In today's thin Sunday paper, more cockeyed columns

If you have an off-road vehicle, race over to Berry Street, a single block between Prospect and Summit avenues in Hackensack, where the potholes stretch along nearly half of its length, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

One definition of "news" is a report about something that has happened.

But Page 1 of The Record today is remarkable for stories that speculate or try to predict the future.

Surely, Staff Writer Scott Fallon could have led the paper with a story about the environment that didn't try to panic readers in a dozen towns over the potential derailment and explosion of trains carrying "millions of gallons of highly combustible crude oil" (A-1).

More stonewalling?

Cristina Renna will probably take the Fifth when she appears before the state legislative panel investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closures, just like other Governor Christie insiders (A-1).

Doesn't Charles Stile have anything better to write about? This isn't a news column; it's a short story.

Forced busing

On the Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski has finally emerged from a fog to report on the long lines of commuters waiting for buses every weekday afternoon at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan (L-1).

The crowding had been evident for about two years, but you can tell from his rambling column he has never taken an NJ Transit bus to or from the city, and has no idea what he is talking about.

This piece on major delays appears months after angry commuters wrote letters to The Record's editor, asking for relief. 

He commits one major error -- Christie killed the construction of two rail tunnels into the city, not one, as he reports on L-3 -- so you have to wonder what else is incorrect in his long, winding column.

More space to park buses in Manhattan would be great, but a reverse bus lane into the Lincoln Tunnel during the afternoon rush hour would provide an immediate solution to the delays caused by the need to return empty buses to the city.

The Port Authority, which operates the tunnel and bus terminal, has refused to add a second express bus lane in the morning to boost capacity, and would probably oppose one in the afternoon.

Any expansion of the bus lane would deprive the bi-state agency of toll revenue from drivers.

Break it up

A permanent solution would certainly follow breaking up the behemoth agency into one unit that operates public transit -- including an expanded PATH rail system -- and another that handles toll operations.

In the entire eight-page Business section, there is only one story carrying the byline of a reporter working for the Woodland Park daily.

The Jets that matter played the Sharks

The only Jets who really interest readers of The Record of Woodland Park once roamed the West Side of Manhattan and rumbled with the Sharks.

Hey, Editor Marty Gottlieb, readers of The Record don't care much for the Jets, another football team from New York that offends us by refusing to adopt New Jersey in its name.


In fact, the Jets we love sang a West Side story:


When you're a Jet, 
You're a Jet all the way 
From your first cigarette 
To your last dyin' day. 

When you're a Jet, 
If the spit hits the fan, 
You got brothers around, 
You're a family man! 

You're never alone, 
You're never disconnected! 
You're home with your own: 
When company's expected, 
You're well protected! 

Then you are set 
With a capital J, 
Which you'll never forget 
Till they cart you away. 
When you're a Jet, 
You stay a Jet! 


Most of the front page is taken up today with another silly column by Staff Writer Tara Sullivan. Who can -- or cares to -- follow this tortured sports tale?


Exploiting the media


Meanwhile, the lead A-1 story continues to promote the rehabilitation of Dharun Ravi after he was found guilty of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation when he used a Web cam to spy on a tryst involving his gay Rutgers roommate, Tyler Clementi of Ridgewood.


This is the 12th story since the Ravi verdict and the second on Page 1 in two days. On Wednesday, The Record discussed Ravi's "strategy" for appealing his conviction.


Boy, Ravi's defense attorney, Steve Altman, is having such an easy time manipulating The Record and other media, but he fell flat on his face with the jurors who convicted his client.


Time to deport Ravi 

What a joke. The main headline is a quote from Ravi: "I didn't act out of hate." Does anybody but Gottlieb believe that?

What about poor Clementi, who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge, and his grief-stricken parents? Can you imagine their rage at all this attention Ravi is getting? Ravi can't get deported fast enough.



Maybe Ravi can try to make up for his crimes by doing community service in India, a turd-world country mired in poverty.

Lazy assignment desk

Don't bother turning to head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, if you're interested in municipal news, whether from Hackensack, Teaneck or many other towns.


Today's 8-page Business section is unusual. Business pages usually appear inside Local, except on Sunday, when a standalone section is published.


Want a good laugh? Check out the B-2 photo of an ancient Datsun 210. Nissan is reviving the brand, so where is a photo of the new car?


The Business section also contains legal notices with local school budgets, as did pages in Wednesday's paper. Take a good look. You'll never see that kind of detail in the news columns from Sykes and her lazy, incompetent minions.

Greedy bank, greedy publisher

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Publisher Stephen A. Borg lived in a $2 million home in Tenafly, above, but bought a bigger one.

Ads on Page 1 and section fronts are common in The Record of Woodland Park and many other newspapers as readership falls. In January, a luxury car dealer's ad appeared day after day on the front of The Record's Local section -- above the fold -- as part of the month-long 2011 People to Watch series.

