Editors run fake and real horse races on the front page

At Newark Liberty International Airport's Terminal C this morning, this departure level was relatively calm. The airport's cellphone lot still is hard to find because there are no signs at airport entrances that direct drivers there. Follow signs for "Rental Car Returns" and "South Area," then you'll see signs directing you to the lot.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Nearly 11 months before the major party conventions and nearly 15 months before the election itself, can anyone predict how close the 2016 presidential contest will be?

Of course not, but that doesn't stop the media from engaging in endless rounds of speculation on the nominees and who worries whom, such as today's Page 1 story in The Record.

Editors and reporters are so bored they have to manufacture a horse race every four years as a way of trying to engage readers whose real interest are the issues that affect their every day life -- such as the environment, gun control, Social Security and Medicare.

The Record's editor, New York Times veteran Martin Gottlieb, and the people running most of the nation's media shy away from exploring important issues, preferring to report extensively on the political conflict that has paralyzed Congress, and given birth to the "sound bite."

More manure

For the only real horse race on the front page today, see the disappointing performance of Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, whose wealthy owner lives in Teaneck.

The report from the spa town of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., was written by veteran sports reporter John Rowe, whose newsroom demeanor resembles that of a funeral director.

Gender change

A-1 is dominated today by a sensitive piece on a soldier's gender change from Staff Writer Todd South, the Hackensack reporter who is a veteran of the Afghanistan war.

In a Tweet today, South called the piece on Jennifer Long of Kearny "a story that took a lot of work but was worth it."

That may explain why Hackensack readers haven't seen any stories about the city from him recently, including in today's Local section.

The gender-change story continues on A-12 and A-13 -- totaling nearly two full newspaper pages -- making one wonder how many readers will stay with it to the end. 

Local news?

Readers' eyes continue to roll over the complete breakdown of editing and fact-checking, despite such six-figure newsroom editors as Deirdre Sykes and Liz Houlton.

A typo in the first paragraph of a local obituary for a World War II fighter pilot is so obvious readers wonder how everyone -- assignment editor, news editor, copy editor, copy desk supervisor, page proofer and Houlton or their stand ins -- could possibly have missed it.

"The Battle of the Bulge" is rendered as "The Battle of the Budge."

Opinion section?

The copy of The Record thrown onto my driveway today is missing the Opinion section, which includes the lone Margulies cartoon of the week.

Click on the following link to see the cartoon, one of the few mentions of Governor Christie in today's paper:

California's drought is getting worse ...

Naked puff piece is prominent on rabbi's Facebook page

Loud, smelly motorcycles were the only off-note at Englewood's Memorial Day parade. Even though these and other motorcycles violate every municipal anti-noise ordinance on the books, their owners -- including many cops and firemen -- are rarely ticketed as a matter of professional courtesy. And when these motorcycle groups hold charity runs, The Record always finds room for the photos, complete with glowing captions.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Columnist Mike Kelly's shameless Page 1 puff piece on Shmuley Boteach of Englewood is featured prominently on the rabbi's Facebook page today.

And why not?

The veteran Record columnist -- a Catholic -- delivered more than 100 inches of flattering coverage on Tuesday that some view as little more than an elaborate B.J. on the circumcised rabbi.

And just two days earlier, Boteach's own Opinion piece appeared in The Record, describing Governor Christie's meeting with Elie Wiesel, "the world'[s] most well-known holocaust survivor" (O-3 on Sunday).

That piece drew a comment from reader David Wilson on North Jersey.com:

"I know this is published in the Opinion section of the newspaper. But I question whether or not Schmuley Boteach was paid to write it. It sure reads like a paid campaign release."

Indeed, does the rabbi's support for Christie really deserve such prominent coverage in The Record -- unless it is part of the Borg publishing family's campaign to make the GOP bully seems like a viable candidate for president?

Most polls, experts and observers have already predicted Christie will fail to get the nomination in 2016, and if he pulls off a miracle, will be in line for a good spanking by Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate.

