken on the city's violent streets.

"We are not going to give up," Speziale told The Record, "we are going to do what we have to do to make a safe city."

You'll have to search for the interview, buried as it is on the continuation page of the A-1 story on the shooting death of Armoni Sexton, 15 (A-7).

The editors have been treating the police director gently -- Heaven forbid he is put on the spot -- even though the 6-foot-7 aspiring basketball star is the third young person killed by random gunshots in less than a year (A-1).

What exactly is Speziale waiting for before he asks for help from the state police or the Passaic County Sheriff's Office, which he once headed?

It's pretty obvious Paterson police are unable to control gun violence on city streets. How many more kids have to die?

Forget about appealing directly to Governor Christie, even if he can be found.

He's already screwed Paterson royally with state aid cuts that forced the layoff of 125 officers in 2011. Now, even with new hires, the force is 20% smaller than before the cut.

Rough editing

They've been at it for decades, but Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sfroza still can't handle breaking news.

The reporting and editing of the stories on Sexton's death are poor.

The main front-page headlines stink:

Death Avenue claims another

Paterson teen

is third fatally shot

in past 10 months

Why not use the word "gunman" or "gunmen" to indicate that it is uncontrolled gun ownership that claimed the boy's life, not a street called "Death Avenue"?

The photo caption on Page 1 shows Gloria Sexton, who is identified as "a family member of Armoni Sexton," apparently because the photographer didn't ask her relationship to the dead teen. 

Why didn't the editor who wrote that just say she is the teen's "relative"?

This same caption mentions "the street near Godwin Avenue and Rosa Parks Boulevard, where the 15-year-old was shot Saturday."

But the first paragraph of the lead news story reports Sexton was with a group of teenagers "on Rosa Parks Boulevard" when he was shot, not "near" the intersection of Godwin and Rosa Parks (A-1).

Finally, also in the lead paragraph, Sexton is called inappropriately one of the "children" who "have lost their lives in the violence that strangles every day life in city neighborhoods."

Later, Sexton and the two girls who were killed by gunshots in the past year, Nazerah Bugg, 14; and Genesis Rincon, 12, are referred to as "young people" (A-7).

Wasted space

Why is Editor Martin Gottlieb wasting precious Page 1 space on Matt Mowers and Matthew Moroney, two Christie aides in New Hampshire no one has ever heard of?

Staff Writer Melissa Hayes reports the margin of Christie's second-term victory was "impressive," but doesn't note voter turnout was the lowest for any New Jersey gubernatorial election in history (A-1).

Fewer than four out of 10 voters went to the polls for the November 2013 contest, signalling incredible apathy.

A real turkey

Today's Local section literally is a turkey.

The biggest local news is a wild turkey that is being fed in an A&P parking lot in Closter (L-1).

A caption for the photo on L-1 -- showing the 29th annual Lincoln Tunnel Challenge 5K -- doesn't note the race left hundreds of New Jersey motorists frozen in traffic jams at the tunnel's Manhattan entrances late Sunday afternoon.

Editors continue to swallow Christie P.R. and B.S.

The Church On The Green spire in Hackensack.

Two Page 1 stories, an editorial and an editorial cartoon today continue the editors' romance with Governor Christie.

The Record treats the GOP bully like a mighty chief executive who single-handedly brought back New Jersey from the ravages of Superstorm Sandy, and who will somehow make his foolish no-tax policies work. 

The editors -- from Marty Gottlieb to Alfred P. Doblin -- continue to promote Christie's massive public relations/reelection campaign despite his dismal record since he took office in January 2010.

Missing the story

On the Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski continues to miss the biggest development affecting  road deaths -- the dramatic decline in enforcement by the New Jersey State Police (L-1).

Hundreds of troopers have left in the past 25 years and were never replaced. The force once had 3,000 members.

No longer, as any driver can tell from all of the speeding, tail-gating and weaving maniacs on the parkway and turnpike.

Thanks to Governor Christie's anti-mass transit policies, the one constant in North Jersey is traffic, as seen near the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee.

Mental paralysis

Cichowski reminds readers of all those seemingly able-bodied people they see using handicapped parking spaces -- especially at the gym. They must be mentally disabled.