That precedent was followed today by an unprecedented sellout, one which shatters the traditional balance between news and advertising-- a four-page ad wrapped completely around the front page and the entire A-section. How much did Wells Fargo Bank pay for it -- $100,000, $150,000?

How long will that delay the inevitable? It's a few drops in the bucket compared to the $3.65 million Publisher Stephen A. Borg sucked out of North Jersey Media Group in the form of a company mortgage to buy a McMansion in Tenafly. He should change his middle name to avaricious.

Robbing readers

I was initially confused by the Herald News bag that held my newspaper today. Unfolding the main sections, I saw The Record masthead with lots of blank space under it.  Then I caught sight of the word "Wachovia" in an odd type face, with an odd, reddish color to boot.

At least, the advertising department made no effort to disguise the bank's feel-good message as news or make it look like Page 1 with tightly arranged headlines, stories and photos. And, truth is, today's front page is nothing to crow about.

Most of A-1 today is wasted on Bergen County's Equestrian Center and dysfunctional Improvement Authority, a story that belongs in the Local section.

Women play second fiddle

An important cancer-treatment story for women is shoved down to the bottom of the page, and Editor Francis Scandale squandered an opportunity to package it with an A-3 story on two female legislators who want to repeal antiquated laws that affect women.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section continues to puzzle readers with much ado about nothing. 

More Jewish news

If Orthodox Jewish children observe the Sabbath, they can't compete in sports on that day. Why were two reporters and a photographer assigned to explore that so-called issue? 

One of the staffers, Giovanna Fabiano, hasn't had any municipal news from her Englewood beat since Jan. 22. Maybe she and Sykes believe covering Orthodox Jews is covering the city.

Road Warrior John Cichowski devotes an entire column to the death of one man at an intersection in Franklin Lakes, but doesn't ask why the car he was driving didn't have safety features that could have saved him. That car brand is an advertiser, of course.

The Business section today reads like advertisement -- a lead story on iPhone toy apps, a column on Fresh Direct grocery delivery and another on Tofutti Brands. Those reporters really know how to sell a story.

Here's real agita

If you want to experience heartburn, turn to Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's "The Corner Table" column, which is about chefs again (F-6) -- a subject she explores almost as much as restaurant owners and her obsession with dessert. She shafts only consumers.

Does Ung ever wonder why her Sunday columns usually are buried in Better Living?

You tell me what's good

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Critics of "Eye on The Record" complain I rarely or never say anything good about The Record of Woodland Park. Well, why don't you tell me about the good journalism you see in today's paper. Click on the "comments" at the end of the post and you can praise the paper to the sky, anonymously, if you prefer.

Does anything on the front page today interest you? What about the speculative story about New Jersey losing federal aid and a congressman or woman, because of slow population growth? Or the other Page 1 stories, one about Hackensack University Medical Center's push to reopen Pascack Valley Hospital or fraud against a Paterson church? Is there anything inside the paper that should have been played on the front?

On Page A-8, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin or another writer blesses the decision to return a 9-year-old boy in Brazil to his American father, but a far more compelling custody battle is reported on the Local section front, where a judge imposes a 14-year jail sentence on the Spanish mother of a 9-year-old girl. Why the Brazil case? Should we expect another editorial tomorrow? Should the parents or foreign family involved -- both sides -- be taken to task for their hardened positions? Or is the American parent always right, as this editorial seems to say?

Besides the sentencing of the Spanish mother, there are eight court, crime or accident stories, or related stories, in the Local section, but no municipal or development news about Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood, Ridgewood or a host of other towns the paper is supposed to cover.

What's good today about the Business section, which refuses to document the waste, and the adverse impact on both the environment and commercial airlines of the private jet fleets at Teterboro Airport? Or the quality of  life of residents of Hackensack and other towns under its noisy flight paths?  What's good about the Sports section today? What's good about Better Living today?

More lazy journalism

The last five daily editions of  The Record contain a lot of dreck and  a lot of short-cut or lazy journalism, but there were signs of life among local news editors and reporters. Still, I didn't find any news about Hackensack, which the newspaper appears to have declared dead.

Today's front page is dominated by a headline, "Sports gear scam hits high schools,"  which reports a "massive financial fraud against high schools in New Jersey," including falsified helmet-safety tests and lavish gifts to school officials. I plowed through the page-and-a quarter continuation of the story without seeing any mention of whether the same company tested helmets for junior football players.

And the reporters never say why we didn't learn about this a year ago, when a company president pleaded guilty, despite the release then of a "startling document." I guess it wasn't startling enough to wake up editors and reporters asleep at their computers.

Governor-elect Chris Christie says state finances are even worse than he realized, but the story is relegated to Page A-4. Three corrections appear on A-2.

