Christie is gorging on fish and chips while Jersey starves

The 47-story luxury residential tower at the center of Fort Lee's Hudson Lights project, as seen from the parking lot of a small downtown shopping center. The building, dubbed "The Modern," is shaped like a tombstone, and I can see it from the car while driving on Euclid Avenue in Hackensack, now that the trees have lost their leaves.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today is another lame effort that holds hardly any relevance for residents of North Jersey.

A third international trip for Governor Christie, who is flying thousands of mile to London for takeout fish and chips, has readers wondering how New Jersey's ailing economy benefited from his previous junkets to Mexico and Canada (A-1).

At least Editor Marty Gottlieb finally is running a Page 1 story on the group bankrolling the GOP bully's foreign trips:

Choose New Jersey has the backing of the "largest public utilities, labor unions, law firms and contractors -- some that have received multi-million contracts and tax breaks from the state," a front-page story reports in an awkwardly worded, poorly edited first paragraph (A-1).

For one thing, I don't think the labor unions have received any of those benefits.

Today's largely favorable Christie coverage shows how Gottlieb, Columnist Charles Stile and other staffers have been sitting on the edge of their seats for at least two years, promoting the governor's White House dreams.

On Saturday's front page, Stile's boring political column discussed how the pathetic Mitt Romney's decision not to run for a third time in 2016 might affect Christie.

Media vultures

Again, today's Page 1 image from an Islamic State video "in the slaying of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto" only encourages more terrorist brutality.

Why does the irresponsible Gottlieb keep on running the story on the front page?

The rest of A-1 today is wasted on the Super Toilet Bowl.

Municipal news

Today's Local section is filled with legitimate municipal news for a change, but stories from Hackensack and Teaneck have been conspicuously absent lately.

Four out of five stories on Saturday's Local front reported on employment issues in Paterson and Emerson, and on the police in Glen Rock and Lodi.

The fifth story was about the sentencing of a former Paterson auxiliary officer who tried to cover up the death of a motorcyclist.

The rest of Saturday's Local section was mostly Law & Order and court news, as if the municipal staff and local assignment editors in Woodland Park took Friday off.

Kelly on 'Sniper'

Hard to believe New Jersey columnist Mike Kelly couldn't find anything else to write about today except "an extraordinarily subtle but deeply significant fact" in the film "American Sniper" (O-1).

The punch line?

"The hero at the center of the story, Chris Kyle, served four tours in Iraq." (%$&!!!*()@???)

'Rape' or not?

If a grand jury voted against indicting four William Paterson University students on charges of sexual assault, or rape, why did the banner headline on Friday's and Saturday's front page refer to a "rape case"?

It wasn't, after all, a case of rape. The headline should have used the phrase "rape charges" or "alleged rape."

Free country

I guess emergency room doctor and pilot Christopher Okechukwu of Paramus has every right to commute in a 1976 Cessna 150 (Friday's gee-whiz story on A-1).

But after the engine sputtered and he landed on a highway in West Milford, shouldn't he reimburse the town and any other first responders?

Property taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize the wealthy doctor's joy rides.

Blizzard fizzled

Last Tuesday's "Blizzard of '15" edition was really embarrassing, though not quite as bad as the incorrect banner headline that ran in The Chicago Tribune on Nov. 3,  1948:

"DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN"

The Record's stories, under the banner "READY FOR THE WORST," called the storm potentially one of the biggest in decades and reported a virtual lockdown on transportation.

Maybe, it's a good thing The Record wasn't able to deliver the paper to subscribers -- even though fewer than 6 inches of snow fell in some places -- telling them in an e-mail to look at a digital version online.

Next time, instead of swallowing whole all that hysterical TV news hype, The Record should put a story on Page 1 explaining just how many times forecasts have been right and wrong to put the developing storm in perspective.

Finally, editors are focusing on the uninsured

Signs provide plenty of reading along River Street in Hackensack, where The Record prospered for more than 110 years before the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group abandoned the city for the sticks, precipitating a slide in local-news coverage that persists to this day.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

On Page 1 of The Record today, Editor Marty Gottlieb drops the filter of politics to focus on the people who have been living without health insurance.

For the first time since selfish Republicans again tried to derail the Affordable Care Act, the paper carries profiles of North Jersey residents who hope to find affordable health care. 

Now, where are the stories about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by health insurance company lobbyists, and the millions of dollars in contributions flowing into the campaign accounts of Tea Party radicals and other conservative Republicans?

Lazy reporting

But lazy journalism still dominates the front page in another column citing polls that claim Democrat Cory Booker now holds only a 13-point lead over Tea Party crackpot Steve Lonegan in the U.S. Senate race.

Lonegan, you may recall, recently kept a straight face when he compared governing Newark to his years running tiny, dysfunctional Bogota. 

And what about all those polls predicting a close race between President Barack Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney last November, when, in fact, the Mormon was blown out of the water?

Politics are the refuge of scoundrels like Staff Writers Charles Stile and Herb Jackson, who don't have the stomach for covering the issues that affect voters.

Errors pile up

Staff Writer John Cichowski is another so-called journalist who refuses to do the legwork to cover the issues of most concern to commuters in his Road Warrior column.

On the Local front today, Cichowski acknowledges the column started 23 years ago this week, written by a different reporter, Jeff Page, but doesn't admit he's no Jeff Page, despite 10 years of trying.

Cichowski's laziness is well-known, including his refusal to cover mass transit or report on declining enforcement by the state police of speeding, tailgating and other reckless driving.

Morons define issues

The addled Cichowski also allows drivers to hijack the Road Warrior column, and spin exaggerated tales of problems -- from highway detours to glare to red-light cameras.

And Cichowski has committed so many errors and given so much inaccurate advice on road rules, toll discounts and other subjects that a reader in Hackensack started a Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers.

Local news? Nothing from Hackensack and Teaneck for yet another day.

More failures

On the Opinion front today, another failed columnist claims the health-care exchanges "flopped" after they went online last week -- even though consumers have three months to buy coverage (O-1).

Of course, it's Staff Writer Mike Kelly who flops, especially with the shit-eating grin evident in his dated column photo.

On the Better Living front today, the imbalance in food coverage is evident -- the challenges of feeding a family on assistance shares the page with Staff Writer Elisa Ung's obsession with dessert (BL-1).

Ung again goes far afield in The Corner Table column, which is supposed to be devoted to restaurant issues, by stuffing her pudgy face with a new line of scones, muffins and croissants at Starbucks.

Hotel promoter

What are readers to make of Travel Editor Jill Schensul's gushing cover story today on new hotel "amenities" (T-1)?

Here's another major travel piece without prices, suggesting Schensul was comped by the big hotel chains or she agreed to write the lavishly promotional copy to land more advertising for her pathetically thin, 4-page section.