Good effort for a change

Image by wallyg via Flickr

 
There is a lot of good reading on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park today, but not much hard news there or elsewhere in the paper.

Tall, thin Ashley Kindergan not only stands head and shoulders above most of the other reporters, but she is a far better journalist, as is evident again today in her story about North Jersey Iranians who are getting the word out on events in Tehran. Jeff Roberts, a sports reporter, has a moving story on the self-destruction of a onetime star athlete.

But I guess both of these stories are on Page 1 because there was no real news to report. Editors allowed most of the reporters to spend Friday making weekend plans, not reporting and writing Sunday stories. (Photo: One Police Plaza and federal courthouse in Manhattan.)

On the front of Local, there is not one, but two stories about Paterson students. Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski continues to be held hostage by drivers. There's nothing much to recommend in the section outside of an expanded obituary on Patricia Travers with a great headline.

In Business, Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais has another column on how credit card companies continue their efforts to screw us -- despite a new law. Maybe, he should be providing readers with strategies on paying off their balances in full every month and collecting rebates and other rewards, so they don't have to worry about interest rates, penalties and other outrageous fees.

On the front of  Opinion, Columnist Mike Kelly perpetrates another fraud, the second installment of his attempt to rehabilitate his pal, Bernard Kerik, the convicted felon who once was New York City's police commissioner. Kelly had the chance to ask bosom buddy "Bernie" the hard questions, but didn't. This isn't confrontation. It's masturbation.

Kelly loves to push words around to create a mood and ask lots of unanswered questions, but this so-called veteran journalist is afraid to use the appropriate words for Kerik: greedy and arrogant. I wanted to throw up reading Kelly's nonsense and the ridiculous, unchallenged quotes from Kerik.

A far better effort appears above Kelly's drivel -- former gubernatorial press secretary Carl Golden's reasoned analysis on the need to raise the gasoline tax to save the Transportation Trust Fund. Let's hope The Record's editorial page also isn't held hostage by drivers and urges Governor Christie to do so.

More drivel from Columnist Mike Kelly

I'll post a critique of today's edition of The Record of Woodland Park later, but now I want to highlight the inane column from Mike Kelly on the front of the Local section.

Many people at the paper know Kelly has been floundering for years. Haven't the incompetent editors noticed he is unable to muster the requisite outrage of a columnist? Is his topic today -- the breakdown of cellphone and other communications with Haiti after a devastating earthquake -- even worthy of being printed?

Isn't there enough said on this same topic in the Page 1 news story about local Haitians that more than a dozen reporters contributed to?

"But now, suddenly, a small part of our world has gone dead," Kelly writes. Sadly, Kelly went dead long ago.

With images of children sleeping among the dead in Haiti, is this the best Kelly can do? What about writing how the world has ignored Haiti, allowing it to spiral into misery with a corrupt, dysfunctional government and a greedy ruling class? Why not question why aid wasn't rushed there from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba -- only a few hundred miles away -- rather than from Virginia and California?

Of course, this is a much bigger natural disaster than Hurricane Katrina, but did it occur to Kelly to write about how the U.S. response was far more immediate for Haitians than for the residents of New Orleans?