This newspaper is all wet

The rag-tag circulation department at  The Record of Woodland Park double-bagged the copy delivered to my home today, but some moron forgot to close the bags, so the paper was soaking wet.

I was still able to look it over, noting with disgust that nearly half the front page was given to airhead reporter John Brennan to describe the new Meadowlands football stadium, and that the lazy, incompetent editors are continuing their royal F.U. to readers by not covering Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood, three of the most important towns in Bergen County. And what about the state's mounting financial crisis? Why doesn't that merit more than a brief  on  Page 1?

On the front of the Local section, we learn that Wal-Mart will be opening a store in Garfield, but the story by Staff Writer Alexander MacInness says nothing about all the employee lawsuits against the Arkansas chain for not paying overtime and other alleged workplace abuses.

Similarly, Robert Torricelli, the disgraced congressman from North Jersey, commands a lot of ink inside the section for representing yet another developer who is lusting after that parcel of land near the GWB in Fort Lee that has been vacant for nearly four decades. Curiously, the story I read on northjersey.com by reporter Merry Firschein yesterday said nothing about his deplorable ethics when he was in office or that he resigned.

I don't mind that Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski today criticizes the selfish drivers who use parking spaces for the handicapped, but in his six years as a columnist, he's ignored NJ Transit's back-handed treatment of minorities who are forced to ride the oldest, most decrepit buses in the fleet, while riders on Manhattan-bound routes get the newest buses. This is truly lazy journalism, aided and abetted by the lazy  assignment editor who gave him the job, Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes. I guess those hapless black and Hispanic local bus riders aren't the newspaper's "demographic."

What about the Sports section? I'm told those editors and writers do a great job, but if you follow automobile racing, you wouldn't know it. I recall searching in vain for a story about driver Jenson Button after he secured the Formula One championship this year. So that's why my Sports section goes right into the recycling bin.