Praise the Lord for police shootings

Image by Tony the Misfit via Flickr

The Editorial Page editor wants to consolidate Wayne and Paterson schools. For his next act, Alfred P. Doblin will try to go over the Great Falls in a barrel.

Editors Francis Scandale and Deirdre Sykes are desperately praying for another police shooting to fill news columns -- just as an incident did on the front page today and on the Local front Thursday. 

So, why did the fatal shooting of a suspect end up on Local, while the wounding of another is all over Page 1 today in The Record of Woodland Park?

Three photos on A-1 and A-10 show nothing more than police officers walking or standing around and "beginning to investigate," according to the wildly optimistic caption. 

Screw the union

The turnpike's unionized toll collectors will be allowed to keep their jobs, but their average $65,000 salaries will be cut more than $15,000 by July 2012 (A-1).

Compare that to the immediate $10,000 cut in the salary of reporter Elaine D'Aurizio, who has since retired, and other staffers engineered by Publisher Stephen A. Borg, with the advice and consent of Scandale and other editors.

A graphic on A-1 Wednesday was so cockeyed it required a long correction today on A-2, along with five corrections from Thursday's school board election results.

Come back later

You won't find the suspect's name in the Page 1 shooting story or even a description, nor is the officer or officers who shot him identified. In the fatal shooting story on L-1 Thursday, the officer's identity also was withheld.

Governor Christie's spokesman had noting to say about a new name for Xanadu -- American Dream Meadowlands -- or a fall 2013 opening date (A-1).

Many reporters for The Record appear to stand there with their hands out for information, and don't argue when told to come back later or call me tomorrow.

LOL at Doblin

What a hoot. Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin knows there's absolutely zero chance of success for his school-district consolidation plan -- combining Paterson and Wayne, Newark and Milburn, and others across the state (A-21).

But he doesn't tell readers why: Most white suburbanites will fight to the death for their "neighborhood schools" to avoid having their kids rub shoulders with blacks and Hispanics in neighboring towns.

After all, didn't Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg send young Stephen to a private high school in Englewood for just that reason?

Dumb and dumber

Today's Road Warrior column on L-1 is a case of dumb readers' questions and dumber answers.

Where is the Teaneck reporter? An item on L-5 carries the Hackensack reporter's tag line.

Fat of the land

Did Grissini in Englewood Cliffs bribe Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung for her "Good to Excellent" rating in Better Living today?

Ung says she was served "gummy" cake for $12, "dry" veal for $38, "overcooked and dry" salmon fillet for $29 and shrimp with disgusting, dangling "dark veins" for $28 -- yet she bestows two and a half stars on the so-called fine-dining restaurant.

She also must have been groggy from overindulging when she wrote that the chef "marvels at his freedom to purchase high-quality ingredients." 

But then she fails to tell readers if the overpriced salmon was wild or the filet mignon and veal were raised without antibiotics and growth hormones.

More lessons in bad journalism

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Readers who once laughed at Lou Costello now are laughing at The Record.

How could The Record's front page promise "full coverage of school board elections" today when it never published the candidates' positions on issues facing districts?

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes couldn't muster the energy or staff to brief readers before Tuesday's election -- something the paper had been doing for decades -- so they were forced to rely on campaign literature. 

Basically, she told them to vote blind.

How about the three standard photos of voters and a kid at the polls (A-1 and A-8). They are as exciting as watching paint dry.

Language barrier

Another A-1 story in the Woodland Park daily reports a group of students from the Dominican Republic got a democracy lesson in Passaic County. 

If readers managed to get through the story, they realize the reporter also needs a lesson -- in the English language.

Staff Writer Richard Cowen, who is no novice, reports the students showed up at a freeholders meeting "dressed in formal attire" (A-5). Does he mean tuxedos and gowns or just suits and dresses? 

Errors 'R' Us

On Wednesday, a Page 1 story by Staff Writer John Gavin peddled the preposterous notion that a train station would be an invasion of nearby residents' privacy. 

The reporter said one man lived a "few feet" from the proposed station in Wood-Ridge. Is that even possible? Three feet from the proposed stop?  He must be homeless.

On A-2 today, an embarrassing correction notes Wednesday's lead story made two serious errors.

Snow job

Former Gov. Jim McGreevey and folk-jazz singer Phoebe Snow couldn't be more different, so how could Mike Kelly lump them in the same L-1 column today?

Road Warrior puts driving foot in mouth

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The Chevy Volt. Errors by Road Warrior John Cichowski continue to mount.

