More -- much more -- sloppy and irrelevant reporting

Ten lanes of Manhattan-bound traffic merging into a single tube of the Lincoln Tunnel during Friday afternoon's agonizing rush hour.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Only political junkies like The Record's Washington correspondent and Editor Marty Gottlieb are already thinking of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.

Unfortunately for readers of the Woodland Park daily, Gottlieb leads today's paper with Staff Writer Herb Jackson's silly "primary preview" -- a face-off between Governor Christie and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. (A-1).

Politics are so irrelevant to the lives of North Jersey readers, who are caught in massive traffic jams and who pay exorbitant tolls and property taxes thanks to Christie's mismanagement.

And readers are bored to death by the media's obsession with which politician may or may not be a candidate for president in 2016.

All in the family

The D'Ercole family -- which "once wielded enormous political power in tiny Norwood" -- may remind Hackensack readers of the Zisa family, which ruled the city for decades and still has hooks into the school board (A-1).

But today's sympathetic Page 1 story on the family's decision to sell their garden center to developers doesn't discuss whether their Norwood reign was free of the corruption that is costing Hackensack property tax payers so dearly.

Another correction

A-2 carries another correction and another error:

The names of Nicole Polizzi and Jenni Farley appear in the wrong order under the PEOPLE IN THE NEWS photo.

Today's A-11 editorial on the U.S. Postal Service -- and all of the news stories I've seen recently -- never explains why the agency has to be self-sustaining.

Isn't that like asking mass transit to make a profit, ignoring the benefits of taking cars off the road, and cutting pollution and our dependency on oil imports?

Mail deliverers deter crime and keep an eye on seniors living alone, among other good things.

Local news 'glut'

There is so little local news that head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' had to fill nearly half a page of Local with wire-service obituaries of people readers have never heard of (L-5).

Most pages carry police and fire news, including the main element on L-1, which describes a bank robbery and pursuit of the suspects:

Crime and chaos 

Indeed. The "chaos" is in the newsroom, and the "crime" is against the reader.

Friday's paper

Page 1 on Friday put legions of readers to sleep.

Gottlieb, who does a good imitation of being The Record's global editor, demoted to L-1 continuing Hackensack River pollution from 26 towns' raw sewage pipes.

That wasn't the only shit in the paper.

Boosting Christie

Stories on Democratic challenger Barbara Buono picking another woman as her running mate, and a non-partisan office finding a $150 million shortfall in the state budget don't bode well for Christie (A-3).

That didn't stop The Record from promoting the GOP bully's bid for a second term.

The editors again ignore all of the vetoes he uses to get his way in New Jersey in a story reporting Christie blamed President Obama for the partisan gridlock in Washington (A-6).

And why are the editors hiding the identity of toll cheats, including an Englewood woman "who owes $43,000 in fees and tolls" to the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (A-6)?

Local censorship

Staff Writer Hannan Adely reports Hackensack Mayor John P. Labrosse Jr. and fellow City Council members have named their campaign manager as the city's new public relations consultant (Friday's L-2).

Adely didn't report public comment at this week's City Council meeting that giving the job to Thom Ammirato "sends the wrong message" -- especially in view of decades of insider deals by the Zisa family.

The City Council also is sending another wrong message with a trial run to collect garbage twice a week in the 1st Ward (Friday's L-3).

The city can save money and reduce household garbage by encouraging more recycling and collecting food waste for composting, as much larger cities already do.

Freezer fresh

In Friday's Better Living, restaurant reviewer Bob Probert praises the "absolutely fresh sushi and sashimi" at Wasabi in Ridgewood (BL-16).

But he apparently didn't ask Chef/Owner Kazuhiko Takahashi whether the fish he serves raw at his 3-star restaurant has been frozen -- to kill parasites -- as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

See a 2004 article in The New York Times:

'Sushi Fresh from the Deep ... the Deep Freeze' 

Second look

The Road Warrior column on Wednesday contained a good deal of misinformation, including Staff Writer John Cichowski reporting that Hackensack's Court Street Bridge was replaced when, in fact, it was renovated.

For a complete rundown, see the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Broken journalist, broken column 

Hiding Mac Borg's role

Image via Wikipedia

Don't you find it curious that today's L-3 story on the East Hill Synagogue in Englewood (map) omits any mention of how Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg was among neighbors who opposed the congregation's expansion on his East Hill block?

Nor do I see the name of attorney Bruce Rosen, who has done a lot of legal work for The Record and who represented Mac and other opponents. (When he was a reporter at the paper in the 1980s, Rosen said Mac gave him at least one mortgage to buy a house.)

At least the lazy, incompetent editors tried to bury the synagogue story omissions. (For non-Record folk, Mac Borg is chairman of North Jersey Media Group.) I recall asking Assignment Editor Dan Sforza two or three years ago, when I was a copy editor, why a short story on this same dispute didn't include Mac's name, and he said there was "no room" to mention it. Editors today can't use the same excuse for this much longer story.

Then, on Page 1 today,  a long, tortured tale about an international custody battle seems to have been deliberately distorted to shower the father with sympathy.

When you look at the headlines and the moody photo on the front page, you can only conclude the paper wants you to like this man and hate his wife. But it's only on the jump page, you discover he has been accused of of sexually abusing his own kids, and left all of them behind to escape a criminal complaint, the woman's attorney says.

It's not "a father's nightmare." It's the readers who are having nightmares.Was this the work of the courthouse reporter trying to sell the story for the front or the devious editors?  

Three corrections appear on A-2. Way to go.

Joseph Ax has stopped acting like a foreign correspondent and gone back to reporting municipal affairs in Teaneck, where he is assigned. Today, he has two stories in Local, compared to none about Hackensack, Englewood and a lot of other Bergen County towns.

A photo of the Woodland Park police chief on L-2 incorrectly says he is behind a "podium," when he is, in fact, standing at a lectern.The caption doesn't say where the swearing-in was, but I'm sure the editors could have left their Garret Mountain newsroom and popped over for refreshments.

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Bill Pitcher cranks ups the hyperbole in a three-star review of sushi restaurant Umeya in Cresskill. (Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives in nearby Tenafly, in a house that is bigger than some Japanese villages.) Pitcher calls the raw fish "pristine, salmon tasting as clean as the water it was plucked from."

Of course, the salmon likely was farm-raised and, thus, artificially colored, and probably it contained other contaminants. Pitcher also fails to mention fish served raw must be frozen first to kill worms.