More jobs, cops for Camden -- still zero for Silk City

Exchange Place in Jersey City, across the river from the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Readers could be forgiven if they think Staff Writer Melissa Hayes of The Record has been assigned to rehabilitate Governor Christie's image in the wake of the George Washington Bridge scandal.

Hayes, Columnist Charles Stile and other staffers have been beating the drums for the GOP bully, a White House aspirant who is raising money around the country as the head of the Republican Governors Association (see Monday's upbeat A-1 story).

Today, Hayes reports on Christie's Monday trip to Camden, where he heralded a "new era" for the hard-luck city.

More jobs, cops

The state has promised a $260 million tax break to an energy technology company that promises to hire 400 people at its new Camden plant (A-3).

Christie noted the city's police force was replaced with "a regional county force," which "put more boots on the ground and has reduced crime already ... in Camden."

Gee, didn't Hayes think to ask Christie about Paterson's rising gun violence and the July 5 fatal shooting of Genesis Rincon, 12, who was hit by a stray bullet as she rode on her scooter in the impoverished 4th Ward?

What about a regional force to replace Paterson's Police Department, where 125 officers were laid off in 2011 after Christie-inspired cuts in state aid (L-3)?

Hayes apparently is the kind of reporter who sticks to the story she was sent to cover. How disappointing.

Clock is ticking

Today's Page 1 reports a plea deal with the former manager of the Tick Tock Diner  in Clifton (A-1), but was it really necessary to send a reporter to the Route 3 landmark to get reaction from customers (L-1)?

Didn't the Woodland Park daily do the same exact reaction story after Georgios Spryropulos was arrested? Are we going to see a third reaction story after he is sentenced?

Meanwhile, two filler photos run in Local today devoid of any real information (L-1 and L-3), as Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza desperately plug holes in their thin local-news coverage.

Couldn't they spare a reporter to call the police for details of what, for example, caused the tractor-trailer to crash? Was it excessive speed?

Genesis story

Sykes and Sforza report on Paterson officials seeking a "business curfew" (L-3), but apparently the editors are unaware of a movement to organize "a committee that will be composed of city residents of all nationalities and religious backgrounds" in the battle to end gun violence.

For that, see the letter to the editor from Corey L. Teague, a member of the city's Board of Education (A-10).

Native Americans

Today's front page also reports on the objections of the Ramapough Lenape Nation to the possibility Franklin Lakes will revise letterheads, business cards, vehicles and borough Web sites to remove the image of a Native American (A-1).

Also today, an editorial says it would be a mistake to cap a Superfund site filled with 106,000 tons of Ford Motor Co. toxic waste in Upper Ringwood, where many Ramapoughs live, instead of cleaning it up (A-10).