A reader of northjersey.com points out errors in John Cichowski's recent column for The Record on the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, which the reporter insists on incorrectly calling an "electric" car:

"The Road Clown rides again for a good laugh. Check out link below for a FIOS1 follow-up video interview with John based on his 4/24 online article on the Chevy Volt.  In speaking about students not using NJ-mandated seat belts in school buses [start at 3-minute point of the video], John mistakenly indicates that “it took years for the NJ legislature to BAN [instead of correctly stating something like “require” or ”mandate”] belts on school buses…… [Hee! Hee!]  As I was laughing about how John not only confuses his readers, but he now also confuses himself, the FIOS interviewer never corrected hm.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/transportation/road_warrior/120560019_Volt_not_green_enough.html

"John also apparently likes to double-down on his mistakes. In his 4/24 article, he thoughtlessly repeated over and over the Volt did not qualify for NY’s Clean Pass [toll discount] due to relatively lower fuel efficiency in gas mode. He then repeated this same nonsense on the FIOS1 interview.

"Based on past experience, John thinks that repeating something over and over makes everything he states correct.  However, John was badly mistaken based on the facts, which I guess he did not bother to properly verify, for EPA’s combined fuel efficiency ratings for the electric and gas modes of the Volt are within NY Clean Pass requirements. And the NY Clean Pass Web page clearly states the Volt is not approved solely because it does not meet the more stringent, California-based emissions limits -- a second requirement for being approved for NY Clean Pass."

Eye on The Record notes Cichowski omitted saying the toll discounts denied the Volt driver from Teaneck are part of the Port Authority's Green Pass program.

The day after the column appeared, an A-2 correction noted Cichowski had erred on the Volt's gasoline mileage.

Not on my front page

What's this nonsense on Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily today? 

Do people who bought homes "less than 30 feet" from railroad tracks have any right to complain about a plan to build a station near them?

You'd think they would be thanking NJ Transit for 1) increasing the value of their homes by making mass transit available to residents, and 2) reducing noise by stopping the 30 trains that roar by every day.

But Editor Francis Scandale is so desperate for copy, he allows the reporter to disguise a not-in-my-backyard issue as one of "privacy." How ridiculous. 

The reporter even has the nerve to call the neighborhood "secluded." 

The front-page photo shows a man on his deck as a commuter train passes. His shit-eating grin tells you he is relishing the tens of thousands of dollars he saved by buying a house next to the tracks. 

Also on A-1 today is a rare obituary -- an intimate portrait of folk-jazz singer Phoebe Snow and her ties to Teaneck. 

Two embarrassing corrections on A-2 involve names that were screwed up. Getting names right is a cardinal rule of journalism, but not at The Record.

Another bad head

Who wrote the misleading headline on former Editor James Ahearn's OpEd column today (A-11)?

Ahearn doesn't link a favorable Supreme Court ruling on educational funding in the Corzine administration and Governor Christie's threat to defy the court now.

Much of the Local section is devoted to Law & Order news, with hardly a municipal story in sight. Another good job by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her minions.

An unusual black-news edition

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Why isn't black accomplishment front page news in The Record?

The front page of The Record hasn't carried this much news about African-Americans since Black History Month.

Are the two stories and a huge photograph in the Woodland Park daily today about black accomplishment? Not in a newsroom run by Editor Francis Scandale, who short-circuits the careers of minorities.

Blacks and horses

All three people have, in a sense, gone wrong: A Jamaican-American man is released from the hospital and disappears. An athlete struggles back from paralysis. The head of the Bergen County NAACP is accused of wrongdoing.

Scandale thinks so much of these people that the fourth major story on A-1 is about animals by that horse's ass, Staff Writer John Brennan, a befuddled reporter whose prose belongs on a back page, not a black page. 

Size matters

There is one good thing to report: Recent tweets by Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill and Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung about a "chocolate salami" aren't veiled references to black men's sexual endowment.

susanlsherrill Susan Sherrill

Chocolate salami: sounds gross; tastes delicious. Made it this weekend with candied ginger + almonds added. Here's how: http://bit.ly/eDkqFi

25 Apr Favorite Retweet Reply

elisaung Elisa Ung

by susanlsherrill

Chocolate salami. Fascinating. http://t.co/3Uej4Re

22 Apr Favorite Retweet Reply

 

 

Page A-2 carries an embarrassing correction from Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski, whose many errors would fill a page, and a second correction on a Page 1 story April 17.

Chasing her tail

The big news rustled up by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes for the front of her Local section includes a car chase. Wowee. 

Another story about historical sites dominates L-1 today. When is Sykes going to be history?

Unkindest cut

In Better Living, Jersey Scene Columnist Bill Ervolino's punch line was inadvertently cut from the end of his story (F-3) -- in another example of the careful production work by Barbara Jaeger's features department.

The prudish, not-so-funny man insisted on keeping his pants on when he was photographed in a kilt.