Who is lying now?

Image by julianboy89 via Flickr











Is Governor Christie lying about what he was told by Bret Schundler, the education czar he fired Friday, or is Schundler lying about what he told the boss in the state's failed bid for a $400 million federal grant?  Don't look for a definitive answer today in The Record of Woodland Park, which reports the dispute as he said-he said and pads the stories with so much extraneous information, readers are overwhelmed.


The most incisive quote in the extensive coverage on Page 1 and inside is Schundler's: "I think the governor gets rolling and a lot of stuff gets said."  This quote appears with and without an ellipsis (...) in today's paper.

That "stuff" includes Christie on Wednesday blaming the Obama administration and federal bureaucrats before Washington fired back on Thursday by showing a video in which Schundler and his aides -- when asked -- couldn't come up with budget data to complete the state's 1,000-page application. (No one has explained why New Jersey officials couldn't use their cellphones to call the office and get the data they needed.) 

Political Columnist Charles Stile (A-1) comes closest to saying who lied, but chickens out in the end, despite overwhelming evidence in Schundler's favor. 

An editorial (A-11) rambles around before saying, "Christie's abrasive style served him poorly in this case." Pretty mild, isn't it?  

The whole affair makes our steamroller of a governor look stupid. Remember, Christie at heart is a lawyer, a group that is not held in high repute. 


You're an editor, stupid

The news copy editor who worked on the other Page 1 story -- about better batteries for the military -- wrote awful headlines that turn off readers. Then, he didn't fix a problem left in the story by the reporter and the clueless assignment editor -- the batteries are not just for the military, but will hasten the development of affordable, plug-in hybrid cars, as readers learn if they ever get to the continuation page. 

You certainly don't know that from a phrase in the second paragraph on A-1: "The next generation of military hardware and vehicles."

This is the kind of copy editing imposed by Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale, who impressed on the news copy desk time and again all he was interested in was snappy headlines that would sell newspapers, and please don't touch the text. His own columns were dreadful, filled with cliches. And many of the stories sent over by the lazy assignment desk were reported and written at the level of a high school newspaper.

Zisa breaks his silence

After working on Ken Zisa's legal problems for more than a year -- and ignoring most other news about Hackensack -- Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado finally has gotten comment from the suspended police chief. The lead story on the Local front quotes him as saying The Record's coverage has been unfair and inaccurate.

There is so little town news from head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes, that to fill half of L-6 today, the desperate layout editors had to run three wire-service or Star-Ledger obituaries of people readers have never heard of.

 

(Photo: Bret Schundler when he was running for governor.)