Corrections

Kelly's piece is not only suspect, he managed to misquote Boteach, according to a correction on A-2 today.

A second correction today noted Friday's Business section "incorrectly described New Jersey's employment recovery since the recession."

The Record's Hugh R. Morley reported the state has 1.8 percent more jobs, when, in fact, it has 1.8 percent fewer jobs.

That's embarrassing, and opens up the business editors to charges they have neglected to fully report Christie's mismanagement of the state economy.

Local news?

Today's Local section is filled with Law & Order news, as the editors are still trying to walk off their Memorial Day barbecues.

Typical of the accident photos Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza like to use as filler is one on L-3 today with a caption that makes no attempt to explain what caused a truck to crush a car.

However, Cliffview Pilot. com reported the 64-year-old driver of the Lexus sedan cut off the tractor-trailer in attempting to turn into the driveway of a Polish restaurant.

There was no word whether the West Orange man, whose ribs were broken, was able to order takeout from Royal Warsaw in Elmwood Park before he was taken away in an ambulance.

Better living?

The Better Living cover story today, "Taking Steps Against Arthritis," makes readers wonder when the editors are going to commission two other pieces:

"Taking Steps Against Obesity"

"Taking Steps Against Dementia"

Editors still obsess over Christie's White House dreams

Residents of Tenafly have asserted their constitutional right to commute individually in gas-guzzling luxury vehicles, rejecting an NJ Transit proposal to extend pollution-free light-rail service to their wealthy community. Plans now are for light-rail service only as far as downtown Englewood and Englewood Hospital and Medical Center.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today and every Sunday it seems, The Record runs a column assessing how Governor Christie is doing in his bid for the White House.

In the past couple of years, Columnist Charles Stile appears to have done little else than report on how state and national politics will affect Christie's bid for the GOP nomination in 2016 (A-1).

Tabloid news

Today, Editor Marty Gottlieb went tabloid on Page 1, with a lurid story on a Closter couple's murder-suicide while their 15-month-old son remained unharmed.
The headline was trite:

Couple's violent end

shocks community

Really, how many stories like this does the staff have to do before realizing neighbors usually know very little about the lives of the people next door?

And when will The Record stop labeling photos of police on the front steps of a dead couple's home as showing officers "searching for clues" (A-6).

Christie, Wilson

But Stile's column also is at the top of the front page, next to this sensational report.

Far more interesting is Staff Writer Jim Beckerman's shocking story on the 100th anniversary of "Birth of a Nation," a racist film that apparently was endorsed by the last New Jersey governor to become president, Woodrow Wilson (A-1).

Wilson screened "The Birth of a Nation" in the White House, the first film to be shown there (A-10).

Focus on TV news

The fourth main element on Page 1 is a story about Brian Williams taking a break from anchoring the "NBC Nightly News" after false on-air statements that he was in a helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade while in Iraq in 2003.

Newspapers have far more serious issues to deal with -- from the faked Washington Post story on an 8-year-old heroin addict that won a Pulitzer Prize to fabricated New York Times quotes in stories by Jayson Blair to the drastic decline in local-news coverage at The Record.

More fabrication

What Staff Writer John Cichowski did recently in The Record's Road Warrior column isn't any different.

Despite a photo showing nothing of the kind, Cichowski deliberately tried to panic readers into believing a Route 4 bridge in Teaneck was unsafe, because, he claimed, it had a "gash" in a major supporting pillar.

Since then, that bridge and other Route 4 bridges shown in a subsequent column have remained open while state officials closed other spans for emergency repairs.

The Record hasn't run a correction of Cichowski's false statement, but today uses a photo of another Route 4 bridge that "got one of the lowest scores for deck evaluation" (O-2).

Does that mean the bridge is unsafe? If so, why hasn't that bridge been closed for repairs? 

If it's not unsafe, why run the photo with an editorial labeled, "Closing bridges"?

