Readers greet GWB headline with healthy skepticism

Solari's on River Street is one of the Hackensack businesses that suffered greatly after The Record and North Jersey Media Group abandoned the city in 2009. I remember an April 2010 lunch there in a nearly empty dining room. Marco Solari, whose grandfather opened the restaurant in 1934, sold the business about two years ago, but retained ownership of the building and land.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Another edition, another bad headline.

The lead, banner headline on the front page of The Record today -- "GWB probe finds no link to Christie" -- has many readers questioning the editors' objectivity.

The text of the story by Staff Writer Shawn Boburg is far more equivocal:

"The report states there is 'no conclusive evidence' as to whether the governor 'was or was not' aware of the lane closures or involved in directing them" (A-1).

That sounds like the state legislative panel probing Bridgegate was unable to answer the question of Christie's role definitively.

Not only does the headline go too far, but a couple of paragraphs later Boburg quotes Christie's million-dollar defense lawyer, who claims "there is not a shred of evidence Governor Christie knew anything" about the Sept. 2013 lane closures in Fort Lee.

You'd expect attorney Randy Mastro to say that, but you'd also expect The Record's reporter to leave such a self-serving statement to the continuation page, and to point out it also goes beyond what the investigative panel said.

Bad reporting

The Record should recall Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson, if he continues to write about Rep. Scott Garrett's campaign fundraising and to ignore the arch-conservative's policies (L-1).

In a Page 1 story before the Nov. 4 election, Jackson boosted the Wantage Republican's reelection effort by omitting any mention of how Garrett initially opposed federal Sandy relief.

Then, the reporter sat on his hands instead of telling readers whether ads attacking challenger Roy Cho of Hackensack had a shred of truth in them.

My beef with Ung

After reading Elisa Ung complain about Roots Steakhouse in Ridgewood, I get the feeling she would gladly eat a turd as long as it was dry aged (BL-18).

To the clueless restaurant reviewer, the ultimate steak "is prime and dry aged," and she complains Roots wet ages its New York strip, "a far less expensive method."

But prime only means the beef is fattier than lower USDA grades; it doesn't have anything to do with how the animal was raised.

So, a restaurant can serve low-quality steaks from animals confined to feeding pens and raised on grain, animal antibiotics and growth hormones to get them to market faster, and Ung would praise the meat as long as it was prime and dry aged. 

Are Roots' steaks organic or grass fed? Readers don't have a clue. 

When police are involved, black lives aren't worth as much

Snow blowers at Lowe's in Paramus. Will this winter be as bad as last, with one storm after another and municipal plows blockading your driveway? I'm prepared. Are you?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Let's hope a Page 1 report in The Record today will lead to federal charges against two police officers for violating the civil rights of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, two unarmed African-Americans who were killed by white police officers.

Today's story reports U.S. Attorney Eric Holder said authorities will conduct a civil rights investigation into the July 17 death of Garner, who was stopped by police for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

The federal investigation into Brown's Aug. 9 death in Ferguson, Mo., is already under way.

The first paragraph of The Record's story uses the conditional, "would conduct a civil rights investigation" after a grand jury cleared the white police officer involved (A-1). 

Maybe that's just another example of the sloppy editing the Woodland Park daily has become known for -- even on Page 1 stories.

Phillip Pannell

In any case, local authorities aren't treating the deaths of Brown and Garner any differently than they did after the fatal shooting of black teenager Phillip Pannell by a white Teaneck police officer on April 10, 1990.

On Feb. 12, 1992, an all-white jury acquitted Gary Spath, the white officer, of manslaughter. 

More than 24 years after the Pannell shooting, the two recent deaths show that when police are involved, black lives aren't worth as much.

We also see that in other ways, such as Englewood's segregated elementary and middle schools 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education.

I haven't seen The Record's newsroom since 2008, but when I was working there, none of the top editors were black or Hispanic, and the white editor in charge killed the only two columns written by minorities.

He's 'Dumber'

After three straight days of front-page coverage, you'd think Columnist Mike Kelly wouldn't have to fill his first paragraph today with details from alleged rapes at William Paterson University and Ramapo College (A-1).

And after you read the thousands of words he pushes around today, you still can't guess whether he thinks the Wayne and Mahwah colleges flunk on providing a secure environment for the women who say they were gang raped.

Kelly has been at this game of being a columnist for more than 20 years.

Today, he reports, the alleged rapes raise "questions." 

After the trials or pleas, he will undoubtedly write a column describing the "lessons" that have emerged.

Pipeline to hell

Can you name one of Governor Christie's policies that has been good for the state's economy, environment, roads and mass transit, and the middle or working classes (B-4)?

So, why does another of The Record's lame columnists, Christie booster Charles Stile, think anybody in the country cares what the GOP bully thinks of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline (A-1)?