In another e-mail to the reporter and managers, a  concerned reader points out Cichowski's crippled reasoning in his previous column. 

Click on the following link to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers at The Record:

Exposing the Road Warrior handicap

From hunger

I looked at the Better Living section today to see if there is any interesting food coverage or if Publisher Stephen A. Borg had named a new food editor.

All I found was a piece on grilling artery clogging sausages on BL-5.

However, a bonus today was Staff Writer Lindy Washburn's heart-stopping cover story on the dramatic operation that saved Englewood cardioligist Jeffrey Mitchel (BL-1).

Talk about Gottlieb burying a Page 1 story to make room for more Christie B.S. The circle is complete.

Slow poke on the Garden State Parkway

Garden State Parkway traffic during a difficult Friday evening rush hour.

 

Below is a link to a video shot on the Garden State Parkway in March that shows just about every other car passing a driver who sets his cruise control to 60 mph.

This is a follow-up to my discussion on Sunday of how The Record ignores speeding drivers and the apparent lack of enforcement that allows them to drive as fast as they want, terrorize law-abiding motorists and blow through red lights.

In Hackensack, Police Director Mike Mordaga has begun to crack down on moving violations by drivers, and his officers issued a couple of hundred more summonses in March than in the same month of 2012.

Maybe, the Road Warrior will lift his head out of one of those enormous potholes he likes to write about, recognize what Mordaga is doing in Hackensack and find out whether other towns are following suit.

And what about the state police? Why not ask for data to show whether enforcement is way down, as many law-abiding drivers suspect?

Here's is the link to the video:

In the slow lane on the parkway 

When paving streets, residents' income level is crucial

In March, a light rain highlighted broken pavement on Louis Street in Hackensack's Fairmount section, one of the city's nicest residential areas.

At this week's City Council meeting, Hackensack City Manager Stephen Lo Iacono delivered some bad news to well-off residents who hope to see their streets paved before 2050.

This year's proposed municipal budget contains only $300,000 for repairing streets, but the city also will receive an unspecified amount in grants for that purpose.

However, the grants come with a catch. There is less grant money to pave streets where residents have higher incomes, Lo Iacono said.


Go figure. If residents of a street have higher incomes, it's likely they also have more expensive homes or apartments and pay higher property taxes. 

Why doesn't that help determine the amount of paving grants for their streets?

Euclid Avenue

Victor E. Sasson, editor of Eye on The Record and  the only independent candidate in the May 14 Hackensack City Council election, has joked he is running to get his street paved.

Euclid Avenue hasn't been paved since 1979, according to long-time residents of Hackensack, and each year for the past few years, Sasson has called the Department of Public Works, only to be told his street is "on the list." 

Lo Iacono told Sasson at Tuesday night's meeting Euclid Avenue will be paved this fall, which is the "paving season."

Sasson replied his street is far from the worst street. What about Louis Street or Prospect Avenue?

Lo Iacono also said he couldn't even give a ballpark estimate of how much it costs to pave one block, noting it depends on how much of the street has to be torn up and so forth.

'19-story monster'

Residents of Baridge House questioned City Council candidates on Wednesday night, in the second such forum sponsored by the Prospect Avenue Coaltion, which has been fighting a 19-story Long-Term Acute Care Hospital proposed nearby for more than 3 years.

Moderator Ted Moskowitz, an attorney, referred to the plan, known as LTACH, as the "19-story monster down the block."

All of the candidates pledged the city's total resources to stop the hospital. The developer is appealing the city zoning board's 5-0 vote, denying him the variances he needed to build. 

Sasson suggested that all or part of the 20-acre River Street parcel owned by North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, would be an ideal site for the proposed hospital and more than 400 parking spaces. 

The Record, which abandoned Hackensack in 2009, didn't cover Wednesday night's forum or the first one on March 20.

Tick-Tock plot

On the front page of today's paper, regular users of the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway found out why state police haven't been enforcing laws against speeding, tailgating and reckless driving.

In the best New York tabloid tradition, Editor Marty Gottlieb splashes a sensational tale all over Page 1 about a diner manager who allegedly cooked up a plot to kill his boss and the boss' wife.