On A-2 today, a correction notes a Route 17 overpass was incorrectly identified in a Friday story on bridge repairs as a Route 46 overpass.

Worse was a correction on Saturday's A-2, admitting the inept news desk ran the wrong photo for U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, who grew up in River Edge.

Turkeys galore

On the Better Living cover, Elisa Ung's The Corner Table column doesn't contain a word on whether the ground turkey in the restaurant dishes she loved was raised naturally without harmful antibiotics (BL-1).

And how did jazz musician and Teaneck resident Rufus Reid overlook the Golden Grill Restaurant as a great place to hang out in the township (BL-1)?

On the Business cover, Richard Newman's story on Uber, Lyft and other ride-sharing services doesn't mention the low pay and exploitation of the drivers (B-1).

And sad but true, Staff Writer Melanie Anzidei apparently couldn't find a single North Jersey company that used the windfall from cheap fuel to raise employees' pay (B-1).

On the Opinion front, Columnist Mike Kelly asks, "Did Saudi Arabia pay for 9/11 attacks" (O-1).

But Kelly never mentions what Americans have know for more than a decade:

Osama bin Laden was born in Saudia Arabia to the family of a billionaire and founded al-Qaida -- which claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attack -- after funneling arms, money and fighters into Afghanistan to oppose the Soviet Union. 

Second look

Last week, The Record ran a glowing story on how a developer will save $1 million by using a space-saving carousel parking system when an office building at 210 Main St. in Hackensack is converted into apartments. 

But the story didn't make clear the elevator-like steel structure won't be enclosed.

A photo of the Parkmatic structure on the front of Friday's edition of the Hackensack Chronicle shows just how ugly this space saver will be.

Christie is wrong for New Jersey, wrong for the nation

The Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan, above and below, was a source of frustration for North Jersey commuters years before The Record's editors took notice. Only angry letters to the editor roused the paper's transportation writers out of their deep slumber and distracted them from their driver-oriented coverage. Now, the editors are ignoring the problems of NJ Transit rail commuters, who scramble to find rush-hour seats on crowded trains.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In the last few months, The Record's editors had an epiphany:

Governor Christie's mean-spirited policies in New Jersey will have an impact on the 2016 election, if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.

But today's Political Stile column is largely a rehash of which Christie policies "are popular with conservative voters in key primary states" (A-1).

Those conservative voters meant little in the last presidential contest, when President Obama easily won election to a second term, and they won't help the GOP bully, in the unlikely event he is his party's nominee.

That will especially be true, if Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, heads what could be the first all-female White House ticket.

Who needs another Bush or a Christie in the White House?

Jackson stumbles 

A correction on A-2 today notes Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson was wrong in his unusually dull Page 1 column on Monday about his central premise -- how often a U.S. Senate ethics rule has been applied.

How embarrassing. This amounts to a "never mind" from the arrogant reporter, who claimed Rule 23 is "virtually toothless" and "has never been used."

Even the copy editor was fooled into writing this wrong front-page headline:

Senate's
strict rule 
on donors
never used

This Jackson correction and all of the errors readers find in the Road Warrior column makes you wonder about the soundness of the reporting and editing at the Woodland Park daily.

Mercedes in Montvale

In a letter to the editor, Montvale resident Kurt F. Kron says Mercedes-Benz USA is paying about $917,000 in property taxes on about 37 acres in his town -- "a 31 percent discount even after revaluation" (A-8).

In view of the official panic over rumors the U.S. arm of the German automaker might leave for the South, Kron suggests financial incentives should also be offered to keep residents in Montvale.

Road Warrior errors? Editors try to kill the messenger

Rush hour on Summit Avenue in Hackensack. In more than a decade of writing the Road Warrior column, which is supposed to focus on commuting issues, Staff Writer John Cichowski has largely ignored North Jersey's worsening traffic congestion and the lack of mass-transit alternatives.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You may have missed a comment I published on Saturday from the editor of the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers.