See corrections, sloppy editing in another 'rape edition'

The New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark on Sunday night.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

From The Record's sensational coverage of an alleged rape at William Paterson University in Wayne, you'd never know one in five women are sexually assaulted in college.

The Woodland Park daily's front page is dominated for a third day in a row by coverage of the charges against five WPU students (A-1).

More corrections

Meanwhile, two more corrections are published on A-2 today -- following two on Tuesday -- and sloppy editing elsewhere has readers shaking their heads.

One of the corrections notes two workers were "misidentified" in a Local front photo at J&R Lamb Studios in Midland Park.

Did the photographer, Don Smith, give the wrong information to the news editors, as photographers have been doing for decades? 

Toll confusion

In an A-3 story on the proposed Port Authority budget, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg notes tolls will go up for the fourth year in a row "after Saturday."

Does that mean Sunday or Monday or when?

And Boburg doesn't say whether the discounted car-pool and green-car tolls also are going up and by how much.

Dropped word?

I've read and re-read the first paragraph of the Q&A with Chef Jeff Kellish on BL-2 and on NorthJersey.com (COFFEE WITH THE CHEF), and have no idea what his mother used as punishment when he misbehaved.

UPDATE: On a fifth or sixth reading, I see " working in the kitchen" was the "punishment," but that doesn't sound like discipline to me.

After all, if it was so distasteful, why did Kellish become a chef?
Also, is it the newspaper's style to lower case "chef" before a name? Why? 

Or is that another typo from the overworked and under-appreciated copy desk, which labors late into the night while its supervisor, six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton, laughs all the way to the bank? 

On the next page, the continuation of a story on WaffleWaffle reports they are sold "at several Whole Foods locations as well as other retailers, including Inserra shops" (BL-3).

How many readers know "Inserra shops" is a reference to 21 ShopRite Supermarkets?

Second look

On Tuesday's A-6, a photo of the William Paterson University campus shows a sign with the school's name on it and two students walking in opposite directions.

The caption says, "Activity at the William Paterson University campus on Monday [italics added]."

Give me a break.

Editors labor to make alleged campus rapes sound new

At 24 Hour Fitness in Paramus, the joke is on the able bodied. How likely is it that the owner of a tile-installation company qualifies for a handicap parking permit? I could be wrong. Do they issue them for mental handicaps?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Sexual exploitation of freshman women on college campuses has been a big concern for many years, but could this be the first time The Record has taken notice?

Editor Marty Gottlieb leads today's and Monday's front page with what a headline calls a "disturbing tale" at William Paterson University in Wayne.

Monday's Page 1 story tried to make the issue seem fresh, not something the editors have basically ignored:

"The arrest of William Paterson students on charges of sexual assault comes at a time when national concern about campus rape is growing," Staff Writer Jim Norman reported, years late, it turns out (Monday's A-1).

Bottom of barrel

Gottlieb had so little to put on Monday's front page he actually ran at least the third story since the Nov. 4 election on Governor Christie's out-of-state fundraising for GOP crackpots like himself.

Then, he used a big picture of the pope making nice with some patriarch in Istanbul -- an embrace that surely inflamed the many Armenian readers who will never forget the genocide of 1.5 million of their Christian ancestors under Ottoman rule.

Staff Writer Virginia Rohan polluted the bottom of Monday's front page with yet another story on bimbo Teresa Giudice.

More corrections

Today's A-2 carries a correction of Monday's front-page WPU story, in which the names of two suspects in the alleged rape were misspelled.

That's sloppy, but typical of The Record.

More 'Bloopers'

Uncorrected are the mistakes Road Warrior John Cichowski included in his Sunday column on blocked Little Ferry intersections.

Cichowski is so dizzy and disoriented, he misreported a) the location of two intersections and b) that the Little Ferry Circle is being rebuilt, when it has, in fact, been eliminated, according to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

1) Clueless false statement - "Two days before Thanksgiving, signs appeared on Route 46 — as if by magic — to warn motorists to avoid blocking intersections in Little Ferry that are generally jammed with traffic while construction crews rebuild a nearby bridge and traffic circle."

CORRECT FACTS - While construction is rebuilding the bridge, the traffic circle is being replaced with a four-way, stop light intersection.

The only magic is in the Road Warrior's exaggerated mind. Everybody else realizes that one day a portable sign is not there, and the next time they see a portable sign, it has been placed there by a road crew. No magic!

2) Clueless false statement - "Technically, Liberty and Grand were just east of the contractor's work zone."

CORRECT FACTS - Technically, Liberty and Grand streets were and are just west of the contractor's work zone for the Little Ferry Circle replacement on Route 46.

See: Road Warrior can't break gridlock of errors