And what about North Jersey?

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How many times have you seen the same photo of a line of vehicles with people evacuating the coast every time a hurricane approaches the U.S. or the same lame humor scrawled on plywood over a motel window? 

The puny, Page 1 headline in The Record of Woodland Park today: "Earl inches closer." Inches? That has to be absolutely the wrong headline word for a hurricane. Sounds like a man name Earl is inching his member closer to something. Does anybody read this stuff before the presses roll?

After you read the A-1 caption, the A-3 story and Mike Kelly's pathetically weak column on surfers (L-1), you still know jack about what will happen in North Jersey on Friday. Only the weather forecast on A-2 gives you a hint: "Breezy with a chance of rain." 

So, how did Kelly sucker his assignment editor into giving him a day at the Jersey shore?  And why is this hurricane story all over the front page?

Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale allows Bret Schundler, the state education czar fired for blowing a $400 million federal grant, to defend himself in the lead, A-1 story, and to document his claim that it was Governor Christie, not Schundler, who was lying.


The desperate editors haven't tired of this dispute, but so far their editorial position has been limp, failing to take Christie to task for his shoot-from-the-hip style, his inability to admit a mistake and the misery he's visited on tens of thousands of middle and working-class residents, while preserving the wealth of the Borgs and other millionaires.


The Local section has no municipal news from Hackensack, except a story about the Salvation Army there, and nothing from Teaneck, either. Staff Writer Ashley Kindergan reports that a suspicious fire in Englewood may be tied to backers of the ShopRite expansion.


Local news in the section -- supposedly the responsibility of head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes and her minions -- is mostly police and fire stories, including two about Fair Lawn police layoffs and a police sergeant getting hit by a car, another account about a parolee charged with killing his girlfriend, a bank robbery spree and a stronger Internet security program in the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.


No wonder readers have no idea what is going on in their towns. 


There is no local food coverage in Better Living today.