The retired engineer set up the page after The Record's editors started attacking him for exposing chronic errors in the so-called commuting column.

The column has been written for more than 11 years by reporter John Cichowski, whose thrice-weekly appearances in the Woodland Park daily have been cut back.

The Record has never explained the reason for the cutback, likely because readers are held in contempt by the arrogant editors, including Martin Gottlieb, Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza.

Here is the comment in full:

"The Road Warrior Bloopers Facebook page provides corrected facts, along with supporting sources and Internet links, all of which are beneficial to the safety and knowledge of readers, in response to mistake-ridden Road Warrior columns, which continually present unsafe, illegal, contradictory, and totally misreported information and advice.

"Readers should appreciate these needed corrections.

"All of this corrected information is always first presented to the Road Warrior and his editors, who continually ignore making any corrections.

"In fact, the very early communications and occasional follow-up efforts have been made in a very constructive objective manner to try to work with the Road Warrior and his editors to try and prevent his mistakes or correct them subsequent to publications. Unfortunately, not only did the Road Warrior and his editors refuse to accept these conciliatory offers, but they went out of their way to make denigrating comments in regards to these offers.

"Therefore, the gloves have come off and readers are shown how unprofessional and incompetent the Road Warrior really is based on the corrected facts, which are also supported by referenced sources, which are frequently the exact same source cited by the Road Warrior in his columns, and Internet links.

"Readers need to made aware of the very misleading, and many times false presentations in the Road Warrior columns if they want to stay on the right side of the law for themselves and their children who drive, avoid dangerous situations promoted by the Road Warrior to themselves and their young drivers, and not be misled or afraid of grossly exaggerated or false information about road and mass transit transportation.

"Readers need to made aware of just how bad the Road Warrior reporting really is when he frequently contradicts himself in the very same column, or reports mistaken information that contradicts what he correctly reported in previous columns.

"Readers need to be shown that the Road Warrior's responses in many of his columns to readers, who question the accuracy of what he reported in a previous column, are either very denigrating to the person questioning his reporting, or very misleading or false based on the actual facts.

"Readers need to be shocked and angered by the very misleading, and many times false reports and advice in the Road Warrior columns.

"The Road Warrior Bloopers Facebook page never crosses the line in offering information or opinions that are not supported by the facts and referenced sources."

Here is a link: Road Warrior Bloopers at The Record

Christie's future

In the unlikely event Chris Christie is elected president in 2016, he couldn't possibly treat New Jerseyans any worse than he has since he became governor in 2010 (A-1).

Given that he won't be making a decision until next year, why is this speculative story leading the paper today?

And is the so-called ANALYSIS really advancing other stories from reporter-cum-lap dog Melissa Hayes that appeared after last week's election, celebrating how well Christie did in raising money and campaigning for Republican candidates across the country?

The overweight GOP bully continues to be the butt of jokes, but he says he would be fit enough to campaign for the Republican nomination and the White House.

Still, he has done such an awful job for the New Jersey economy, the environment and the state's fiscal health, and there are lingering questions about his involvement in the George Washington Bridge scandal.

In another front-page story today, Christie isn't a member of a new gun control group that plans to take its case to manufacturers -- but you won't know that unless you manage to read deep into the continuation page (A-1 and A-10).

Trains, not planes

The Record's stories on trains carrying "highly explosive Canadian crude oil each week through Bergen County towns," including Teaneck, focuses on a relatively new quality of life issue (L-1).

For decades, the editors have ignored aircraft noise that affects far more North Jersey residents, including those in Hackensack, where private jets seem to skim the rooftops of high-rises and hospital buildings on the way to Teterboro Airport. 

The editors also do P.R. for a continuing menace --overweight white men riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles that are modified to be as noisy as possible when they roar down our quiet streets.

They are only shown in photos when they organize a charity run.

Hackensack news

You'll find big Hackensack news on L-3 today -- a woman having her eyes tested, and a man whose hand was injured by an NJ Transit train.