North Jerseyans lining up for crappy hot dogs is A-1 news

More photos of the aftermath of a three-alarm fire that gutted a building at 76 Main St. in Hackensack on Saturday, prompting officials to order its demolition, above and below. Today, The Record corrects the number of apartments on the upper floors, reporting that 34 people in 12 families lived in the same number of apartments (L-3).

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Hundreds of people flocked to tiny Norwood and waited on a long line for a dose of nostalgia and indigestion on Sunday at the re-opening of a Callahan's hot dog restaurant.

Why is this on the front page of The Record today?

Staff Writer Minjae Park describes the deep-fried hot dogs as a "greasy bite," but otherwise doesn't discuss whether they are all beef or contain harmful antibiotics, growth hormones or preservatives (A-1).

Owner Dan DiMiglio, whose grandfather, Leonard Castrianni, launched Callahan's at a Fort Lee gas pump in 1950, says "the restaurant is offering an experience, not just food."

He doesn't describe the "experience," but it likely includes heartburn from all those fried hot dogs with chili and cheese or spicy onions and fried potatoes.

From all the publicity DiMiglio has received in The Record since he launched a Callahan's food truck, you'd think Food Editor Esther Davidowitz has a crush on him.

Or maybe he just signed a contract with the Woodland Park daily's advertising department.

Typo, error

On the continuation page, a historical photo of the Fort Lee Callahan's as it looked in the 1950s has a caption with an embarrassing typo, calling the place a "North Jersey hot dot institution (A-6).

The second photo on that page notes some diners in Norwood waited outside nearly two hours "to join the crowded dining room inside Callahan's on Sunday [italics added]."

Dining rooms are almost always "inside" restaurants, but the clueless editor probably meant to write diners "joined the crowd" inside Callahan's.

The Callahan's ad disguised as a news story appears on the same day that Chipotle Mexican Grill became the first national fast-food chain to stop serving food with genetically modified ingredients.

See: Chipotle is now GMO-free

Christie P.R.

Also on Page 1 today, Columnist Herb Jackson joins colleagues at The Record in trying to boost Governor Christie's sagging chances at the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 (A-1).

New Jersey's unemployment rate is the seventh highest in the nation, reports Jackson and a news story on the Business page today (A-8).

Ignoring speeders

In a letter to the editor today, Gerald G. Van Ess of West Milford describes the "crazies" you find driving on Route 23 north during the afternoon rush hour, "speeding, tailgating, cutting off other drivers -- just plain wild and reckless driving" (A-9).

But you find the same type of drivers on the turnpike, parkway and many other New Jersey highways -- a problem Road Warrior John Cichowski has ignored for more than a decade.

It's apparent to everyone except the confused, house-bound columnist that enforcement has declined dramatically.

What's next for The Record?

The surest way to discourage pedestrians from crossing the tracks is a fence. A story in The Record today reports a shift by NJ Transit from blaming the victim in such fatalities.

Despite the arrival of Editor Marty Gottlieb from The New York Times nearly eight months ago, the editing of news stories and columns in The Record of Woodland Park is worse than ever.

Story length has grown -- going against an industry trend -- but not clarity, and many stories are woefully incomplete, missing many important details.

Both reporters and columnists are content to rewrite press releases, and they rarely pick up the phone or leave the office to get more information.

Super hack

One of the paper's biggest hacks, Staff Writer Mike Kelly, has been writing columns for two decades, yet he has to be goaded into taking a stand on such corrupt officials as former Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa. 

Much of the blame lies with the inept editing on the main assignment desk, where head Editor Deirdre Sykes and Deputy Editor Dan Sforza struggle daily to produce a coherent local-news report.

Sykes and Sforza think nothing of allowing Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski to base entire columns on e-mails from drivers, and to completely ignore his mission of reporting on commuting problems.

Poorly focused

Today's lead front-page story -- under a banner headline, "What's next for Hackensack" -- is typical of the poorly edited news stories that appear in the paper day after day.

Somehow, most of the text on Page 1 sounds like a nostalgic retrospective of the Zisa family's decades-long rule over Hackensack (A-1).

Readers expect a story on the city's future to focus immediately on politically active residents who plan to challenge the status quo in May's municipal election.

And the Editorial Page still hasn't called for the resignation of City Attorney Joseph Zisa, cousin of the disgraced former police chief.

Hack on Hackensack

More coverage of Ken Zisa's legal saga appears on the Opinion front today in Kelly's second column on the convicted official in three days.

Friday's column was a disgrace, highlighting the complete lack of editing by Sykes and Sforza.

Kelly gave Ken Zisa a platform to argue he is "a victim."

Today's column on O-1 is another joke on readers, who are the real victims.

Deep in the text, on the continuation page, is Kelly's mea culpa: "It's an undeniable fact that Zisa was clearly wrong" (O-4).

That's about the strongest statement ever about Zisa from the pussy columnist. Nothing of the sort appeared in Friday's laughable effort.

Greedy lawyers

Also on Page 1 today is another in a random series of stories on how taxpayers in Bergen County and Hackensack are getting stuck with enormous legal bills.

Of course, none of the editors have ever questioned whether lawyers who bill $300, $400 and $500 an hour are charging too much.

Hackensack was forced to hire lawyer Dennis Calo to act in City Attorney Joseph Zisa's place after the official recused himself from representing his cousin in the many lawsuits filed against the former police chief.  

