Pro football keeps on dumping on New Jersey

On Route 4 in Paramus this morning, I didn't see any signs of the Super Bowl 'frenzy' that was headlined so prominently in The Record. At 8:30 a.m., the sun wasn't even shining.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The teams set to clash in this Sunday's Super Bowl are partying in New York City, but sleeping in a Jersey City hotel.

That way, pro football can continue to take a dump in the Garden State as it perpetuates the fiction the game is being played in the Big Apple.

The scam hasn't worked: Ticket prices are depressed, and the economic benefit of the game will be far less than claimed.

What 'frenzy'?

You wouldn't know that from the "frenzy" being whipped up by Editor Marty Gottlieb and his tribe of lazy, incompetent assignment minions (A-1, A-3, A-6, A-8 and L-1).

The mindless Super Bowl coverage almost crowds the Bridgegate scandal off of Page 1 for the first time in a couple of weeks (A-1).

And the best story in the paper is below the fold: Staff Writer Patricia Alex's piece on the "very public suicide" of Madison Holleran, 19, of Allendale.

"...Young adulthood can be emotionally tricky, even perilous," begins her third paragraph, which lays out all of the challenges faced by young people in five hard-hitting sentences.

Readers rarely see this kind of good writing on the front page, which is hogged by The Record's burnt-out columnists, including Mike Kelly, John Cichowski and Charles Stile. 

Rest of paper

Is there anything else of note in today's edition?

On A-3, a story reports that nearly 9,000 volunteers will help Super Bowl visitors navigate the New York-New Jersey region.

And on L-1, another story says Theresa Flores, "a warrior against human trafficking," is on a rescue mission in advance of the big game in East Rutherford.

On the Better Living cover today, The Associated Press report on the Grammys doesn't tell readers many of the Sunday night performances by Beyonce, Taylor Swift and others were just awful (BL-1). 

More screw-ups

On Sunday's Business front, one of the photo captions was misplaced. It should have appeared above the photo of event planner Camille Cerria, not below (B-1).

On Sunday's L-3, Stile's column erred on when Stuart J. Rabner, New Jersey's chief justice, worked with Chris Christie in the U.S. Attorney's Office, according to an Eye on The Record reader.

Stile reported they worked together from 2002 to 2007, but the reader says Rabner left "right after [Jon] Corzine was elected" governor in 2006.