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| Two bus shelters and an NJ Transit ticket machine are all the services available to commuters who rely on the Anderson Street rail station in Hackensack, above, during the glacial construction of a new building, below. I didn't see any activity behind the fence on Tuesday afternoon, but a man in the bar next door said the site is an active one. |
By Victor E. Sasson
Editor
The Record's coverage of local news continues to suffer as Tea Party crackpots hold the media and the country hostage during a partial government shutdown.
The only national park in North Jersey to close in the crisis is the litter-strewn Great Falls in Paterson, so why is so much of the front page today and Tuesday devoted to a brouhaha that hardly affects us?
Today's front page also focuses on Tea Party ire with so-called Obamacare, jammed Web sites and other glitches -- not on the pent up demand of poor schmucks without health insurance or people who can't afford to buy coverage from greedy employers like North Jersey Media Group (A-1).
A lot is missing
The lead story in Local today is so poorly reported and edited that readers who saw TV news video of a road-rage accident on the West Side Highway are shaking their heads in disbelief (L-1).
Video on Channel 2 News on Tuesday night clearly showed a Range Rover accelerating and literally driving over motorcycles and their riders, but The Record reports only that the SUV "rammed several motorcycles."
More errors
Also on L-1 today, addled Staff Writer John Cichowski continues to allow a single moronic reader to dominate the Road Warrior column, and commits several errors in reporting on a special E-ZPass that gives discounts to drivers of hybrid cars (L-6).
Today's minor commuting problem, which Cichowski hypes and exaggerates, is "long, long detours." On Sunday, he hyped to no end a lone reader's complaint about glare from a 47-story high-rise going up in Fort Lee near the George Washington Bridge.
On L-6 today, Cichowski reports only 2,000 motorists have signed up for a Green Pass, the special E-Z Pass that gives toll discounts to drivers "whose cars get good mileage."
That's likely because he has rarely, if ever, mentioned the discounts since they went into effect in 2008.
What an idiot. Only hybrid cars, plug-ins and electrics get the required 45 mpg, but Cichowski doesn't mention that, and he is also wrong on the amount of the discount and where it is available.
With my Green Pass-equipped Prius, I get a toll discount of 10% off peak on the Garden State Parkway, 30% off on the New Jersey Turnpike and I pay only $4.75 off peak at the GWB, other Hudson River crossings and other bridges, such as the Goethals.
Local yokels
Local carries no Teaneck, Hackensack or Englewood news today, as Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza wilts under the demands of his once-cushy job now that his boss, Deirdre Sykes, has been sidelined with a mysterious health problem.
On Tuesday, Sforza managed to scare up three Englewood stories, all from the police blotter (L-2 and L-3), but continued to ignore the struggles of the city's downtown and its notorious traffic congestion, a solution for which has managed to elude the police for years (more turn lanes).
The last big story from Hackensack reported that two bricks had fallen from the facade of a Prospect Avenue high-rise -- as Hackensack reporter Hannan Adely has been asked to cover 9/11 stories and other general assignments.
Dead news
Local today and Tuesday is filled with Law & Order news.
The not guilty plea of former Bergen County Democratic boss Joseph Ferriero could have been covered in a few paragraphs (L-1 on Tuesday).
Ferreiro is a perfect example of why the Democratic Party in Bergen County resembles a fish -- it stinks from the head down --and explains why lifelong Democrats liked me voted for a Republican county executive.
The last two expanded local obituaries I saw ran last Wednesday and last Thursday -- retired Superior Court Judge Harvey Smith, called a preservationist; and Joan Schaefer of Bergenfield, founder of a girls athletic league.
They were worthy subjects, but like many locals whose life stories appear in The Record, they made plenty of headlines when they were alive.
I'm wondering if the editors aren't setting the bar too high, excluding many of our neighbors from special attention when they die.
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