Editors want you to fret over $219,000 conference table

The Empire State Building in Manhattan as seen through the window of NJ Transit's 165 Local on Boulevard East.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Boy, I would have loved to hear the Sunday night newsroom discussion on what to put on the front page of The Record today.

One of the poor schmucks who gets stuck working Sundays probably had Editor Marty Gottlieb, a veteran of The New York Times, on the phone.

OK. We know Sundays are slow-news days, and there is only a skeleton staff on hand.

Still, why should readers of The Record care about what Kean University in Union spent on a custom-made conference table?

I just don't get it.

The story might belong somewhere in the paper, but not on the premium page of a North Jersey daily.

And the other stories on the front page seem to be there only to provide "the balance" of soft and hard news Gottlieb has insisted on since he took over nearly three years ago, turning The Record into a suburban edition of The Times.

Wild turkeys

The three wild turkeys shown on the front of Local today -- "IN A FOUL MOOD BEFORE THE HOLIDAY" -- have nothing in common with the millions of domestic birds that have been slaughtered for Thanksgiving (L-1).

Wild turkeys can fly over trees, and their flesh is probably a lot tougher and gamier than the bland white breast meat so many Americans seem to prefer.

So, there is no danger anyone would want to kill them. 

Pisses away $4M

The lead story on the Local-news front is about a new science building on the Dwight-Englewood campus, an expensive private school on the city's East Hill.

A urologist is donating $4 million of the $20 million cost, and will get his name on the building.

Dwight-Englewood has nothing in common with Dwight Morrow, the public high school that has been desegregated in recent years. 

But the smaller Dwight-Englewood gets far more ink in The Record than the public schools, including the city's still-segregated elementary and middle schools.

News blinders

In a Sunday story about a gift of books to the Englewood public school district, there is no mention of the schools' dramatic racial imbalance.

Another Sunday story about Englewood -- this one on the expansion of free Wi-Fi downtown -- continues to ignore the large number of empty storefronts and failed businesses.