No patrols

Unfortunately, the "hit man" and a second undercover operative were state troopers pulled off speeding patrols, and who knows how many other state police officers were working behind the scenes.

Is this story really worth an overlong news story, a  sidebar on the Tick-Tock Diner, a map and all of those photos?

And, of course, all that overblown coverage guarantees plenty of errors by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Production Editor Liz Houlton, supervisor of the luckless copy desk.

The drop headline says awkwardly the manager of the diner "hired hit on boss." 

"Hired hit"? What's missing? The full drop headline is:

Police say

manager of 

diner hired

hit on boss, 

wife's uncle

 


But the "boss" and "wife's uncle" are one in the same, according to the story, and the photo caption also identifies him as such.

The story also refers to the boss two ways, as "the owner" of the Clifton diner and as the "co-owner." Which is accurate?

yBad lesson

Sykes' Local news section today is dominated by school news, but the only mention of Hackensack is in a chart on per-pupil spending.

With four days before Hackensack's school board election, Sykes still hasn't published a story on the six candidates and what they want to accomplish.   

Why not bulldoze parts of Fort Lee?

Super cars escorted by the state police aren't needed to make driving the Garden State Parkway or N.J. Turnpike a challenge, as any weekday commute will show.

Was Production Editor Liz Houlton out shopping for another schmata when the news copy editors she supervises wrote the main headline on Page 1 of The Record today?

Developers looking

for a 'wow' effect

Nothing could be further from the truth, as readers learn if they bother to read to the continuation page (A-6).

Major misquote

The word 'wow" was never used by a developer to describe the Western development, which was unveiled at a public meeting on Monday night -- four weeks after the Fort Lee Planning Board signed off on the Eastern phase and the construction of Bergen County's tallest buildings.

In fact, a Planning Board member said, "Personally ... this presentation didn't wow me." Later, Mayor Marc Sokolich said, "We're looking ... for a bit of 'wow' effect."

All I can say is, Wow. Who screwed up? And did Houlton again sacrifice accuracy to go off in search of another cheap, raggedy dress?

Where was Editor Marty Gottlieb, who has published a number of embarrassing corrections of screw-ups by Houlton and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes (see A-2 today)?

Fort Lee eyesore

The Record has been covering the proposal for vacant land near the George Washington Bridge as if it was the building of the Pyramids, instead of yet another plan to heal a four-decades-old eyesore.

Some residents are upset about the potential impact on schools and roads of all those new residents and cars.

So, maybe the developer should tear down some of the borough's older high-rises and move those residents into the new 47-story towers and other residential spaces -- guaranteeing a huge boost in property taxes, but no change in population.

Speeding commuters

The Record and other media continue to focus on the state police-escorted caravan of super cars that raced down the Garden State Parkway to Atlantic City on March 30 (A-1).

But no reporter is asking Governor Christie why there is so little enforcement of traffic laws during the rush hour, when ordinary cars and SUVs travel 20 m.p.h. or more over the speed limit, tailgate and weave in and out of traffic -- all because those drivers are late for work.

Free lunch in Vegas

Let's hope Christie doesn't see the story on A-8 today about the Heart Attack Grill, a restaurant in Las Vegas that offers free meals to people weighing more than 350 pounds.

The Record has been running stories lately about Christie working on his national image, including Monday's A-1 report on the GOP bully's plan to cut income taxes, as Republican Christie Whitman did  in 1994 with disastrous results.

Christie's critics can't wait for him to run for national office. The sooner he does that, the sooner the rest of us can start rebuilding the middle class way of life in New Jersey.

Front-page hype

Why is all of Christie's hype and exaggeration reported in Page 1 stories and the reality left for the Editorial Page cartoon (A-10 today)?

On Sykes' Local front today, a gee-whiz, non-fatal accident photo is used as filler (L-1).

The "Welcome to Hackensack" sign in the background of the photo -- and the lack of Hackensack news -- clearly show that Sykes has ordered her staff to stay out of the county seat.

Related articles

• Democrats answer Christie's racism
• Christie caught in another whopper
• Editors try to sell Christie tax cut
• Utility pole news undercuts new editor