Giovanna Fabiano, the reporter who covers Englewood, Englewood Cliffs and Leonia, seems to have awoken out of a slumber, with five stories in five days. Today, she reports on a protest by Englewood teachers, one of the easiest stories a reporter can do. She must be waiting for a protest by drivers, before reporting on Englewood's Manhattan-like downtown traffic jams, or a protest by residents, before reporting on how many of them are awakened by gunshots from the open-air police firing range.

The Business section has a second story in four days about a Wyckoff store's jewelry giveaway -- much too promotional for my taste, especially when you consider none of the 30 bags were hidden in diverse communities.

Monday's front page was wasted on an elaborate package reporting that a convicted senator from Paramus was due to report to federal prison and a recap of nine other politicians who are behind bars. Do North Jersey readers need any reminders of how many corrupt politicians we're saddled with? Then, the paper actually sent one of its own photographers to Pennsylvania to get a photo of the senator, but you can hardly make him out through the SUV windshield. All that way, and no photo of the rug-less felon?

I was more interested in storm damage to the communities I've visited on the beloved Jersey Shore, but searched the Star-Ledger story on A-4 in vain for any meaningful detail.

An editorial on A-11 bemoaning the state's poor showing on carbon dioxide emissions, much of them from cars and trucks, only served to highlight how little reporting the former Hackenack daily does on the  quality of mass transit, including some of the decrepit buses serving minorities. Have any of the transportation reporters ever ridden a bus or train in the last 15 years and written about it? When he was transportation reporter, Assistant Assignment Editor Dan Sforza ignored the loud, screeching brakes and roaring engines of new NJ Transit cruiser buses -- and the impact they had on residents along Grand Avenue in Englewood and other routes --  preferring to write about "highways of the future."

The Local section Monday is dominated by a feel-good story from Paterson, which is getting far better coverage than Hackensack, perhaps because the newspaper moved its newsroom to Woodland Park many, many months ago. In the same way, New Street, which runs by 1 Garret Mountain Plaza, where most of the staff is  located, gets more ink than any street in Bergen County. Better Living reports on restaurants in the West Englewood section of Teaneck, finally shedding the bewildering "Progressive Dining" label of the past.

Page 1 on Sunday reports the outrageous pay of interim schools superintendents, another in a series of stories designed to push taxpayers' buttons. The newspaper lavishes hundreds of hours of staff time writing about symptoms of broken systems -- in this case, ruinously expensive home rule -- but refuses to use its editorial muscle to call for their abolishment.


Sunday's paper also reports Venetians staged a mock funeral for the city of canals, but I guess I missed the story reporting the death of  Hackensack. This paper also contains columns by Road Warrior John Cichowski and Mike Kelly, both of whom are so far over the hill, you can no longer see the hill. And to think the paper kept these turkeys, but silenced its only black columnist, its only Latino columnist and the only columnist writing about the heroics of  police officers, firefighters and EMTs.

In the Opinion section Sunday, the lead article on why Governor Corzine lost the election is from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Three letters to the editor inside the section expose the lies told by ex-Governor Christie Whitman in a column that ran Nov. 10 without an editor's note.

A 2010 Dine Out Guide came with The Record, but this special advertising section excludes any restaurant that didn't buy an ad in the 64-page booklet. An article in Better Living reports on holiday restaurant meals starting at $25 per person (or $24 at one expensive Greek place, if  you can manage to round up 25 people), but ignores cheaper alternatives, such as the sub-$20-per-person, multicourse meals and banquets at Lotus Cafe in Hackensack, including tax and tip.

The Travel section this past Sunday was a thin six pages, but contained a story about restaurants in Montreal, just a few weeks after one about restaurants in New Orleans, a welcome feature that has been all too rare in the past. I just wish Elisa Ung, the paper's restaurant reviewer, could have found healthier fare in Montreal, instead of stuffing her face with high-cholesterol food and high-calorie desserts.

Why did Saturday's paper lead with a story on how 9/11 victims are divided over trying the alleged mastermind in Manhattan? Isn't that a decision best left to prosecutors? We get more elaborate recipes from food editor Bill Pitcher, who must think we all love slaving over the stove for hours on end. One calls for 20 ingredients.

Why is a proposed expenditure by the Englewood City Council to refurbish a firetruck on the front of the Local section? Isn't there more important news than that? Inside the section is a preview of the teachers' protest the reporter covered Monday.

On Page 1 this past Friday,the newspaper highlights the need for campaign-financing reform for the umpteenth time, again without calling for an end to a system where only the wealthy can run for county or statewide office. I got a kick out of a letter to the editor on A-22 in which a Fort Lee man calls the Yankees a "bunch of overpaid prima donnas."

In Better Living, for the third week, there is no Starters column on a new restaurant. And as usual, the restaurant health inspections column is incomplete.