In December 2011, North Jersey.com reported the city paid Dennis Calo a monthly average of $25,000 "over the past year."

Less victimization

It's good to see NJ Transit finally has shifted its focus from blaming the victim when a pedestrian is killed by a train to installing more fences and other preventative measures.

But there's no explanation in today's story why long stretches of track through a Hackensack neighborhood, where a train killed a 12-year-old boy, remain unfenced (A-1).

Foggy thinking

On the Local front today, the Road Warrior column discusses low-cost transportation services for seniors who have given up their driver's licenses (L-1).

When is Cichowski going to be proactive and report on retraining courses available to improve seniors' driving skills to prevent loss of their licenses?

Editing lapse

On L-6, clueless Staff Writer John Brennan reports "no cause of death was cited in the hospital announcement" about Dr. Peter I. Praeger, the prominent Hackensack University Medical Center heart surgeon who also sold health food.

The obituary doesn't give his age, but readers can try to do the arithmetic from a 2004 quote, when the doctor was 56.

Then, readers wonder why he died at a relatively young 64, but come up empty. Why didn't Brennan call a family member?

Where was the weekend assignment editor?

"Hospital announcement"? What's the moronic reporter talking about?

Did the hospital e-mail a press release or statement, or did hospital officials climb to the roof of one of the buildings and make an "announcement" through bullhorns?

Traveling music

On B-3 in the Business section, a story from The Wall Street Journal discusses early bird fares for Thanksgiving travel.

In The Record's Travel section, a cover story from The Washington Post tells readers about airport improvements in Hong Kong, Helsinki and Seoul -- places most of them will never visit.

Also on T-1, Travel Editor Jill Schensul cements her reputation as a klutz with a column that begins with a confession: 

In Denver, she couldn't figure out how to start her rental car.

Fast-food folly

When I saw the teaser on the Better Living front about a "healthy fast-food chain," I immediately thought of Chipotle Mexican Grill, which has a half-dozen outlets in Bergen and Passaic counties.

But Corner Table Columnist Elisa Ung, also the paper's restaurant reviewer, really must have been won over by the pitch from Energy Kitchen, which has a lone outlet in distant Montvale (BL-6).

More of the same

What's next for The Record?

More of the same poorly edited news stories and columns, many of which raise a lot of questions that are never answered -- a sure way to turn off readers.

Another way to turn off most readers is to run inane sports columns on Page 1, such as the one about the Yankees today.

Did anyone read past the front page?

Image via Wikipedia

New Jersey's major toll roads. The Record has another "expose" on Page 1 today.

The three North Jersey stories on Page 1 today are so ho-hum, even the reporters who wrote them seem bored. How bored? As bored and boring as Editor Francis Scandale, who chose these dogs for A-1.

The lead story reports "general support" for teacher evaluation and pay changes being pushed by Governor Christie -- one prong of his war on public-employee unions -- and as always they are called "reforms."

There's a second story on the same subject -- from the viewpoint of educators -- on A-4, and an editorial on O-2, but I can't find anything on how teachers can be held accountable for the test scores of students who may spend several hours playing video games every night and refuse to do any extra reading. 

Mass-transit news takes a back seat once again to yet another story on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway -- the main element on Page 1 -- where toll collections seem to come up short by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. 

How does that affect you, if you use the roads only once in a while and pay with E-ZPass? Beats me.

Working with limited space and with the lead paragraph below the fold, the news copy desk sabotaged the toll story with a drop headline that is an instant turn-off: 

Toll collection errors amount to thousands

Thousands [of dollars]? Why is this on the front page?

The real loss is only four-one-hundredths of 1 percent. That's in the second paragraph.  (A 40-cent loss on every $1,000.) 

Why did Scandale, an assistant assignment editor and Staff Writer Karen Rouse, brought here from Denver, put this tripe on Page 1? Properly, it's a brief in "Around New Jersey."

Finally, the third A-1 story on pollution in Wallington is written as a feature, focusing on "2,000 old containers filled with chemicals." Local, county, state and federal officials aren't put on the spot for why a cleanup has dragged on since 1990. 

Local yokels

In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local:

There's no explanation for why a business story on a Web site is leading the local-news report, or why Road Warrior John Cichowski is devoting an entire column to an accident that closed the Lincoln Tunnel 10 days ago and was all over radio and TV news that morning.

Only two municipal stories appear in the eight-page section, one from Englewood and another from Hackensack, where City Council action from Tuesday is finally being reported.

Scamming readers

In Business, Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais returns to his core mission of alerting readers to scams and rip-offs after last week's article on a woman who sold best friends Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg, the former publisher, and real estate mogul Jon Hanson a private jet that cost more than $10 million. 

In Better Living, a cover story on "healthful ethnic eating" includes a large photo of a sushi roll made with tuna, which is high in harmful mercury, and no discussion of poultry raised with unhealthy antibiotics, meat pumped full of growth hormones or artificially colored farmed salmon.

Image via Wikipedia

And the article slams Chipotle Mexican Grill, a fast-food chain that serves organic vegetables and poultry and meat free of antibiotics, hormones and animal by-products. See:

Chipotle Mexican Grill earns bragging rights 

The Real Estate section, which seems designed to promote real estate agents and banks, has a useful article today on trying to trim your property tax bill by appealing your assessment.